Maggi Montgomery-Heersink in July 2005.

The town of Bancroft, and its surrounding communities, are reeling today after the bombshell dropped that a popular United Church minister ignored her credentials being revoked four years ago, and then went on to conduct dozens of marriages that were never legally registered.

Two local OPP officers reportedly fell victim to the dismissed minister, as well as a number of prominent town residents -- with at least two of the married couples, including the cops, now expecting their first child without their marriages having been either sanctified by the church or officially recorded with the province's registry office.

"Something has to be done," said the mother of one of those grooms, married by the supposed Rev. Maggi Montgomery-Heersink in Peterborough in July 2005 and whose daughter-in-law is now expecting.

"My son and daughter-in-law want the date of their wedding to be legally recognized by the province -- for their sake and for their child's sake," the Bancroft-area mother-of-the-groom said. "But, right now, they are at a loss as to what to do. Everyone is simply in shock."

That young couple, pictured here at their wedding with a smiling Montgomery-Heersink, have had their faces pixilated at their request.

The scandal might have never come to light, at least not so abruptly, if not for an almost deathbed-like confession from the defrocked minister herself, who recently typed an undated mea culpa to those she had "hurt" -- with an explosive handwritten postscript to the couples she had wed which reads, "Your marriage is not legal as the paperwork was never sent in to the government."

Montgomery-Heersink, whose confessional letter only just surfaced, decamped to Calgary months ago. And, according to a woman who wishes to remain anonymous, but who opened her home to her at the request of her unwitting parishioner parents back in the Coe Hill parish south of Bancroft, she has since disappeared. "Without paying me a cent for rent, or for groceries, during the four months she was here," the woman said. "She basically uses people, from what I've since learned.

"I had to tell her to get out," she added. "She's a bit of a swindler."

Messages left on Montgomery-Heersink's last-known cellphone number in Calgary went unreturned.

It is Montgomery-Heersink's open letter, however, that blew the lid off any suspicion over her sudden disappearance, all which had been previously focused on Montgomery-Heersink's bizarre "adoption" by an elderly and much-respected churchgoing spinster named Trudy Heersink, who died of cancer a few years back, and who named Montgomery-Heersink as the beneficiary of much of her estate, which once included Trudy's General Store, a successful, well-maintained business and gas bar that also serves as an LCBO outlet for area cottagers on Hwy. 62, south of Bancroft.

The letter, obtained from one of her victims, reads as follows:

"I am sending this letter to acknowledge and atone for the hurt I have caused you, and to be brutally honest to you and to myself.

"I have come to see that Peterborough Presbytery and Bay of Quinte Conference (of the United Church of Canada) was correct when they placed judgment on me six years ago, and in the things they said about my character and my unsuitability for any type of church leadership. They were correct in saying I was too wounded to be an effective minister. I now realize that I wound people out of my own hurt. I have been caught up in a lie and I need to face the consequences.

"I have breached the most sacred of things given to me by you and by God, that being trust. The church said that I make people bleed. When I first heard this, I denied it vehemently. I have come to realize that I do make people bleed. I have hurt people at the deepest of levels. I do not deserve, nor have I ever deserved, any trust you have placed in me. I can never repay the damage that I have done to anyone I have touched.

"When I first heard I had been caught out, I decided that I was going to commit suicide -- in order not to face the pain that I have caused -- the ultimate act of hurt and bleeding. Upon further reflection, I have decided that I need to live with the knowledge that I hurt people. I need to 'live what I preach,' take responsibility for my actions and live with the hurt I have caused.

"Peterborough Presbytery and Bay of Quinte Conference also said that I should never have been ordained. Once again, they are correct. To that end, I am instructing the United Church of Canada to revoke my ordination.

"I do not expect any forgiveness. I do expect and deserve your condemnation.

"I hope that at the end of my earthly days, God will find some way to forgive me. I am truly sorry for all the hurt I have caused."

And then it was signed, Maggi Montgomery-Heersink, with some letters carrying the handwritten bombshell that their marriages were not legal.

Maggi Montgomery-Heersink is 40, but she looks a lot younger. According to the United Church of Canada, she is an unmarried former registered nurse who was ordained in Toronto in 1999.

The Rev. Wendy Bulloch is executive-director of the Bay of Quinte Conference of the United Church of Canada, and the Belleville-based church official who wrote Montgomery-Heersink to notify her that, as of May 2001, she was on the church's "discontinued service list," and therefore prohibited from performing even the most minor of church functions.

"It was so prohibitive that she could not do in the church what some laymen are permitted to do," said Rev. Bulloch.

It was a directive, however, that was obviously ignored by Montgomery-Heersink for, according to sources, scores of marriages and even more funerals were conducted by Montgomery-Heersink since her dismissal from the church almost six years ago.

While no religious or legal authority is needed to oversee a funeral, the same cannot be said for marriages.

According to Rev. Bulloch, it was the Peterborough Presbytery, which had "oversight" over Montgomery-Heersink's ministry, that first decided to do a "363 Review" to determine if she was an "effective minister."

"There were issues around 'boundaries,' and they were not sexual boundaries," said Bulloch, admitting that the review primarily focused on the appropriateness of her "adoption" by the late Trudy Heersink, and her name being on the beneficiary document.

"I know she inherited the woman's estate, but I do not know how much it was worth," she said. "But, my sense is, it may not have been the first time this has happened."

'SICK PERSON'

Bulloch, who said Montgomery-Heersink's mea culpa came out of the blue "like a gunshot," described her as a "sick person" who had a "strong need for people to care for her."

"I've had parishioners say to me that she was like a daughter to them," said Bulloch. "And I'd tell them that she is not supposed to be like a 'daughter' to them. She is supposed to be their minister.

"But she looks like a child. She is young looking. She is personable, and she played it to the hilt," said Bulloch.

Following her ordination in 1999, the then Rev. Maggi Montgomery was "settled" by the United Church in the rural area south of Bancroft which includes the parishes of St. Ola, The Ridge, and Coe Hill.

Trudy Heersink was one of her parishioners and, according to Bulloch, Montgomery moved in with her without the church's knowledge to supposedly help care for the old woman when she was ailing from terminal cancer, and then came up aces when she died.

"Her adoption by this woman, particularly when she was in her 30s, was totally inappropriate," said Bulloch. "But Maggi would not back away from it."

INVESTIGATION

The Bancroft OPP yesterday opened an investigation into Maggi Montgomery-Heersink's actions, with Det. Jeff Dano indicating he has set up a meeting with the chief investigator for the provincial Office of the Registrar General regarding the unregistered marriages.

"But it's early going," said Dano who, at that point, had not yet seen a copy of Montgomery-Heersink's letter.

In the meantime, all persons married by Montgomery-Heersink after May 2001 -- many who paid $300 and upward, plus travel and accommodation expenses for her to administer their wedding vows, not only in the Bancroft area but in Toronto, Ottawa, Peterborough and elsewhere -- have been asked to contact the Belleville office of the Bay of Quinte Conference of the United Church of Canada.

That number is 613-398-1051.

Since a brief news item yesterday morning on Bancroft's Moose-FM, Rev. Wendy Bulloch said her phone has been "ringing off the hook."

"But I suspect (today) will be much, much busier," she said.

Early indicators have Montgomery-Heersink giving her unauthorized blessing to the "marriages" of at least two dozen couples.

That projection, however, may be conservative.