For the babies she bought online 18yrs ago

Sometimes I think about them, wonder where they are, how their life is going.

“It could have gone very wrong, they could have ended up getting involved in the gang and gun culture – I would have blamed social services if that had happened.”

Judith also has two daughters from an earlier relationship – Louisa, 37 and Caley, 35 – but claims she has no contact with either of them.

But she said she would love to speak to twins Kiara and Keyara. Asked what she would say to them now, she said: “Look at you now, haven’t you done well. I wish you could have stayed, but I’m glad you have made something of your lives.”

She added: “I would like to see them again, would like to talk to them on video chat, to see how they are and how they’ve turned out. It would be nice to hear from them and explain who I am and let them know they were wanted.

“Sometimes Alan and I talk about them, at times like Christmas especially, we’ve often wondered what they’re doing now.”

The twins were six months old when they were caught in a transatlantic custody battle.

Judith and Alan, unable to have more children of their own, had explored international adoption on the internet and travelled to the US to meet the baby girls they hoped to raise as their own.

It later emerged that an American couple, Vickie and Richard Allen, had already adopted the sisters but they were snatched back by their birth mother Tranda Wecker, then 28, and sold on to the Kilshaws for £8200.

The British couple signed the adoption papers in the US in December 2000 and later flew the twins – who they renamed Kimberly and Belinda – to their home in Buckley, Wales.

At the time Judith and Alan Kilshaw shared their seven-bedroom farmhouse with Judith’s younger daughter Caley, their two sons, six dogs, more than a dozen cats, two ferrets, a horse, a pony and two pot-bellied pigs.

But news of the “cash for babies” deal caused international uproar. Judith said: “The FBI came over – they came in and ‘snatched’ the babies and legged it.

“Then social services came in and asked for clothes and dummies.

“I didn’t have any choice when it came to losing contact. The choice was taken from me on unfair grounds really.”

The twins were taken into emergency protection in January 2001 before being returned to the US.

Now, almost two decades on, Judith is delighted they are happy.

“I’m very pleased they are doing well and have made a life for themselves, but I do think they’d have been successful in Britain. They’d have been quite driven people, if I had my way they’d have been quite forceful women who could stand up for themselves and had done well.”

As she left the house yesterday to walk her dog, Judith insisted she had no regrets over the scandal. She added: “I always thought it would make a good film, it is such a far out story, the twists and turns of it all. It would do well.”

JUDITH KILSHAW ON WHAT SHE’D SAY TO TWINS