'I've let you down': Widow ends relationship with dead husband's brother
A widow who started dating her dead husband’s brother weeks after he passed away has ended their relationship and apologised.
Mother-of-three Ashley Murrell and her husband of seven years Michael had been fighting over the amount of hours he was working at his carpet cleaning business when she banished him to the couch.
He had been secretly saving for a surprise anniversary trip to Prague, but on May 16 the 36-year-old mysteriously died on the couch that night.
Ms Murrell then started dating her late husband's brother Chris just weeks after his death.
But now, that relationship appears to be over and Ms Murrell has issued an apology to her late husband.
“I’m so sorry that I’ve let you down,” she posted on Michael’s Facebook timeline.
“You will always be in my heart Mike and I know I’ve made a mistake, and I promise you that when my time comes I’m coming home to you. Miss you uncontrollably.”
The post-mortem reportedly came up “inconclusive”, but Ms Murrell claims her husband choked in his sleep.
“I felt so guilty. I was so angry with myself for making him sleep on the sofa. I still find it so hard to think that my last words to him were out of anger,” she told The Sun after her husband’s death.
“When I found out he’d been saving to take us on an anniversary holiday it was awful — heartbreaking doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Ms Murrell found comfort with Michael’s brother Chris, and some members of the family were supportive of their relationship saying he had been “a huge support for Ashley and he’s great with kids”.
She later told the Mail Online the relationship was fake and “Chris was not a replacement for Mikey” but the kids needed a male figure in their lives.
Chris’s sister Christina said she did not agree with the pair being in a romantic relationship.
“I think it is so insensitive and so wrong of them getting together so soon after Michael has died,” she posted on Facebook.
