Two wives get smart, snare shared hubby

Scripps Howard News Service

Must credit The News eigh, N.C.

By THOMASI MCDONALD

Raleigh News , N.C. -- Two women married to the same man teamed up this week to turn him over to police, one of the wives said.

Police charged Keron Lamont Wilkins, 30, with one felony count of bigamy, according to an arrest warrant filed at the Wake County Magistrate's Office Tuesday.

In North Carolina, bigamy is a Class 1 felony, punishable by four to 10 months in prison.

Police accused Wilkins of marrying Shannetta Dawn Stone, 32, of Richmond, Va., on March 20 while he was married to Chaka Miles Wilkins, his wife of eight years and the mother of his children, ages 4 and 8 months.

Stone said Wednesday she first learned of the suspected bigamy April 19, when she talked with Keron Wilkins' mother, Cynthia Moody, a teacher's aide in Emporia, Va.

Stone said Moody told her that her son was married to someone else.

Stone confronted Wilkins, but he lied, saying he was not married. Stone gave him a week to produce divorce papers or she would call the police.

More than a week passed.

Then Chaka Wilkins discovered text messages her husband had sent Stone early Monday. She called Stone before dawn.

"Around 4 a.m. the phone rang, and this girl says, 'Dawn, this is Chaka Khan Miles Wilkins. This is Keron's wife,' " Stone said. "I sat up in bed."

The women talked awhile. They hung up, and Chaka Wilkins called again, this time with Keron Wilkins on the speaker phone.

"Who is Dawn?" Stone recalled Chaka asking her husband. When he refused to answer, Stone says, she asked, "Oh, you not going to tell her we live together in Cary?"

The Wilkinses began arguing and hung up.

On Tuesday after midnight, while Keron Wilkins sat in his Clayton home, Stone and Chaka Wilkins talked in code over the phone so their husband could not understand that they were orchestrating his arrest.

Police Capt. Michael Williams of Cary said he had no idea why Keron Wilkins married two women. "He didn't make any statement at all to us when we arrested him," Williams said.

Cary police are also investigating the possibility that Keron Wilkins may be married to a third woman, Williams said.

E-mail Thomasi McDonald at thomasi.mcdonald(at)newsobserver.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)