Now disgraced Duke is charged with burglary
Five years after being exposed as a bigamist in the High Court in London, the thricemarried 53-year-old Duke of Manchester is facing further disgrace.
The dissolute aristocrat has been charged with burglary after being arrested in his adopted city of Las vegas. it was shortly after 2.20am on July 6 that vegas police received an emergency call from a Norma Lopez, who was stunned to see a substantial, grey-haired, shirtless man striding around her hallway.
The police told her to lock herself in her bathroom. Ms Lopez remained hidden until she heard the intruder go downstairs, when she crept out — only for the man to see her, drop the brown box he was carrying and ‘rush out the front door’.
Police officers, arriving shortly afterwards, found signs of forced entry through the back of the property.
Minutes later, the Duke — still shirtless — was arrested.
He explained that, having gone out to buy ‘milk and cat food’, he had seen a silver Hyundai Sonata parked in Ms Lopez’s driveway, which he thought might belong to someone he described as his ‘room mate, Jake’.
This explanation failed to satisfy the arresting officers, who charged him with burglary.
He remains on bail until his trial in September.
Back in england, the trustees for the Manchester english estates are awaiting further information.
‘He hasn’t told us anything about it,’ says a spokesman, adding that the Duke receives ‘plenty of money’ from the trust.
Perhaps His Grace simply has a taste for prison food.
He was twice imprisoned for fraud during his formative years in Australia, where his first wife left him after just three months when he fired a spear-gun at her.