The Man Who Married Too Much

The two went on only one formal date, Julie Hicks said, because Ed was raising two children. Instead, they stayed in and watched television mostly.

"It didn't really bother me because he was a good dad, he was watching out for his kids," Julie Hicks said. "If you had asked me then, 'Does he love me?' Oh, yes, there is no doubt in my mind.

"It was so strong. Then one day, it turned off. It was just weird. I don't know why."

They had been married four years and were living in Chesapeake, Va. Julie Hicks's parents in Utah were both ill, and she made plans to go there to help them. One morning, as she was getting ready to leave, she found a typed letter on her pillow from her husband, telling her, "It is not working out." Julie Hicks went to Utah and never returned to Virginia. She also never divorced Ed Hicks.

While Julie Hicks was in Utah, Ed Hicks moved on to Sandra Hicks, whom he met through an Internet dating site. Ed Hicks began driving to Northern Virginia to date her, not mentioning his wife in Chesapeake.

"I loved him. I wanted to be his wife, I wanted to share a lifetime with him," said Sandra Hicks, who took in his two teenage children and helped support them even before their father had moved in with her. The two went fishing, traveled together and bought property in the Bahamas. Sandra Hicks said she paid for everything.

Then, shortly before their second anniversary in May, she called the IRS to find out why they hadn't received their tax refund. She was told it had been applied to a tax lien from his joint return in 1999 with Julie Hicks.

She contacted Julie Hicks and learned that she was still married to Ed Hicks. Then Sandra Hicks checked the Internet and found he was still looking for women to date. She kicked him out April 13 and went to police six days later.

In addition to the trail of broken hearts and financial problems that current and ex-wives say Ed Hicks has wrought, his legacy includes an abandoned son, who is living in Las Vegas. At 32, Christopher M. Hicks, his son with Sharon Hicks Pratt, is working his first job and getting his life in order after years in foster care, street gangs and prison. He hasn't seen or spoken to his father in 20 years.

"I don't know what I would say to him," Christopher Hicks said. "I think maybe if he would have taken care of me, I think we both could have bettered each other. Maybe we wouldn't have been in this [mess]."

Hicks was 21 and in the Air Force in California in 1965 when he first got married, to a woman with four young children. Over the next four decades, he would impose strict rules on how his households should be run, inflict occasional beatings on the kids, according to his first son and his stepchildren, and start dating other women while he was still married.

Sharon Hicks Pratt, his second wife, was then Sharon Tealer and the half sister of his first wife. They had Christopher while Hicks was still married to his first wife.