Giovanni Vigliotto His March to the Altar Turned Into a Stampede
August 19, 2021
Volume 51 - No. 33
By Sam Howe In March 1983, the jokes circulating around the Maricopa County Courthouse in Phoenix during an unusual bigamy and fraud case included this one:
Question: What has 210 legs, 105 broken hearts and no money? Answer: wives.
Giovanni
Vigliotto's
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because he was a record-setting marryin' man. By his own calculations, he wooed, won and wed 105 women. This created some major problems other than the obvious ones of wearing out his wedding suit and the cost of buying anniversary cards. One was that he never divorced any of his wives. Second, as soon as he took a new bride, he ran off and never returned. And third, when he ran off, he took her money and belongings with him. Equally amazing was the fact that Vigliotto, by the usual criteria, was
hardly a prize catch. He had an oversize nose, puffy lips and a beer belly, and his wardrobe consisted primarily of well-worn blue jeans and tennis shoes. But he was a smooth talker and a good listener, and a surprising number of women found him irresistible.
His victims were single women – spinsters, divorcees or widows. It didn't matter to him, so long as they had money. They were easy prey because they were lonely and he had a knack for comforting them because he was, some said later,
honest, exciting, and compassionate.
But honesty and a sympathetic ear were merely tools, and Vigliotto was highly skilled in using them to pry earthly goods from the vulnerable and unsuspecting. In the end, all it brought him was jail time and an early death.
He did most of his damage over a 20-year span that began in the early 1960s, but his life prior to that remains a mystery, outside of the fact that he was born on April 3,
Giovanni Vigliotto - A Big Bigamist