Pensioner who's become 'very good friends' with articulate and human Death Row prisoner

A British pensioner formed a close relationship with a death row inmate and says they are 'very good friends'.

For almost three decades Rosemary Power, from Scotland, has been writing to prisoners on death row.

One of those the 68-year-old has been in touch with is her pen pal Twin (not his real name).

He was on death row for 21 years - 17 years by the time he began talking to Rosemary - before being eventually taken off it.

Speaking to the Metro, Rosemary said she was taken aback by his story and that they became friends.

She said: "Twin’s story has really touched me, because we’ve become very good friends, and the feeling is mutual.

"For the first six months, I got no answer. I then got a very stilted but polite letter saying thank you and that he would write – he had just been thinking about it.

Rosemary Power

"Though we’ve never physically met, after a number of years we managed to get a phone call, and he’s perfectly articulate."

By the time he was moved off death row, Rosemary said Twin had turned to his childhood faith of Islam and had began offering support to other inmates.

"He helps with basketball refereeing, that kind of thing, and his family has stuck with him," she said.

"I wrote to his sister to send him some money and she wrote back and said, 'I’m glad you’re writing to him, he’s done some wrong things but he’s a good man'.

"At one stage, he was mentoring a young man, a 23-year-old who was sharing his cell, and the young man decided to fast for Ramadan with him, even though he was Catholic by background.

Mirco Gabriel/Alamy

"The system hadn’t allowed for two meals at the end of the day to break the fast, so they had to share one. If you’re 23 and only getting half a dinner at the end of the day, that’s a big commitment."

She added: "Things like that show humanity, despite the threat of being executed by a fairly horrible injection being over them all the time."

While some may think it's wrong to write to people who have been convicted of committing heinous crimes, Rosemary believes it's her duty.

"My view is you’re writing to them, and why they’re there is not your business," she explained.

‘It’s not that I don’t care; I know there will be victims somewhere out there. It’s more that it’s not my affair, that’s the affair of the legal system.

"What I am doing is humanitarian, and people are human whatever."