Goulding/Times-Herald RecordPictured before their marriage, Michael O'Connell holds fiancee Jessica Vega's hand as she reads their marriage license. O'Connell holds their daughter Ava, who was 11 months at the time.

A newlywed bride from upstate New York faked a case of terminal leukemia to score a free wedding dress, honeymoon and gifts, her estranged husband claims.

Michael O'Connell accused his chef wife Jessica Vega of cooking up a sad story that duped strangers into showering her with freebies and sympathy.

The Times Herald Record in April published a story about the upcoming dream wedding of the young couple, who met two years earlier while both were studying at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan.

"I had to prepare for her to die," O'Connell told the Middletown, NY, newspaper.

Now, Michael O'Connell says his wife's illness was a sham - though he also admits slapping "the fire out of her" during a brawl and biting her on the elbow.

He's now filed for divorce in Sullivan County Court, just months after marrying Vega in front of 60 loved ones.

O'Connell, 23, claims he was snowed by a phony letter from a Westchester County cancer specialist that supposedly confirmed Vega's diagnosis of terminal acute myeloid leukemia.

The Westchester Institute for Treatment of Cancer & Blood Disorders did not return calls.

The reporter who wrote the original story for the Times Herald Record wrote today that he listened in when O'Connell said he called the clinic and was told Vega, 23, was "never a patient" there.

"Jessie would never do something so manipulative," her mother, Diana, told the Daily Mail.

Jessica Vega insisted to the Times Herald Record that she had received the letter confirming she had cancer -  after earlier saying the letter had been typed in front of her.

She then stood the reporter up on a planned visit to get a blood test at her new doctor's office in the Bronx, and has claimed her husband was physically abusive.

"I don't think he really wants to go down that route of me exposing him," she said, according to the newspaper.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/07/2010-09-07_man_divorces_wife_who_faked_leukemia_to_score_free_wedding_dress_and_honeymoon.html#ixzz0ytrlMGb7