Walter Jerome Harmon

Walter Jerome Harmon Sr. (known by his aliases Harold Steen, Dr. W Lewis, Herbert Stone ) (November 4th, 1893 - 30 September 1943) was an American bigamist, a furniture salesman and identity thief who was infamous for marrying allegedly up to 18 wives often with a short period to steal money and to check in fraudulent checks. Harmon had an extensive criminal history of falsifying identities by frequently claiming to be a physician or a wealthy businessman.
Harmon was arrested on November 21st, 1923 in Juneau, Alaska, and taken back to Oregon to face a trial of forgery. Harmon was found guilty and sentenced to three years in State Prison, but was released after just two years, he would later be arrested again in 1927 and served time in the Chicago House of Corrections, before being arrested again in 1929 in Cleveland, Ohio and sentenced to 18 months in Federal Prison in Fulton, Georgia of breaking the Mann Act He was released in August and was arrested only a week later as he was accused of pretending to be Cary T. Grayson, After a woman had noted that Harmon had been posing as Cary T. Grayson
Harmon would eventually escape to the West Coast where he would live the rest of his life before dying in September 1943 at age 49.
==Background==
===Early Life===
Walter Jerome Harmon was born on November 4, 1893, in Manhattan, New York. He was the oldest of two surviving children and the only son of a German immigrant housewife Frieda Wassermann and Stephen Harman, an American merchant of German descent. His father passed away in December 1903 when he was 10 years old and was raised by his single mother, who would later get married in February 1910 to Max Frankel, a German immigrant merchant. He grew up in Manhattan's Carnegie Hill neighborhood of East 96th Street and Lexington Avenue.
Harmon began working at a young age to support his family's financial instability. At around age 16, he worked as a clerk for linen industry and did other clerical jobs for several years. In his 20s, he worked manufacturing wicker furniture for several years, then co-owned a pharmaceutical company in 1920 with two other individuals, in which he was the president of the company.
At age 24, He married for the first time in April 1918 to Beatrice Sliver Hellman (1895–1977), with whom he had a son, Walter Jerome Harmon Jr. in December 1919. Their marriage, however, was short-lived, and ten months after their son's birth, Hellman filed for divorce on grounds of infidelity from Harmon. They were later divorced in March 1921.
==Criminal Activity==
===Criminal Activity===
During the Hellman's divorce process, Harmon allegedly tried to poison Beatrice's friend, a motion picture actress Georgie Empie, who was mentioned in the divorce suit and was taken to law enforcement, although due to lack of evidence, the investigation did not take place.
Harmon had allegedly married 9 wives on the East Coast before coming over to the West Coast.
Shortly after his divorce, Harmon escaped to Los Angeles, California presumably to escape a criminal record he had built in New York. While there Harmon began his financial defrauding. He would often approach women who had money marrying and then filing forged checks under these names, later abandoning them before entering into another courtship with the next girl, it was also around this time that Harmon began claiming that was a surgeon named "Dr. W Lewis" of San Franciso, opening a bank account under that name on a Ladd & Tilton Bank, In June 1923, Harmon married Viola Winterstein in Norwalk, California, Harmon would desert in September, 3 months after marriage, Harmon would then marry Rosa Farmer, a government stenographer of Dallas, Texas on September 27 in San Franciso, deserting her after just 5 days. Soon after an arrest warrant was issued for Harmon in Los Angeles for Bigmay
===Arrest and Trial===
Harmon was arrested on November 21 after one of his wives filed a complaint and notified the police that he was in Juneau, Alaska, Harmon had escaped there and was using the alias "Harold Steen", he was taken back to Portland to face charges of defrauding a bank, the trial lasted over two months ending in Harmon receiving a three-year prison sentence for forgery
During the trial, Harmon denied having 18 wives, claiming that he had just one and claimed that his "lack of personal beauty" should be enough to acquaint of such a charge
Harmon was released in January 1926 after serving only a two-year sentence
==Family==
Harmon married Sallie Brown "Sally" Garland of Millbro, Virginia on October 2nd, 1930 in Manhattan, they had one child:
* Walter "Jerry" Jerome Harmon Jr. (July 1st, 1931 - May 3rd, 2019)
He would desert her less than 4 months after their marriage, marrying Sylvia Boher on January 31st in Manhattan before deserting her on a honeymoon to Boston.
==Later Life and Death==
Harmon died September 30, 1943, in Los Angeles, aged 49 years.
Category:1893 births
Category:People from New York City
Category:1943 deaths
Category:Bigamists
Category:American people