[Mark Athans] She was my first love.
[narrator] When Mark Athans loses the mother of his children,
it leaves a gaping hole in his life.
[Mark] To fall in love agai and feel that for another person...
...was something that I longed for.
[narrator] When he meets a woman who seems to fill the void...
[Mark] Charity drew me in personality-wise.
[narrator] ...he'll quickly discover he's just the mark she's been looking for.
[Michael Flores] She's a master manipulator.
And she's literally out to take all that she can.
[Mark] I paid for vehicles, for apartments, cell phones, clothes.
That's strange. Why are there men's clothes here if her daughter is here?
[Mark] That's when Dakota started looking into Charity's background.
There wasn't a Charity Parchem or a Charity anything.
[anchor] Montgomery County has ordered Athans to pay $96,000 by tomorrow.
I found Charity's husband. Her real husband.
Boy, did I get a kick in the balls.
[Mark] My name is Mark Athan
I live in Willis, Texas.
And I'm a surgical first assistant,
licensed through the State of Texas.
I been doing this for 35 years. And, uh, I love it.
I'm proud of all three of my boys. I couldn't have asked for better.
Dakota is my youngest. He is 25.
He is God's gift to me.
Dakota is very high functioning, but he is autistic.
So he sees things in a different light.
He is purely honest and ope
with what he sees, understands, or hears.
[Dakota Athans] I do love my dad. My dad's a very wonderful guy.
He takes care of me,
takes care of my doctor's appointments,
hair appointments, that sort of stuff.
Always stands up for me.
[Mark] We were told that he would never graduate high school.
He graduated from high schoo He went on to college.
It's a tragedy that his moth is deceased,
and is not seeing the young man that he's turned out to be.
Kelly was my first love.
I spent 22 years of my life with a woman that I loved dearly.
That filled the void in my heart with something that I longed for.
[narrator] It's been almost four years since the death of Mark's first wife.
[Mark] I'd tried dating, and there wasn't any encounters that were serious
I was hoping to find someone who I could trust enough
that if something happens to me,
that they can carry on forward to help Dakota.
So he's not left alone.
Because I'm not gonna be around forever.
Now, I met Charity online.
Charity said that she was a Texas registered nurse.
With a couple of home health agencies.
She worked with elderly patients and terminally ill patients
That made me say, wow, she's gotta be pretty special if she can do that.
We did have a chance to have a date. Going to a local restaurant
Charity had told me that she had been married twice,
and that she had four daughters.
[narrator] Charity is livin with her two youngest daughters,
Paige, 17, and Destiny, 15, in the nearby town of Spring.
She had been divorced from her second husband for almost ten years.
Charity had told me that, uh, his name was Bart Parchem.
That she didn't have anythin to do with Bart.
That he was, uh, a convicted felon.
I said, okay, well, it is what it is.
Charity had, uh, a magnetism that drew me in personality-wise...
...that in a way kind of reminded me of the boys' mom.
Bubbly, friendly.
[narrator] It only takes a few weeks for Mark to fall in love.
Now, he introduces Charity to his closest friends:
his neighbors, Gina and James,
who are living with him while their house is being renovated.
[Gina Helm] Mark said, hey, I'd like you guys to meet he
see what you think.
So I was like, oh, yay, that's so nice.
She was very bubbly, and I liked her.
She looked very normal to me. Just a normal, average person.
Like... yeah, nice.
[narrator] Mark and Charity start seeing more of one another.
[Mark] I mean, to fall in love again...
...and feel that for another person,
that was something that I hadn't felt in a long time.
Charity came, she was like, hey, I've gotta run a few errands,
do you wanna come with me?
I just have to pick up a prescription and we'll come back.
So, we go to the pharmacy,
and she immediately pulls out her insurance card
and it said, Charity Parchem Bart Parchem.
And I thought, who's Bart Parchem?
And she said, that's my ex.
[narrator] Charity has been divorced for almost ten year
It seems strange her ex is still on her insurance card.
[Gina] But you know, she started immediately talking to the pharmacist,
and so I wasn't able to tal more about it.
So, then we leave the pharmacy, and she says,
hey, I am really sorry, but I need to stop by my house.
When we get there, she says my middle daughter, Paige, lives here by herself.
Then she goes, oh, I'm gonna go to my bedroom.
Come with me. You can see the bedroom.
So I go to the bedroom.
And there's a closet open, full of men's clothes.
And so I'm thinking, what?
That's strange. Why are ther men's clothes here if her daughter is here?
And then I look down, and there's a basket of like like, laundry.
Like someone's staying here
And then, she takes me through the bathroom,
and there's like, men's cologne, men's razors um, shaving cream.
And I said, what man lives here?
And she says, oh, no man lives here.
My ex comes here after working out,
showers and changes and the takes the girls to do stuff
And I was like, okay, but...
...this is a lotta stuff.
It literally looked like the girls lived there and he lived there.
So, when we got back, I went straight to Mark.
I was like, okay.
I don't understand at all. You may want to discuss that with her.
[Mark] That was where my confusion starts.
How do I take this?
Because I was in love with Charity,
and because of, I wanted things to work,
that was the whole intent, was to get a life partner.
And he comes to us and mentions, hey,
I've asked Charity to move in with us.
And James and I, you know, are like, okay...
[Mark] Her youngest daughter Destiny, came with Charity.
So I picked up a ready-made family, pretty much.
[Gina] Charity really took over the house.
Like, these are my things, and I'm gonna cook this.
And I thought, she just wants us outta here.
[Mark] Charity wanted to quit work
and just concentrate on Destiny and Dakota.
At that point in time, I jus said, you know what? Sure.
Let's rock and roll with thi
I'm getting back on track with a life, a family life.
[Gina] I just didn't understand it.
You know, we're thinking, uh, he's just so in love?
You know... You know, is this what's happening?
We didn't like it at all.
Honestly, I thought that Gina and James were not getting along with Charity
because there might be an issue that I'm not seeing.
So that weekend, I wanted to go somewhere with James, Gina and Charity
and I could take a little mental health break, and I guess reconnect.
[Gina] James and I were a bit reluctant.
But we were like, okay, you know, we'll do it.
[Mark] Charity starts drinking.
All of a sudden, she starts forcing me to do these shots
Then I just put my foot down said, that's it, I'm not doi no more shots.
[Gina] James snaps a pictur of us at the table,
and it was, oh, I got a picture of us, I'm posting it on Facebook,
and we're all, like, oh, cut
[narrator] Moments after posting the photo,
James gets a phone call from an old and trusted friend, Michael Flores.
[phone ringing]
Michael and Charity had bee friends and colleagues in the past.
But it didn't end well.
I, I was just like, wow.
Out of all the people in the world, what are the odds?
It had been two years since I had saw Charity.
She was more full figured than she was when I knew her,
but I I knew it was her as soon as I saw her.
[Gina] James comes back to the table, and he's very...
...like, freaked-out looking.
And then James kinda, like, nudges me
while Mark and Charity are talking about something
And he says...
...Mike Flores says Mark needs to run.
From Charity.
James asks Charity, do you know Mike Flores?
And her face was shock.
And then James goes, I grew up with him.
And in fact, I spoke to him and he didn't have very goo things to say about you.
[narrator] But before Charit can respond,
the group is distracted by another bar patron.
[Gina] Somebody bumps into Charity's chair,
which, you know, seemed harmless, oh, and he was like, [slurring] "Oh sorry."
You know, and just walked off.
But then she's telling Mark oh my gosh, I think he touched me.
And now Mark's up, and he's like, what do you mean?
Like, how did he touch you?
And she seems to be getting Mark all riled up.
There he is, pointing him ou
[Mark] Man, I was, I was fixing to go at him.
I was losing my cool.
My saving grace was, is Jame decided this is done,
we gotta walk outta here now
We got out in my truck.
[Gina] Charity is still, you know, badgering Mark, they're fighting.
Mark's trying to get her to calm down.
And she seems to just want to escalate it.
And she's like, you don't even care.
[Mark] When we were coming down the road here at the house,
Charity got out of the truck
[Gina] She slams the door,
walks over to her vehicle, and says, "I'm leaving."
And Mark's like, what?
And she did. She left.
James and I look at each other, and we're thinking...
...but where is she going?
This is not good.
I told James that she isn't who he thinks she is.
She's a master manipulator.
I lost everything. I lost everything.
She is the spawn of Satan.
[narrator] Mark Athans' evening out with his friends and girlfriend
has ended in confusion.
I'm going, like, what the hell just happened?
[Gina] Charity just tears outta there.
And I don't even understand.
[narrator] James thinks he knows what was behind Charity's hasty retreat.
[Gina] James says she didn' wanna deal
with any of the Mike Flores questions from any of us.
So it was a giant, blown-up situation to create drama.
And then I think, oh, that's right.
[narrator] The next morning there's still no sign of Charity.
It's James' chance to get Mark alone.
[Gina] They sit down,
and James begins to just unload all this material that Mike Flores,
you know, explained to him.
[Flores] I gave him a rundow of my dealings with her.
And I met her at the tattoo shop years ago
Charity liked getting older guys to fall for her,
and then getting what she wanted out of them,
whether it was dinner or jewelry or, you know, takin care of some of her bills.
Charity just uses, you know, sexual favors to kinda reel 'em in.
She talked about how to manipulate, uh, men
to get what she wanted out of it.
Weak men with money who are searching for a relationship.
Use 'em while she can, and just go on to the next.
She's a master manipulator.
You know, she's sweet on the outside,
and just a, a monster on the inside once she gets her, her fangs sunk in.
I told James to tell Mark to get out now, while you ca
Before this guy just loses everything.
This is the real deal.
And she's literally out to take all that she can.
[narrator] A dire warning which Mark completely ignore
when Charity returns a day later.
[Flores] James says Mark's response was,
well, that may have been her in her past, that's not the way she is no
[Mark] You know what?
I had lost somebody that I spent 22 years of my life with.
You know, to feel that for another person...
...I opened up totally, 100%.
[narrator] And now, Gina and James are the ones who feel unwelcome.
[Gina] There's a lotta tensi in the house.
We go in to get a cup of coffee, if she's in there,
she just immediately, like, removes herself from the roo
I'm sure she doesn't want me asking her questions.
[Mark] I'm getting told over and over that they're just using you
I mean, Charity had told me that James had tried to sell her drugs.
She had told me also that James had tried to come on to her.
On multiple occasions.
I was upset.
Of course.
Honestly, I was really hurt by it.
He must be believing this stuff.
And at that point, you know, James and I were like,
we need to immediately get out of Mark's house.
We get everything done quick
And we move where we needed to be next door.
It was weird. We lived right next door to Mark, but we didn't talk.
[Mark] Everything really started going into high gea within a matter of weeks.
[Mark] I got down on one kne and asked Charity if she would marry me.
And I guess I'm expecting something like,
okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then come give me a big hug and a kiss,
and, oh my gosh, and...
But it's... subdued.
She looked at me and she said yes, she would.
I guess I'm thinking of a crescendo...
...when it was more like a little vibrato, [laughing] you know?
But that's the way that occurred.
And she told me she didn't want any of her family knowing.
Nobody. Daughters, nobody.
Charity had pushed it, wanting to get married in South Dakota, at Sturgis
So, you know, we went to South Dakota, and we got married in City Hall
in front of pictures of all the Mayors [laughing] of Deadwood, South Dakota.
[laughing]
We go back, the people at the resort that we stayed at
had, uh, drinks for us there and that was it.
That was the end of the nigh
What, what a wedding night, huh?
[laughing]
Nothing else happened.
Actually, nothing else happened for the next...
...six days.
So for six days, we didn't consummate the marriage?
Seriously? What the hell is going on?
On the way back, I had 20-something hours of drivin to think,
and the whole time back, I felt like I had made one hell of an error.
[narrator] Once back home in Willis, Mark sets his concerns aside
and commits himself to supporting his new family
But it's a strain.
The expenses increased tenfold from the day we were married.
Charity told me that Bart didn't pay any child support
He was an ex-con deadbeat da That's exactly the way she put it.
With Charity and her daughters, I had to pay for vehicles,
I had to pay for furniture, I had to pay for apartments,
I had to pay for college tuitions, cell phones, and I'm doing it all alone.
For a lotta people.
Even though Destiny was the only daughter that lived here.
One day, Charity said she had to go see Paige
and pick up some things that she had.
She left at like, eight, nin in the morning.
I would come home from work about four or five-ish in the afternoon.
She wasn't here.
I was going, like, okay, well, she's just busy. I'd text her.
And couldn't get a reply out of the text.
She just disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gone.
She came back home at about 11:00.
And she's going like, well, I had a lotta things I had to get with Paige.
I had suspicions that something was up.
And that's when Dakota started looking into Charity's background.
[Dakota] I actually went through, uh, online, found some stuff about her.
I went to the Montgomery County Texas Odyssey databas
that's actually the court docket system, and she has a criminal record.
For theft by check.
She said she was a nurse.
[Mark] All the lights, all the red flags, popped up
You can't be a nurse with a criminal record. You just can't do it.
I called the Texas State Nursing Board. They went and looked.
There weren't no Charity Parchem, or a Charit
or anything with her birthday in there.
Anything. Her social securit anything.
I'm going, like, are you kidding me?
So she's been lying to me all this time about her being a nurse when she never was.
[narrator] What else is she lying about?
Now Mark really wants to kno what Charity has been up to
[Mark] And then I also remembered
that I put GPS trackers on my vehicles.
On all the vehicles.
So if one of 'em ever got stolen, I knew exactly where that would be.
Said, you know what? I need to look and see where the vehicles are.
And guess where the vehicle would be showing up at?
Especially the one that Charity had?
At the old house in Spring.
[narrator] ...where earlier Gina had observed men's toiletries and clothes
Imagine that.
[narrator] Mark Athans has just discovered that his new bride Charity
has been spending a lot of time at her previous hous
Of course, I'd already had the devil picking on my shoulder, causing doubt.
And doubt was starting to seem pretty, pretty hard and heavy then.
[narrator] True, her daughte Paige lives there.
But does her ex-husband Bart live there as well?
Mark's suspicions are growin
There's a lotta things I will believe, but when it comes down to it,
and you can't get in touch with somebody,
whether you needed 'em for an emergency or nothing
no contact, cell phone's turned off...
Things changed very rapidly then.
I started looking at Charity cell phone records,
because the phones were in my name.
And it was kinda funny,
because the morning that she disappeared off the face of the earth...
...there was a phone call made on her cell phone,
and guess whose phone it went to?
Bart Parchem's.
I confronted Charity about this.
I said, you're calling your ex-husband three or fou times a day.
"It had to do about the girl They are his daughters."
And I said, so, you're telling me
that you sent him over a hundred-and-something text about his daughters
when you never did that before?
She blew up. So she got extremely mad.
Extremely ticked off.
"What are you doing tracking me, you don't trust me?"
And I told her straight up, hell, no, I don't trust ya.
You're doing things that are, that are violating that trust.
I asked her if she was sleeping with Bart.
And she said no, she was not
But sometimes, you don't have to have an admission of guilt
whenever you got the proof sittin' right in front of your face.
She was pissed off, and she just took off.
After about ten hours, Charity came back,
and it was like, let's talk I can fix this, I, I can do right.
I went and said, okay, you know,
you can't say I'm not gonna try.
[narrator] Charity seems determined to make a fresh new start with Mark
[Mark] Charity made reservations
at the San Luis Hotel in Galveston for the weekend
Just me and her. Something to rebuild what had been broken.
We go to the hotel. The restaurant was a very good dinner.
But, uh, halfway through the meal,
she wanted to go back upstairs.
We went back up to the room
and she starts getting a little bit frisky with me
And we end up having sex.
Twice.
So I'm going, like, okay.
We go out for a walk on the beach together.
The next morning, we get up and go have some fancy brunch there
that they have every Sunday
I opened up totally. 100%.
[narrator] And Charity is in it 100%, too.
For Dakota's birthday, she organizes a trip they ca all three enjoy together.
[Mark] Dakota wanted to go to Fredericksburg.
Me and Dakota spent lots of time at Fredericksburg.
We always have.
[narrator] Charity arranges for her daughters to house sit,
and the three of them head West to Fredericksburg
a popular spot for wine love and history buffs.
[Mark] It's a four to five hour drive there.
Got there in Fredericksburg with the B&B.
And then Charity started a conversation
that went really South on me. Real quick.
Charity's talking about her past life,
about how one of her boyfriends had made her be a drug mule
down in Mexico, and do some real wild, crazy stuff
And Dakota's out there with us.
So I got uptight.
And this is not something that Dakota needed to be hearing.
And he doesn't know what to think. I'm sure right now he's in panic mode.
And you can tell, because with anybody that's, that's autistic,
they start flapping their hands.
I would think she was tryin to bait me into something where it would get physical
And then she could have me arrested for assault,
so it's a he said, she said type situation.
Because that's exactly what she wanted.
She was baiting me into that
I said, I've got to get thi under control immediately,
and isolate this from me and Dakota.
And I did. I just said it stops. It stops now.
This is not the life I'm gonna live.
I said, Dakota, we gotta go home.
[narrator] Mark and Dakota make the five hour drive hom
knowing that when they get there, they'll have to tell Destiny and Paige
they left their mom in Fredericksburg to cool down.
But that's not how the night unfolds.
[Mark] Dakota and I pulled i at around 4:00 in the mornin
The dogs were gone.
And Destiny and Paige were gone.
And so were the vehicles. The Mustang, her truck, the truck that I had.
All of those vehicles were gone.
And I knew what had happened then. I'd been set up.
Me and Dakota walk into my house and see a lotta things missing.
I mean a lotta things.
[Dakota] It was very empty. So I was like, where's the stuff that was gone?
[phone chimes]
[Mark] My phone starts burning up.
[narrator] It's a string of texts that were sent by Mark's neighbor, James,
while he and Dakota were sti on their way home.
[Mark] You're, you're out in the hill country of Texas
We don't get cell signals down there.
So I got 'em after I got her
[narrator] Hours earlier, sometime around midnight,
Gina and James had been alerted to trouble.
-[dog barking] -[Gina] Champ keeps barking
Champ likes Mark and he like to watch his house.
And James goes outside and he sees a U-Haul truck and a Charger,
and there's a man and some girls there.
[narrator] Gina believes she recognizes the man.
and at least one of the girl
[Gina] The lights were on, so you could see Bart and Paige.
[narrator] Bart Parchem, Charity's ex.
They were going into the house, bringing things out,
and putting 'em into the U-Haul.
And at this point, James and are just thinking, this is not good.
[scoffs] We were like, this is not good.
James says, I don't see Mark's truck. Let me just send him a quick text.
[narrator] But by the time Mark receives James' messages, it's far too late.
It was four in the morning. I had driven 800 miles.
I'm mentally and physically wiped out.
So me and Dakota laid down and went to sleep.
[narrator] Mark feels he's been burgled.
But as his spouse, Charity is entitled to remove her belongings.
What happens next is less of a legal gray area.
[Mark] The next morning, I woke up,...
...and my phone is going crazy.
I'm getting alerts from my bank, sending me notices of charges right and left.
They're wanting to know what's going on.
There was $15,000 taken out of my bank account all to Amazon.
And Amazon told me where everything was going, to Spring.
Guess who lives in Spring?
[narrator] Sure, Charity's daughter Paige lives there,
but now, Mark thinks Gina was right
that Bart Parchem is also staying there.
[Mark] I knew what had happened. I knew who did it
At the meantime, Charity is texting me, burning my phone up,
trying to get me to come pick her up from Fredericksburg.
First thing that popped into my head...
...is Charity was not even in Fredericksburg.
[narrator] Mark has his suspicions. Now, he goes looking for proof.
[Mark] I went to Sam's and actually said,
I wanna see who used my card
and they pulled it up on their video surveillance.
And who was on the video surveillance?
Charity and Bart.
When she's trying to get me to go back to Fredericksbur to pick her up,
her and Bart are here in the woodlands at Sam's,
trying to pick up stuff they had just bought off my credit card together.
[narrator] Bart may be Charity's ex,
but as far as Mark is concerned,
the two of them seem to be working together
[Mark] Her and Bart, they bo facilitated this together.
They instigated this whole thing and had it planned.
[narrator] Mark has reached his limit.
I got a local attorney down here in Conroe, I file for divorce.
Everything went to court.
This time, I'm going full force, locked and cocked. I'm ready to go.
[narrator] Less than a month later,
with the divorce proceeding already underway,
Mark looks like he might be on the hook for a hefty amou of spousal support.
Until he gets a call that could change everything
[Mark] The detective called on the phone and says,
"Uh, I've got some news for you."
"I found Charity's husband."
And I said, Bart, yeah, I know about Bart.
He's going, like, no.
"Trevor Hendry. Her real husband."
And I'm going, like, what?
[narrator] Trevor Hendry, the guy Charity said she'd been a drug mule for,
wasn't just an ex-boyfriend
He was a husband.
[Mark] The detective told m they've never been divorced
I'm trying to, to unscramble all of what I was just told.
[narrator] Charity had marri Bart Parchem in 1999,
divorced Bart in 2002,
married Trevor just one day later,
and then left him, without bothering to divorce him.
[Mark] And he says, "Guess what?"
"She illegally married Bart Parchem again, after sh was married to Trevor Hendry
"And then she married you."
[narrator] Four weddings. One divorce.
Charity is now married to three different men.
[Mark] And I'm going like, hold on, hold on.
This is bull [bleep], right? You're kidding me, right?
That whole entire court case was the biggest mess I have ever seen.
It's baffling. It's upsetting.
[Mark] The Texas justice system failed me completely.
[narrator] A detective from the sheriff's departmen
has just discovered that Mark Athans' wife Chari
is married to two other men besides Mark.
[Mark] And I'm going, like, you've got to be kidding me.
And he's going, like, no.
They filed a warrant for her arrest, and she was taken into custody.
[reporter] Now, she's, she's facing court tomorrow. It was a bigamy charge?
Yes, sir. She is in court. She's been indicted by a grand jury.
Uh, she's gonna be in court for the criminal charges tomorrow.
When the detectives sent over Charity Parchem's case,
it had everything in it that a prosecutor would need
to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
[narrator] With Charity now charged with bigamy,
Mark expects he won't even have to bother about a divorce,
let alone spousal support.
[Mark] I was elated. I was going like, my God.
Now all this is over. This is done.
She's a bigamist. So none of this stuff goes forward.
Divorce proceedings are gonna be stopped immediately.
Because I'm not legally married to her.
And we've got proof I'm not.
Did that happen? No, it did not.
Boy, was I shocked. Boy, did I get a kick in the balls.
Even after the voided marria was submitted to Judge McDonald in her court
she refused to accept it.
And she still kept coming after me.
[narrator] Mark fires his attorney and seeks out a tougher advocate.
When Mark called me, every petition that they had filed with the court
was getting shut down and denied.
Sara immediately started trying to get this divorce dismissed,
because... it's bigamy.
[Sara Razavi Zand] It was shocking.
This was the first time in all of my years of practi
this judge wasn't following the law.
Mark was ordered to pay $40,000 as a cash settlement
He was ordered to, uh, give her a car.
He was also ordered to give other cash settlements,
uh, with regard to the decre
[Mark] At one point in time I, I just said,
Charity Parchem is not my legal wife.
And I locked my heels and I dug in, and I just said, I'm not paying another dime.
[narrator] But this only makes things worse.
[Zand] Charity had filed an enforcement
to throw Mark in jail because he hadn't paid his cash settlement.
She wanted her money. [laughing]
The judge held me in contempt of court.
There were five or six orders of contempt.
[narrator] Mark faces at lea a year and a half behind bar
Essentially, Charity told the court what she wanted,
and the court granted it.
And what am I supposed to tell my son?
I'm sorry, son, but I've gotta go to jail for 18 months?
[sniffling]
[Mark] Charity showed hersel walking on TV, smiling,
because she knew that day, I was gonna go to jail.
Who does that? Who does that
but a professional criminal...
...or the spawn of Satan?
[Zand] I can't believe that have someone who is so bold
that she files a petition to enforce spousal support
with felony charges that are pending against her for bigamy.
That's crazy.
Why was the law failing me?
It should have been protecting me.
[narrator] Mark's lawyer brings in the detective who arrested Charity
to present proof that she's a bigamist.
[Zand] This judge saw the police officer in the courtroom,
and the judge just wouldn't even give us an opportunity to present the evidence.
I was bamboozled. Absolutely bamboozled.
Everything that, that Mark's attorney Sara put out there,
she knocked it down.
Everything that Charity's attorney,
whatever his name is, he's the sorriest attorney I ever saw in my life.
She went with it.
[reporter] Were you already married, married to someone else?
[security door beeping]
I wanna talk to her. She should talk to me.
I'm her lawyer. She doesn't wanna talk to you.
[narrator] At last, Mark's side catches what should be a break in the criminal cour
Today, uh, in court, Ms. Charity Parchem pled guilty to the offense of bigamy.
[Sheri Culberson] That basically proves
what Mark Athans has been saying in the divorce.
"She's not really my wife. She is not legally married to me."
"Therefore, I shouldn't have to pay her a dime."
[Mark] Charity pled guilty to bigamy.
And Judge McDonald still didn't rescind her orders.
[anchor] Montgomery County Judge Patrice McDonald
has ordered Athans to pay $96,000 to Parchem by tomorrow
or face jail time.
[Mark] Sara knew, she's gonna put you in jail
Okay, well, I've already talked to my son.
Prepared for this. I am not backing down from this.
This wasn't just about his wife being married to other people.
This was about his wife taking advantage of him and his son.
Leaving Mark financially destitute.
[narrator] The clock is ticking for surgical assistant Mark Athans.
With few exceptions, if you' done time in jail in Texas,
you can't practice medicine
And yet, in less than 24 hours, that's where Mark is going.
Mark's lawyer files a last minute appeal.
[Zand] Filed an emergency stay.
And we were requesting that the court of appeals freeze all trial court proceedings.
[Mark] From what I understan
they had only had it for about 15 minutes before they made a decision.
The appellate court overrod Judge McDonald's decision and dismissed it.
Told 'em, basically, leave this man alone.
[Mark] Sara saved me from going to jail.
It was just a sigh of relief, because all along, this is absolutely what he deserved.
...but I've gotta go to jail...
[Mark] I was pretty emotiona just to get it over with.
Actually, I, I did. I cried over it.
[narrator] Three months after filing for divorce,
and barely five months after their wedding,
Mark's marriage to Charity is officially dissolved.
The ordeal is over.
Charity had scammed
over $425,000 from me.
I had lost funds
in over $220,000 in legal fees.
Everything that I had, all my retirement, was gone.
I mean, I lost everything.
[Culberson] The sentence for bigamy in Texas,
because it's a third degree felony,
is anywhere from two years up to ten years in prison.
[narrator] Charity gets four years, but not in priso
[Mark] She walks away with probation.
Not a day in jail.
After all the people she's hurt, where's the justification in that?
I don't know what's in Charity's future.
I hope she doesn't hurt anybody else.
But, not so sure I can trust that hope.
[narrator] Some good has com from this ordeal.
Dakota discovered he's got a valuable skill set.
Dakota has a knack of sizing people up.
A hell of a lot better than mine, [laughing] I can tell you that.
So he's already got his license in process through the State of Texas
to become a private detectiv
[Dakota] I like to find out the truth.
I'm like the truth seeker.
I wanna be the best of the best when it comes to investigations.
[narrator] In spite of all that Mark lost,
there's one precious and irreplaceable thing he managed to win back.
James checks his phone, and he's like, Mark wants to talk to us.
So James goes over there and Mark says, hey, I am really sorry.
And he really was regretful
[Mark] The things that I look for in a relationship, I've got 'em already.
Because I've got a relationship with James and Gina
that after all that happened...
...and me coming back tryin to eat crow and apologize..
They could have told me to [bleep] off.
But they didn't.
Gina and James, I know that something happens to me,
or if Dakota needs help, [voice breaking] he's gonna have it.
And I know that.
[Gina] Now that Charity's gone, Mark is a different person.
He's not frustrated all the time.
[laughing] It's back to life as normal.
[Mark] I'm back on the dating scene.
I'm just more thorough now about looking at people.
I want to try to find somebo that will love my family,
and give me the same amount of love and attention
that I'm gonna give to her back.
Because I learned that I deserve that.