
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 29, 1995                   TAG: 9505010016
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LEESBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

BIGAMIST SENTENCED TO JAIL

A CON MAN posing as a dentist persuaded a Virginia woman to marry him - even though he already had a wife - and then he duped her out of more than $15,000.

Joseph A. Caracciolo told Jill Forbes he was a pediatric dentist who wanted to marry her and buy a big house. In fact, he was a high school dropout and someone else's husband.

Forbes, a financial manager for an airline, met Caracciolo in 1993 in a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., bar, and spent the weekend with him.

Caracciolo, who told her he was 36, then followed Forbes, who was 39, back to her home in Leesburg. He said he couldn't live without her, and would move his dentistry practice to Virginia to be with her, she said.

They married two weeks later and started house hunting among the mansions of Great Falls, she said. Forbes happily quit her job, ready, in her words, to become ``a doctor's wife.''

``He was constantly on the phone to hospitals talking about his practice,'' Forbes recalled. ``He had the business cards - the whole thing.''

And he had some experience. A Southern California hairdresser had fallen for the same story and married Caracciolo eight months earlier.

Caracciolo was sentenced Thursday in Loudoun County Circuit Court to 38 months in jail for bigamy and grand larceny. The latter charges relate to jewelry, a car and other items he stole from Forbes.

He pleaded guilty in December.

After reviewing a pre-sentencing profile that described Caracciolo as lazy and opportunistic, Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas D. Horne also ordered Caracciolo to reimburse Forbes more than $15,000.

``I can't think of one redeeming feature in this report,'' Horne said.

Loudoun authorities said Caracciolo probably would still be on the run if Forbes had not launched her own investigation. Forbes walked into the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office in September 1993 with an 8-inch-thick file documenting Caracciolo's activities in Virginia, California and Florida.

She had discovered he was not a dentist. Caracciolo, who actually was 26 when he met Forbes, spent most of last year in jail for a 1988 incident in Massachusetts in which he forced a woman to have sex with him by posing as a police officer and threatening to arrest her.

``He destroyed my credit, wiped me out financially ... and took two years of my life,'' Forbes said.

by CNB