MATTHEW HANSEN / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:00 pm
Alleged Pennsylvania bigamist Julia Bish has been arrested in Elm Creek and will soon return to the East Coast to face a charge that she married more than one man at a time.
The Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office arrested Bish — who’s known in Elm Creek as Julia McGovern — on the charge Wednesday afternoon. She’ll be held in the county jail until Pennsylvania police take her back to the Keystone State.
“The district attorney has made a decision to extradite,” said Lt. Chad Treber, a spokesman for the Westmoreland County (Pa.) Sheriff’s Office. “We’re abiding by that and will bring her back to answer to the charge of bigamy.”
Bish’s arrest adds another chapter to a twisting, turning story that’s been told by the National Enquirer, CNN and then, quite accidentally, by the Journal Star.
In January, a woman calling herself Julia McGovern agreed to a Journal Star interview for a story about Rev. Tom Swartley, an Elm Creek minister who’d delivered a controversial anti-abortion, anti-evolution prayer on the floor of the Nebraska Legislature.
A man named Randy Bish saw that story and e-mailed the Journal Star on Sunday. He said Julia McGovern was legally named Julia Bish and was his estranged wife.
He said she was wanted on a bigamy charge in Pennsylvania for marrying at least two other men while still married to him, and had skipped a court appearance to face that charge last year.
Pennsylvania State Police confirmed this information.
Randy Bish eventually sent the Journal Star a half-dozen stories about the bigamy case, including a National Enquirer story and the transcript of a CNN interview Julia and her lawyer did with Anderson Cooper.
In an interview this week, Julia denied the charges, saying she’d been divorced from Randy Bish for a decade and that subsequent marriages to Lawrence Judah, Mark Hunt and Kevin McGovern didn’t overlap one another.
The Pennsylvania police — who learned Julia’s whereabouts from Randy Bish and a Journal Star reporter Monday — asked the district attorney to extradite Julia back to the state to face the misdemeanor bigamy charge.
The district attorney agreed. On Wednesday, the Buffalo County Sheriff's Department arrested her at an Elm Creek residence after being contacted by the Pennsylvania police.
Julia now must decide whether to allow the extradition, or fight it.
If she allows it, she’ll be transported to Pennsylvania by the end of next week.
If she fights it, the governors of Pennsylvania and Nebraska must sign an agreement allowing Julia to be transported across state lines.
This process could take a month, said Lt. Duane Bond of the Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office.
“Her attorney was in to talk to her,” Bond said Friday. “They were talking about that.”
Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.