The Dermott News

LOVE 'EM AND LEAVE 'EM IDEA: LEADS TO JAIL
Frank Wills, Who Married 16 or More, Cannot Recall Wives' Names.

Bridgeport, Conn.--Frank Wills, forty and foxy, who broke some kind of a record or other when he married 16 women in 16 weeks, is thinking of setting up housekeeping again, but he will have to wait until he gets out of jail.

Just to show he is willing, he put an advertisement for a housekeeper in a local paper, and then, becoming really enthusiastic, offered to wed six of the widows who were among the 89 who replied to the advertisement.

But One Wife Appears.

Later in city court he identified himself as "Love 'Em and Leave 'Em Frank," claimed Northampton, Mass., as his home town, and said he played Santa Claus in the 5 and 10-cent stores one week in each year and worked at the matrimonial profession the rest of the time.

Although Wills boasts of his 16 wives, only one of them has put in her appearance since his arrest. She was Pauline Wallobits of Brooklyn, whom Wills, using the alias of Wilkens, married at the Municipal building in New York December 8. He left her December 12 when he discovered she had no money but before he left, she says, he forged her brother's name to two checks. Accordingly, he will be tried for forgery in New York.

"She was a nice girl, one of the last of my 16 wives," mused Wills as he

Worked at the Matrimonial Profession.

sat in his cell reading the matrimonial columns of his favorite newspaper. "She was all right and she wants me to go back to her in New York, but nothing doing. I don't want to go to New York, Bridgeport suits me.

"I had six women here ready to marry me within a week after I arrived. Only for the police grabbing me at the post office, I'd have been married again, maybe two or three times. One of the girls was a knockout."

Can't Recall Names.

Wills is a bit dim about the names of all his wives.

"Some of them just didn't register. Say, you police must think I have a wonderful memory," he declared. "As I recall it, the name of one I married was Mrs. Helen Bussell of New Haven. She was a widow with one child. Then there was a Mrs. Ettie McClenpan of Boston. I married her in Portland, Maine.

"There was another Boston woman, one in Washington, D. C.; two in Baltimore--wish I could see them now--one in New London, and some others, about 16 in all, since last August.

"But I did not stay with them long enough to really get acquainted. I've been trying to think of their names and the dates of our weddings just to while away the time at jail, but I haven't had much luck so far."

Wills said he did a lot of marrying when he was younger, but that except for this last burst of speed he has slowed up considerably of late years.