World’s biggest bigamist: Conman married over 100 women without getting divorce

Gulf Today Report

A man in the United States earned the distinction of being the world’s biggest bigamist by marrying as many as 105 women, without getting divorced, between 1949 and 1981, according to reports in sections of the Pakistani media.

Each time, Giovanni Vigliotto would propose to the woman on their first date and then decamp with her possessions after getting married.

According to the Guinness World Records, Giovanni Vigliotto's wives did not know each other and neither did they know about the man they got married to. 

Vigliotto is not the real name of the person but just one of the aliases he used with his last wife before getting caught, the Guinness World Records reported.

Giovanni Vigliotto tied the knot with 105 women from across 27 states in the US and 14 other countries. He would meet the women at flea markets, confess his love to them on the first meeting and then soon arrange a wedding while keeping his real identity concealed.

His modus operandi involved asking his wife to pack all her belongings and join him after getting married. Vigliotto would then flee with the woman’s possessions in a truck and look for his next target. The conman sold the belongings he stole for his wives at flea markets and kept evading arrest for a long period of time.

However, things went bad for Vigliotto when his last victim Sharon Clark decided to take matters into her own hands and found the man herself by tracking him down. He was arrested on Dec.28, 1981

The man was charged with bigamy and fraud for marrying Clark while still being married to Patrician Ann Gardiner. 

“The police have this thing all wrong. I don't recall half a dozen times when I had to ask anyone to marry me. It was always the women who popped the question," Vigliotto said in an interview. 

He also said that he treated the women he married well. "If the rest of the men in the US don't treat women that way, then I'm sorry for the women in this country," he added. 

Vigliotto claimed that his real name was Nikolai Peruskov during his trial in 1983. He also listed 50 aliases he used while he was involved in fraud and also the names of his 105 wives with their addresses. 

In 1983, Giovanni Vigliotto was awarded 34 years of imprisonment on charges of fraud and bigamy along with a fine of $336,000. Vigliotto spent the remaining eight years of his life in Arizona State Prison before passing away in 1991 at the age of 61 due to a brain haemorrhage.