Things looked briefly promising for Richard (R.P.) Collins on March 15, 1923.
He’d just pitched Ontario’s semi-pro baseball team to a victory, and had a new car and a beautiful new bride. But things quickly collapsed. That night he was arrested, spent the next three months in jail and made his next pitching appearance wearing the uniform of the baseball team at San Quentin Prison.
The rather amazing saga of the 22-year-old Collins, his bad checks and three wives kept newspapers filled for weeks with often bizarre twists. While Collins was on trial for bigamy and fraud, two of his wives actually became fast friends and even planned a vaudeville act together in hopes of raising money for his defense. Collins, who came to Ontario two weeks before his arrest, claimed he was a World War I Navy veteran who had recently been a member of the Los Angeles Angels, then a minor league team in the Pacific Coast League.
However, I could find no record of him ever playing for the Angels. He married Arlington’s Dorothy Martinez in Orange, but two days later his actual wife, Nell Ruth Collins of San Pedro arrived on the scene. Adding to the confusion, it was learned that Collins was actually married to a third woman in Portland, Oregon, who mercifully was never heard from during all this legal ruckus.
Adding to all this, Collins cashed four bad checks in Ontario, using the money to buy a car from the Ontario Motor Car Co. After his arrest, Martinez quickly had her brief marriage annulle.