Oliver Killeen (born 13 June 1937 in Castlebar, Ireland)[1] is an international bigamist and fraudster.
He pretended to be a doctor of psychology in Waterford, Ireland for five years in the late 1990s, claiming to be a highly trained psychotherapist with university credentials from the United States and Canada.[2] He became a well-known media personality in Ireland with radio, television and newspaper coverage, including authoring a syndicated column in 35 publications.[3][4] He is believed to have been married 19 times. It is unclear if divorce was sought or received in any of those marriages. Killeen was convicted of bigamy in the United Kingdom in 2004, serving one and a half years of a three-year sentence.[5]
Barbara Daniels, one of Killeen's many wives, filed a bigamy charge against him in Superior Court in Ontario. On 1 March 2012, Killeen pleaded guilty to the charge, and was sentenced to 90-days in jail (to be served on weekends). The prosecutor said Killeen’s age, his guilty plea and fact he is working were mitigating factors to be considered in sentencing.[5]
In 2006 Agnieszka Piotrowska directed a documentary about Killeen for Channel Five titled Conman With 14 Wives (also broadcast as Trust Me I am a Conman in some areas) which led to a discovery of Killeen's subsequent bigamous marriage. A Canadian documentary series was made titled The Devil You Know created by Vancouver-based production company Make Believe Media. One of the episodes tells of Daniels' story of her marriage to Killeen and her daughter's legal battle to bring him to justice in Canada. It aired in Canada on Viva and on the Oprah Winfrey Network.[6]
References
edit- ^ "How jokey tale of the man with 14 wives became a horror story". The Telegraph. 29 September 2006. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 4 August 2024.
- ^ "Casanova Conman met his match: A strong woman". Toronto Sun. 30 March 2009. Archived from the original on 5 June 2009.
- ^ "Infamous Castlebar bigamist jailed in Canada". The Mayo News. 6 March 2012. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
- ^ Piotrowska, Agnieszka (2012). "The conman and I: A case study of transference in documentary". Studies in Documentary Film. 6 (1): 15–28. Retrieved 28 December 2022 – via academia.edu.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Toronto bigamist pleads guilty to one extra wife — out of 19". Toronto Star. 1 March 2012. Archived from the original on 29 April 2022.
- ^ "The Devil You Know". Oprah Winfrey Network. Archived from the original on 20 March 2012.