From the outside Joseph Rosenzweig seemed every bit the honest, successful, hard-working family man.
Born into a wealthy family, he had married original wife Theresa in 1985 and the couple had gone on to have two daughters together, setting up home in a plush apartment in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York.
Encounter: Bigamist lawyer Joseph Rosenzweig met his second wife Radiah Nunez at the New York Dolls Strip Club
But everything would change during
what he would later describe as a 'boys' night out' to the New York
Dolls strip club on the Fourth of July weekend in 1995.It was there that the then 38-year-old Rosenzweig met 23-year-old striptease artist Radiah Givens Nunez for the first time.
Rosenzweig was smitten and became a regular visitor to the club to watch her perform.
She told him she had moved to New York from Colorado after receiving a scholarship from the Alvin Alley Dance Company and was stripping to pay the bills. After a few months they started sleeping together.
According to a report in the New York Daily News, Nunez quickly became his mistress. The couple took expensive holidays together. He gave her a credit card, paid for all of her bills and even provided an allowance.
Paradise wedding: Bigamist lawyer Joseph Rosenzweig married stripper
Radiah Nunez in Negril, Jamaica in 2004. But his other wife opened the letter
containing the marriage licence
Rosenzweig appeared so helplessly in love with Nunez, that he turned a blind eye to the fact she was a Santerian priestess and would perform animal sacrifices in the apartment as a key part of the Afro-Caribbean religion.
He later told a court how she had set up a 'very large altar with all kinds of unusual things upon it,' inside the apartment.
In around 2002 Rosenzweig first suggested to Nunez that they should get married.
Second life: Rosenzweig conducted his affair in
secret while living with his wife Theresa and their two daughters in a
plush apartment in Tribeca
They couple married at the luxurious Rockhouse hotel in Negril, Jamaica in 2004 with Rosenzweig, completely disregarding the potential possible consequences of lying on amarriage certificate, and claiming he was a bachelor.
Back at home they planned to continue to conduct the relationship in the same way with Rosenzweig living with his original wife and daughters, but would spend most of their
But just a few months later their secret was out when FedEx sent the Jamaican marriage certificate to the Tribeca flat and Theresa opened the letter.
Like Rosenzweig, Theresa had also come form a wealthy background and had insisted on a prenuptial agreement.
Theresa confronted her husband about the certificate. He tried to deny it at first but was evebntually foprced to tell all.
By April 2005 Rosezweig had stopped seeing NUnex and had cut off financial support. Their marriage was finally annulled in 2007.
Two years later he attempted to sue Nunez, claiming two mortgages which he had taken out on the property had constituted a loan to Nunez.
However Nunez, who now runs an online radio station spirituality, won and the pair reached a settlement.
Last month, Rosenzweig was suspended from practising law for six months by the state court system’s Departmental Disciplinary Committee.
He vowed to be 'honest, trustworthy, and not engage in any conduct that would reflect badly on myself or the profession, ' telling the court: 'I betrayed the people who love me, who trust me, and everybody who knows me,' he said.
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