BIGAMY TRIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260056-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: February 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260056-3
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1 February 1983
PHOENIX. ARIZ.
BIGAMY TRIAL
An alleged bigamist took the stand at his trial Tuesday, portraying himself
as a worldwide rover who traded wives almost as often as he traded the goods by
which he made his living.
Asked how many women he had married between 1949, when he first was wed in
Korea, and 1955, Giovanni Vigliotto replied: "I don't keep score."
Vigliotto, who has said he married more than 100 women in 18 states and nine
foreign countries, is charged with one count each of bigamy and fraud stemming
from his Nov. 16, 1981, marriage to Patricia Ann Gardiner of suburban Mesa.
Gardiner and another woman who said she married Vigliotto have testified that
Vigliotto bilked them out of cash and property.
On the stand, Vigliotto, 53, identified himself as Nikolai Peruskov, saying
he was born in Sicily on April 3, 1929, and began his travels with his uncle at
age 8 1/2 after his parents died.
As the years wore on, he said he went to Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Mexico, Korea,
Hawaii and scores of other places, making his living by trading as he roamed _
"sometimes a very good living, sometimes an adequate living."
By trading, he said he meant "buying something, selling something, making a
living ... .
"I just don't stay anywhere that long," he said, adding that typically he
moved on within six months to a year.
He first entered the United States in 1943 when he was about 14 Qr 15, he
testified. He said he couldn't remember what name he used at the time but that
it wasn't his real name.
He said he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency "on a contractual
basis" from 1953 through 1954, and the CIA supplied him with three names
.Frederick Jipp, John Mendoza and John Briccione. Authorities said earlier he is
known to have used at least 50 aliases.
He testified that his trading took him to Korea during the war years, and he
lost part of his stomach and gall bladder when he was wounded there. He said he
also suffers from diabetes.
He first came to the Phoenix area in 1958, when he married Colleen Davis, he
testified. He said he spent the 1960s in the Midwest and the 1970s in California
and Hawaii.
One of his marriages came in Florida in 1980, when he wed a Korean woman who
"had a manufacturing business for original oil paintings," he said.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260056-3