Colleen Edwards was a tired, lonely woman when she met David B. Geer. She was tired of working two jobs to support her two small boys. She was tired of the loneliness of being a single parent.
When she met Geer, it was a dream come true. He whisked her off to Wendover in a limousine for their first date. He promised to build her a house. And most important to her, he promised to be a father to her boys.What he never told Colleen was that he was already married. Or that he had married 13 women in the past 16 years. Or that he had left a trail of financial ruin and heartache all across the United States.
"No one has any idea how much pain I have deep inside me and how I cringe when I hear his name," Edwards told the Utah Board of Pardons. "He has hurt and embarrassed me beyond pain."
Edwards' emotional testimony came Wednesday during a parole hearing for Geer, who was convicted of bigamy in the Utah case and sentenced to up to five years in prison.
"I'm not sure why I did it," Geer told the board in his own defense. "I just don't like being alone."
The Board of Pardons Wednesday ordered Geer to serve 15 months more of his zero-to-five-year sentence for bigamy, setting an Aug. 8, 1989, parole date. He has already served six months.
Geer admitted to all 13 of his marriages, acknowledging he would seek out and marry vulnerable women, and then financially ruin them.
An Oklahoma City woman gave him $20,000 to start a business; an Indianapolis woman gave him $10,000 to start a business. No business was ever started. With others, he would charge their credit cards to the limit, empty their checking and savings accounts, and leave them in bankruptcy.
Edwards said it will take her at least another year to pay off long-distance phone calls Geer made on her telephone - calls he made to wives in other states, as well as 54 calls he made to a dating service.
Edwards told the board how one night her dream-come-true turned into a nightmare when she awoke to hear Geer, sitting on the bed next to her, talking on the telephone to a woman in Texas. He told the woman he was in Miami and closed the conversation saying, "I love you."
"He is a person without a conscience," Edwards said. "He has no guilt or remorse for what he has done. He could talk you out of your last dollar, even if you were starving. He left women and children penniless."
Also related were accounts of how Geer told a Summit County Jail inmate that he had to marry again "because 13 is an unlucky number," and how he was using Edwards' financial resources to shop for his 14th wife.
At the time of his arrest, he had just spent the weekend in Reno with a prostitute and another woman.
"Your motivation was the sexual and financial exploitation of women," said board member Paul Boyden. "You were even calling dating services looking for your next victim when you were married to Colleen Edwards.
"I would conclude you are a master con man," added board member Gary Webster.