A former Maine man who was married to four women at the same time and avoided jail time when he pleaded guilty last month to a charge of bigamy in New Hampshire has disappeared.
Michael Middleton, accused of marrying women in multiple states including New Hampshire, pleaded guilty April 29 to bigamy. York County Sheriff’s Office via AP
An arrest warrant was issued Wednesday for Michael Middleton, 43, after he lied to his probation officer about his living arrangements, according to court documents.
Assistant County Attorney David Rotman, who prosecuted Middleton, did not return a reporter’s call Thursday.
However, the Associated Press reported that court documents filed in Dover, New Hampshire, say Middleton told his probation officer on May 1 that he was living in a transitional housing unit but was thinking of moving to a shelter in Portsmouth. He never showed up at the shelter and actually had left the transitional housing two days earlier, the AP reported. Officials also said his phone has been disconnected.
Middleton, who most recently lived in Old Orchard Beach, was sentenced in Strafford County Court on April 29 to 12 months in prison, but the sentence was suspended under an agreement with prosecutors, provided he meet certain conditions. One of those conditions was that he live in structured housing and alert officials if he went anywhere else. He also was required to undergo evaluations and possibly counseling related to domestic violence, substance use and mental health.
Court documents alleged that Middleton was married to at least two other women — Katherine Langley in Georgia in 2006 and Cassandra Shipley in Alabama in 2011 — when he married Alicia Grant in Dover in 2013. He would later marry yet another woman, Ashley Climer, in Kentucky in 2016, without divorcing Grant or his other wives.
Grant did not attend Middleton’s sentence hearing last month, but Rotman read a written statement from her in court.
“When we got married six years ago, what I thought I had found in him was a life partner, someone that I could face life’s ups and downs with, someone my children could look up to,” the woman wrote. “Instead I got six years of pain and misery as I tried to free myself from the prison of his lies and manipulations.”
Grant told police Middleton stole money from her and made frivolous purchases while they were a couple. But police said there was not enough evidence to charge him with anything else.
Middleton has a lengthy criminal history that includes convictions in at least nine states, including for domestic violence assault in South Berwick, where he lived with Grant, in 2014. He faced a maximum sentence of 3½ to 7 years on the bigamy charge.
This is not the first time Middelton has disappeared. In February, he failed to appear in court after a grand jury indicted him on the bigamy charge. A warrant was issued and Middelton was arrested in Ohio after a tipster alerted police to his whereabouts.
At his court appearance last month, Middleton declined to speak in detail to reporters but said he felt the sentence was “a good outcome.”
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