A Florida pastor who wrote a book telling men how to love their wives has been arrested for allegedly marrying multiple women at the same time, using his pulpit and his faith to convince them God had chosen them for each other.
Leslie Williams, 62, was taken into custody April 22 at The Villages, a sprawling senior retirement community in Sumter County, on an active warrant out of Rockdale County, Georgia, charging him with bigamy. He is being held without bond as an out-of-state fugitive while he awaits extradition to Georgia, where a bigamy conviction carries a prison sentence of one to 10 years.
Florida marriage records obtained by the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Williams was still legally married to one woman when he entered into another marriage.
“Based on these records, a warrant was obtained for Leslie Williams for the charge of bigamy,” the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News Digital.
The Book, the Ministry, the Marriages
Williams ran LW Ministries out of The Villages and described himself on Facebook as a pastor and board-certified Christian counselor. In 2017, he published a book called “Love Her Like This: Loving Her Has Never Been Deeper” — a guide, per its own synopsis, that speaks directly to the hearts of men and challenges them to love deeper than ever before by making plain the meaning of commitment.
The irony is not subtle.
Wives who came forward told investigators Williams used his standing as a man of God to draw them in, telling each woman that God intended for them to be together. Investigators believe he married multiple women to satisfy what authorities described as a twisted personal agenda.
His pattern did not go unnoticed even publicly. On Dec. 9, 2025, Williams posted on Facebook announcing what appeared to be a new marriage to a woman named Cindi. Friends flooded the comments with congratulations. One person wrote plainly: “Wow I thought you were already married.”
Six days later, Williams posted a photograph of a woman alongside a message thanking followers for their warm words about his “saved, beautiful and talented wife, Mrs. Williams.”
His Facebook relationship status now reads single.
A History of Deception
The Rockdale County case is not the first time Williams’ marriages have come apart under scrutiny. The Daily Mail reported that a previous marriage was annulled after it emerged he was already legally married at the time of that wedding — a near-identical pattern to the conduct now driving the Georgia warrant.
Williams was arrested in Sumter County and is being held there while extradition proceedings move forward. The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office and the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office have both been contacted for further comment.
On his Facebook page, Williams describes himself as “an apologist and teacher of the word of God with relevant and timely messages for the body of Christ.” LW Ministries, the organization he led at The Villages, has not issued a public statement.
When the Shepherd Becomes the Predator
What makes the Williams case land harder than a straightforward bigamy arrest is the mechanism of the alleged deception. He did not just lie about being single. He weaponized the trust that people extend to religious leaders — the particular vulnerability of someone who believes a pastor when he says God is speaking through him.
Retirement communities like The Villages attract older adults, many of them widowed or divorced, many of them women of faith who came looking for community and companionship in later life. A pastor with a book about loving your wife is exactly the kind of figure who earns trust quickly in that environment. That trust, prosecutors allege, was exactly what Williams was after.
Bigamy laws exist precisely because marriage carries legal, financial, and emotional weight that fraud can exploit. A spouse has inheritance rights. A spouse has claim to assets. A spouse can be listed as a beneficiary. The legal exposure created by a fraudulent marriage is not only emotional — it is financial and it is real.
Georgia’s sentencing range of one to 10 years reflects the seriousness with which the state treats that exploitation. Whether Williams faces the lower or upper end of that range will depend on what prosecutors can establish about the full scope of his conduct and how many marriages were affected.
The book remains for sale. The ministry’s future is uncertain. And somewhere in The Villages, at least one woman named Cindi is reckoning with what she thought she had.
People.com
