OKEECHOBEE, Fla. — An Okeechobee woman claims her now-missing husband is a bigamist.
"I just want it to be over," Audra Clemons recently told WPTV.
It's a story that even Clemons -- a public relations professional -- couldn't write.
"I don't understand why the court can't annul my marriage," she said.
Clemons married Carlos Alberto Abreu Mendez in 2015.
"He fooled me," Clemons said. "He completed fooled me. He fooled my parents."
Originally from Venezuela, her husband claimed to be a graduate of the University of Miami.
Their family doubled in size in 2017 when Clemons gave birth to twins. But it wasn't easy.
"I had a really hard time getting pregnant, so I had to go through multiple miscarriages and also a lot of fertility treatments," Clemons said.
One of the girls is on the autism spectrum, making things more challenging for this now-single mother.
"She can say about 25 words now, which is huge," Clemons said.
Clemons said she got the first sense of trouble not long after giving birth.
Abreu Mendez was supposed to file their income taxes, but Clemons said she never got an expected refund, so she called the IRS. That's when she discovered no tax return had been filed and Abreu Mendez didn't have a tax identification number that non-citizens use to file taxes.
"They can't find him now," Clemons said.
She later learned that Abreu Mendez never enrolled in classes at the University of Miami as he had claimed.
By 2019, Clemons had filed for divorce. Then a relative shared more disheartening news.
"A family member came up and said, 'I think, you know, you should check this out. I heard a rumor that your husband is still married to someone,'" Clemons said.
So she pulled up records from the Miami-Dade County Clerk of Court.
"There it was," Clemons said. "I was married to someone who was married to another woman literally four months before he married me."
Clemons said it felt like "a kick in the stomach."
"It was horrible," she said.
She's been relying on Zoom for court dates and hasn't spoken to or physically seen her husband in more than a year. He did not appear at the latest court hearing.
"I want someone to be big enough to step forward and say, 'I know where this guy is and I'm turning him in,' or him to step forward and turn himself in," Clemons said.
Her next court date is set for late June.
