'Instant connection': Mum's plan to move kids to US to marry convicted murderer
A British woman has said yes to marrying her soulmate - who just happens to be a convicted murderer currently serving a life term in an American prison.
Emma Pickett, 33, from Stourbridge in the West Midlands, is now planning to move overseas with her three children to be closer to Justin Erskine, who was convicted of first-degree murder over a double homicide in 2006.
Erskine, now 30, was an 18-year-old landscape gardener when he was found guilty of supplying the knife used to stab one of the victims and helping to bury the bodies.
Pickett, a care assistant, fell in love with him after they became pen pals through the website writeaprisoner.com, telling The Mirror she had felt an "instant, strong connection" with him.
“There is a stigma attached to it but it is not the case that everybody in prison is automatically a terrible person," she told Fabulous Magazine.
Their wedding will take place at a chapel inside the maximum-security James T Vaughn Correctional Centre in Delaware, where Erskine is serving his sentence.
Erskine proposed after just a few months of correspondence, and when they met in person, she said yes.
For obvious reasons, the couple will not be able to go on honeymoon or consummate their marriage, but Pickett is campaigning to free her husband-to-be from prison.
Her children, aged 14, 12, and six, know Erskine is in a prison, but not why.
“I censored some details because you have to be age appropriate," she told Fabulous Magazine.
“They could see how happy he made me and were excited.”
