Six weeks ago, a woman named Julia McGovern agreed to a Journal Star interview and talked about how she loved her minister, her church and her quiet family life in small-town Nebraska. She didn’t talk about the National Enquirer headline, “Woman Supports Soldier by Marrying Him … Why She’s Married to Three or More Husbands!” and the photo of her wearing a dominatrix Halloween costume.

She didn’t speak of her CNN appearance during which her lawyer offered, as a legal defense:“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

She didn’t mention her other last names that appear on  Pennsylvania and Nevada marriage licenses  — Julia Bish, Julia Judah, Julia Hunt — or the resulting bigamy charge, or the outstanding warrant because she failed to appear in court last year.

“I was pretty much hoping things would calm down,” she said Tuesday by phone from Elm Creek.

“That’s what I was hoping.”

Instead, a Pennsylvania bigamy case is again in the spotlight because of a series of events that began when an Elm Creek minister delivered a controversial anti-evolution, anti-abortion prayer on the floor of the Nebraska Legislature.

In late January, a Journal Star reporter and photographer drove west to Elm Creek to attend Sunday services at the Rev. Tom Swartley’s First Christian Church.

The duo talked to Swartley and church members about the minister’s prayer, which had sparked dinner table debates across Nebraska.

One of the people interviewed was McGovern, who said she had recently moved to Nebraska from the Pittsburgh area.

She talked for nearly a half-hour after church, defending Swartley, while her husband, Kevin, paced in the church’s entryway.

That was that until Sunday, when an editorial cartoonist named Randy Bish e-mailed the Journal Star.

He said McGovern had been married to him when she married two other men in Las Vegas. He said she had skipped town to avoid a bigamy charge. He sent a photo of Julia.

“I did a Google search,” he said later. “Typed in the last name she’s using now.

“It brought up your story.”

Another quick search revealed half a dozen news stories written about the then-Julia Bish.

They detail her alleged marriages in Vegas to Lawrence Judah in 2002 and Mark Hunt in 2004, when she was married to Bish.

They describe Bish’s shock when he sat down at the family computer on Father’s Day 2004.

“When I went to the computer I expected to find love notes,” he said this week. “I found more. I found wedding plans.”

The marriages prompted the Pennsylvania State Police to file a bigamy charge, says Trooper Gregg Norton, the lead investigator on the case.

He says his case was airtight after Julia admitted to the crimes.

“It’s been interesting,” he says. “You can do legally pretty much anything when you are married, except marry someone else.”

In September, Julia’s court appearance came and went without any sign of the defendant, prompting the warrant for her arrest.

Tuesday, she said she got legal advice to not appear in court, although she wouldn’t give the name of the lawyer who gave the advice.

She also said she was having health complications after giving birth and wasn’t allowed to move her court date. She wouldn’t supply the name of the official who barred her from changing the court date.

Julia McGovern denies most of the charges. She says she didn’t know she was still married to Bish when she married Judah and Hunt.

She says Bish tricked her into thinking they weren’t divorced, and says she divorced Bish, or at least tried to divorce him, in 1994.

The marriage to Hunt, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, was to help him with a personal situation she says she can’t specify for print.

The marriage to McGovern, she says, came after she and Hunt were divorced.

Both Julia and Kevin McGovern argue Randy Bish is out to ruin their lives.

“On the one hand, I can’t blame Randy,” Kevin McGovern says. “She’s an extraordinary woman. You met her.”

Anderson Cooper, the CNN personality best known for his dogged Hurricane Katrina coverage, seemed less impressed with Julia.

Cooper shifted his focus from New Orleans long enough to do a weeklong series documenting the secret lives of bigamists, porn stars and strippers last year.

“Every family has secrets,” he intones at the start of the “Anderson Cooper 360” broadcast. “Some are healthy. Some are dark and dangerous.”

During the CNN interview, Julia says she married Judah and then Hunt to get out of an abusive relationship with Bish. (Bish and Julia have repeatedly lobbed allegations of sexual and child abuse at one another.)

She never tells Cooper she was innocent of the bigamy charges, and even seems to agree when the host twice calls her a liar. 

The TV interview gets stranger still when Julia’s lawyer, Larry Burns, claims that getting married in Vegas isn’t valid in other states. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” he says at one point.

Cooper asks if that’s actually going to be the defense in court.

“I mean, that’s a tagline for a commercial,” he says.

What had happened in Vegas stayed out of Elm Creek, at least until this week.

The Rev. Swartley said he was shocked to learn the woman who’d taken an active role at the First Christian Church had an outstanding warrant in Pennsylvania. He said anyone was welcome at the church, but also didn’t want the public to judge the church based on McGovern’s actions.

“We’re encouraged in Scripture not to judge one another, but we’re also encouraged to be honest to one another,” he said. “It’s hard for me to be judgmental because everyone fails, but … oh, man.”

It’s unclear whether the Pennsylvania State Police will extradite the woman they know as Julia Bish to stand trial. Generally this isn’t done in misdemeanor cases, says Norton, the Pennsylvania investigator, but the local district attorney may decide extradition is necessary in this case.

“I don’t think she’s a danger to society,” Norton says. “Other than she might try to marry you.”

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.