NEW JERSEY ANNULMENT

A judge has granted a New Jersey annulment to a woman who unwittingly "married" a serial fraud artist. Joyce Reynolds was legally freed from what she thought was her 2001 marriage to William Michael Barber, a purported doctor who turned out to be a convicted con man and liar. Reynolds met Barber over the Internet, and he claimed to be a cardiovascular pediatric surgeon taking a sabbatical. They married a few weeks after he showed up in New Jersey to meet her. This summer, she learned that he tricked other women with lies of being a former NFL player, a cancer survivor, an Army hero and former POW. Judge Robert E. McCarthy, sitting in Morristown, granted the 49-year-old Wharton woman's request for an annulment from Barber, who married her on January 19, 2001, under the name James Michael Barber and added 6 years to his real birth date.      Morristown Daily Record, October 13, 2005