LaVerne Saxon, Military Marriage Fraudster – Arizona, 1943

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Mrs. Mabel LaVerne Saxon Kelley yesterday entered a plea of guilty to a charge of bigamy and obtained an annulment of the marriage that brought about the charge in Pima County Superior Court.

Judge William G. Hall suspended the imposition of sentence upon her plea of guilty to the bigamy charge, putting her on probation for three years, making one of the conditions of her probation that she refrain from excessive drinking.

From Judge Evo DeConcini in division No. 2 she obtained an annulment of her marriage to Andrew J. Kelley on testimony that she was intoxicated at the time the marriage occurred.

The charge was brought against her when the mother of her first husband, Charles T. Jackson, a soldier who was transferred to the county attorney’s office upon learning of her marriage to Kelley, which occurred April 10.

[“Mrs. Kelly Pleads Guilty To Bigamy,” The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, Az.), Jun. 29, 1943, p. 4]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Facing a charge of bigamy, Mabel LaVerne Saxon, formerly Mabel Courtney, 20, of Tucson, wife of Private Charles T. Saxon, of the U. S. Marine Corps, waived preliminary hearing in justice court yesterday and was held to answer to superior court under bond of $1,000, in default of which she was lodged in the county jail.

According to the complaint of Private Saxon’s mother, Mrs. R. L. Saxon, 629 East Ninth street, the defendant bigamously married Staff Sgt. Andrew J. Kelley, of Troutville, Va., then stationed at Davis-Monthan Field, last April 10, while still the wife of Saxon and drawing an allotment of $50 a month.

The defendant was arrested Friday afternoon at the Southern Pacific station by Detective James Herron, of the city police department. She had just returned from El Paso where Sergeant Kelley is stationed at Biggs Field.

Private Saxon, formerly a bartender at the Pioneer Hotel, enlisted in the marines at the outbreak of the war. When reports reached him last month that his wife had married again, he was in a hospital in the South Pacific, suffering from malaria, police said.

First information in the case reached city police when Saxon’s mother read in a newspaper that Mabel Saxon and Andrew Kelley had taken out a marriage license. Records disclosed that Mabel Courtney married Charles T. Saxon at Tucson in February, 1940, and that they were divorced and remarried in 1941.

[“Woman Held On Bigamy Charge – Married Marine and Then Soldier, According to Court Accusation,” The Arizona Daily Star (Az.), Jun. 30, 1943, p. 7]

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For more cases of this type see: “War-Marriage Vampires”& “Allotment Annies"

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