Bigamy Charge Dismissed in Case of Double Two-Timing

LAGUNA NIGUEL —  An Orange County municipal court judge dismissed misdemeanor bigamy charges Tuesday against a 29-year-old Lake Forest woman. If convicted, Debra Ann Linderman could have faced a sentence of one year in jail or a $1,000 fine.

Prosecutors had charged that Linderman, who married Raymond Thomas Kerr in San Juan Capistrano in May of 1988, was still married to him when she married Derek Whiston in Las Vegas in February, 1990. Thus, Linderman’s marriage to Whiston was bigamous, the Orange County district attorney’s office contended.

But Linderman’s attorney, Michael Garey, charged in court documents that Kerr was still married to a German woman, Beate Beyer, at the time he married Linderman. Thus, Kerr’s marriage to Linderman was bigamous and never valid, making bigamy by her impossible, Garey claimed.

Garey said in an interview that Kerr had led Linderman to believe that he was single when she married him. Linderman believed that her marriage to Kerr had been dissolved when she married Derek Whiston, 25, who now lives in Rancho Santa Margarita, according to Garey. Linderman and Whiston, who have a young son, are now in the process of divorcing.

Kerr, who now lives in Colorado, denied to authorities that he was married to anyone else when he married Linderman. However, when he did not appear in municipal court Monday, Judge Pamela Iles dismissed the bigamy charges against Linderman at the request of the prosecution.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen Trudell said the district attorney’s office does not usually go the extra mile to get a reluctant witness in a misdemeanor case.

Asked about the defense’s motion that Debra Whiston could not have committed bigamy because her husband was a bigamist, Trudell said: “If all these documents are true, both the defendant and the victim have led some interesting lives.”

Times staff writer Davan Maharaj contributed to this story.