HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) \u2014 An Altoona couple looking to tie the knot was ordered to stand trial on charges they faked the man\u2019s divorce papers so they could get married quicker.
\nScott Alan Hite, 40, and Patricia Palmer, 38, not only haven\u2019t gotten married yet, they now face a formal Blair County Court arraignment \u2014 on Valentine\u2019s Day.
\nAn investigation began shortly after the couple allegedly filed a document in October that purported to confirm Hite\u2019s divorce.
\nPolice said a clerk in the Blair County Prothonotary\u2019s Office noticed an odd coincidence: The chief judge in Frederick County, Va., whose signature was on Hite\u2019s divorce decree, had the same name as Blair County\u2019s president judge \u2014 Thomas G. Peoples Jr.
\nThat prompted Blair County Prothonotary Carol Newman to check with Virginia officials, who said that they had no record of Hite\u2019s divorce, and that the judge there was not also named Peoples.
\nBecause Palmer is also divorced, Blair County officials looked up her file and found that Peoples was the judge who signed her decree, police said. Court officials, and later police, determined the signature on that document exactly matched the signature on Hite\u2019s divorce decree, authorities said.
\nDistrict Justice Elizabeth Doyle on Tuesday held for trial charges of forgery and false swearing against the couple. She dismissed a charge of bigamy against Hite, because even if his first marriage is still valid, he has yet to make Palmer his second wife.
\nThe couple\u2019s attorney, Richard Behrens, said his clients \u201care not guilty of any crime. Explanations will be forthcoming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) \u2014 An Altoona couple looking to tie the knot was ordered to stand trial on charges they faked the man\u2019s divorce papers so they could get married quicker. Scott Alan Hite, 40, and Patricia Palmer, 38, not only haven\u2019t gotten married yet, they now face a formal Blair County Court arraignment \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}