Man Pleads Guilty to Having 3 Wives

With his head hung low before a Municipal Court judge, a Simi Valley man pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of bigamy for being married to three women at the same time.

Lloyd Wetzel, 29, faces up to a year in County Jail for the crime, which his attorney blamed in part on a lingering mental disorder stemming from his childhood.

“He is a little slow mentally,” Deputy Public Defender Christina Briles said outside the courtroom after Wetzel entered his guilty plea. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a second charge of witness intimidation.

“He was just not paying a lot of attention to what was going on in his life,” she said of Wetzel’s three marriages. “It’s sort of like, if you ignore it, it will go away.”

Authorities say Wetzel, a security guard and former truck driver, was married to three women simultaneously. Briles said he married his first wife in Las Vegas in 1987, his second wife in the San Fernando Valley in 1990 and his third wife in Ventura County earlier this year.

Only the third wife--Moorpark waitress Sandra Lemich--pressed charges. When Lemich challenged him about the previous marriages, Wetzel allegedly threatened to kill her during a confrontation at a country-and-western bar in the San Fernando Valley.

At his arraignment last month, Wetzel pleaded not guilty to charges of bigamy and dissuading a witness by force or threat.

But on Wednesday, he entered a new plea.

Dressed in jail blues, Wetzel glanced quickly at his third wife as he was escorted into the courtroom by a bailiff. He sat hunched over at the defense table next to Briles, saying very little except to answer “yes” to a series of questions from the prosecutor.

In a hushed voice, he entered his new plea, saying simply: “Guilty.”

During the proceedings, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the second charge of dissuading a witness at a sentencing hearing if Wetzel admitted to the bigamy charge.

Wetzel faces a year in County Jail for bigamy. He could have faced four years in prison if convicted of the alleged threat. Wetzel’s sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 11.

Briles said there was no strong evidence to back up Lemich’s statement that she was threatened by Wetzel. “It is going to be dismissed because there is no basis for it,” she said.

But outside the courtroom, Lemich stood behind her earlier statements, telling reporters that Wetzel threatened her after she blew the whistle on his prior marriages. She scoffed at the defense attorney’s comments about her husband’s mental capacity.

“I don’t buy that,” she said. “He is so good at what he does with the women.”

What he does with women is marry them--a lot of them, according to Ventura County sheriff’s detectives who investigated the case.

Wetzel married Newbury Park resident Bonita Hoffman in 1987. She later filed a temporary restraining order against him, claiming domestic abuse, according to court records.

Three years later, Wetzel married his second wife, Guadalupe Diaz of Sylmar. Authorities say Wetzel was living with Hoffman and Diaz at the same time without either woman knowing of the other.

Briles said Wetzel was under the impression he had an annulment from his second marriage when he wed Lemich in a Simi Valley church this year.

The pair met at the restaurant where Lemich works. During a months-long courtship, she fell in love with the dark-haired truck driver, who is 17 years younger than her.

“I really loved the man deeply,” she said a few days after his arrest.

On Wednesday, however, Lemich appeared less enamored of Wetzel. She plans to file for divorce and may sue him. She has not filed divorce papers yet, however, because she wants him to pay the $185 filing fee.

She added: “I am in no hurry to remarry.”