The Man Who Married Too Much

"Everything he did was romantic to me," Pratt said.

Then, she said, she caught him cheating. Hicks was on to wife No. 3, taking young Christopher with him to Washington state and refusing to disclose his whereabouts, Pratt said.

Hicks invited his third wife, Monica Marschall Hicks, and her friend Johnette Erlandson, to live with him. This, in turn, led to Erlandson becoming wife No. 4, though Hicks hadn't divorced his third wife, according to court records.

Ed and Johnette Hicks had two children together in the mid-1980s. Even after they divorced in 1994, they continued to live together for several years, she said. "He's just a very charismatic individual," said Johnette Hicks, now 45.

The pattern continues to this day: A seemingly normal relationship begins between a single, working woman and a divorced man with two children, followed by a quick trip to the courthouse for a civil ceremony. No mention of any existing marriages from Hicks and not much financial contribution from him, either, his recent wives said.

"I just think he wanted control," Johnette Hicks said. "He looks at his women and his children as his possessions."

Julie Hicks said that after she and Ed Hicks grew close in the mid-1990s, even as he was married to his fifth wife, he moved all of Flint's furniture into his new home in California without telling her. At first, she said, she was taken aback. But she saw it as a romantic gesture and moved in with him.

Their wedding was a brief courthouse ceremony. By 2000, they had moved to Chesapeake and their relationship had soured.

"I ended up having to declare bankruptcy and I lost my car," Julie Hicks said, after her husband ran up credit card bills and failed to make payments.

By early 2001, Ed Hicks was looking around again and posted his profile on the Internet. That's when he met wife No. 7: Sandra Goldin, a technical writer and former teacher.

"He has an aura of magic about him that is mesmerizing," she said. They went fishing and took vacations together. Sandra Hicks said she, too, always paid for both of them. They married in a civil ceremony in the Bahamas.

As with all of Ed Hicks's marriages, the magic quickly wore off. Sandra Hicks said debt collectors soon began appearing at her door.

After learning about the Utah wife, she checked the Internet. There he was, trolling, Sandra Hicks said. She threw him out and had to take out a home equity loan to repay the debts her husband had incurred.

"That's my money, and I'll never see it," she said. "And I don't want to see it as long as he gets thrown in jail."

Even after he was arrested in late May, Hicks did not stop looking for love. Sandra Hicks said he has dated a woman he met online and has been chatting online with at least four other women -- three of whom are fictitious characters created by his Fairfax wife.

"He was charming, he was accommodating, he seemed to be who he said he was," said one of the women Hicks has dated several times in recent weeks, until she was alerted to his history by his current wives. Hicks told her he was 52, had graduated from California Polytechnic State University and had been married only twice -- all false. She and Sandra Hicks were particularly impressed by his government security clearance, thinking it signaled a level of verified integrity.

"I know men," said the woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy. "You usually can pick up red flags. But him . . . God, he talks good."

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.