WESTERN BUREAU — With a statement still outstanding from the case file, the case against a Trelawny man charged with having two wives was on Wednesday pushed back to July 14.

Desmond Richards, of Falmouth, has had his $80,000 bail extended until then.

Wednesday’s delay was just one among many since the case was first brought before the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court in February.

In 1987 Richards, then 21 years old, reportedly married Lorraine Gordon who was three years his junior. The marriage took place in Falmouth.

Twelve years later, in 1999, he married again but without obtaining a divorce from Gordon.

This time, the woman was 23 year-old Nicola Wright and the ceremony was performed in Montego Bay, St James.

But things began to unravel last October when Wright, from whom Richards was by then estranged, learned he had married her without divorcing his first wife. She reported his bigamy to the police.

As a result Richards, who presently shares a common-law union with another woman with whom he conceived a child, was arrested and charged.

Richards’ attorney, George Duncan, has contended that his client had been estranged from his first wife, who migrated shortly after the 1987 marriage, for many years. Not knowing whether she was alive or dead, he said, Richards opted to marry the second woman.