End Time Divorce -Part 2

The story of a man who divorced his wife without her knowledge posted HERE on this blog is not the first....did you read the same story of a doctor in the US many years ago. I think it would be an interesting read for you........

THE BEDSIDE MANNER OF A DEVIOUS DOCTOR

By Kieran Crowely November 2, 2000

TO casual observers, Dr. Jean-Claude Dominique and his nurse wife, Eliette, had a rock-solid marriage and strong family values.

Immigrants from Haiti, they were hard-working, successful and living the American dream in an exclusive suburb on Long Island with their son and daughter.

But behind the facade, Dr. Dominique was a conniving bigamist with another family in New Jersey.

Now, he’s dead – killed in a mysterious hit-and-run – and his brother stands accused of hiring two hit men to murder Eliette so he could claim the family fortune. The woman managed to deflect the bungling hit men’s bullets and is recovering from the ordeal in a Long Island hospital.

The sordid tale began more than 20 years ago when Eliette, an intensive-care nurse, sponsored Jean-Claude with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to bring him to the United States to practice medicine.


They fell in love and married in 1980, living in a nice condo at 1040 Carroll St. in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.


Their first child, Jean-Claude Jr., was born in 1982, and the couple seemed to neighbors and friends to be loving and content. The doctor tended to sick neighbors, who were impressed with his easygoing professionalism and charm.


But Dominique, a handsome man with friendly, green eyes, had also made promises to another woman – Marie Betsy Barlabier, his childhood sweetheart from Haiti.

He had married Eliette, but he still carried a torch for his first love.

That year, the affable doctor hit on a scheme to keep both women happy and began a tangled, 17-year secret life that he concealed from Eliette but shared with some members of his family.

Using a female impostor, who posed as Eliette and forged her signature, Dr. Dominique duped a lawyer and a judge and obtained an non-contested divorce from Eliette – without her knowledge.

Several months later, he “married” Betsy, who took the name Betsy Dominique. They set up house across the river in Irvington, N.J.

In 1984, Eliette gave birth to a daughter, Rachel. Eliette had no clue about her husband’s double life until she got a call two years later from her husband’s other wife – who told her she also had a child from the doctor.

What Eliette didn’t know was that her husband had actually fathered two children with Betsy – a boy named Oneil and a girl named Mapessa. And she had no idea he secretly “divorced” her and set up a bigamous second marriage.

She confronted the doctor, who admitted he fathered the child – and told her he would have to visit his child regularly. Eliette reluctantly agreed to the visits.

In 1993, Eliette and Dr. Dominique moved out to the suburbs – a large $273,000 white, split-level home in the affluent waterfront community of Baldwin Harbor on Nassau County’s South Shore.

The couple retained ownership of their Carroll Street condo, where the doctor often told Eliette he slept between jobs, rather than fall asleep driving home to Long Island.

In fact, Dr. Dominique used the condo as middle ground between his two wives, who could reach him by beeper or cell phone – wherever he was.

Ultimately, the doctor’s double dealings came to a swift and unexpected end. He died in a mysterious accident in March 1999. He was 49.

Moments before midnight on March 22, a stolen car sped down a darkened Bedford Avenue toward the intersection of Carroll Street. The vehicle slammed into him.

“The car hit him so hard, he went up in the air,” said one witness. “One shoe went on one street, and the other shoe went on the other.”

Dr. Dominique lay critically injured in the gutter. He lingered for 39 days before dying, without ever regaining consciousness.

The stolen car was recovered nearby, but police had no leads. In the emergency room at Kings County Hospital, the two Mrs. Dominiques met for the first time. His death had suddenly brought his secret life into the open.

It also provoked an ugly rift between his family and Eliette that, police say, resulted in a contract on her life, and possibly on her children.

Eliette said she was threatened by her brother-in-law Aly Dominique and warned not to attend her husband’s funeral.

In their Brooklyn apartment, she found an envelope with her name on it and opened it – it contained the phony divorce decree.

“I was sick, really sick . . . mentally and physically,” Eliette later testified. “I now began to realize that my husband had perpetrated a fraud upon the court.”

Eliette and Betsy went to court, fighting over the doctor’s estate, which now included an insurance settlement to Eliette’s children and another insurance check for at least $100,000 for the accidental death plus their homes.

A judge ruled last July that Eliette was the legal wife, which police say may have sparked the death plot.

from Nypost.