best report: Falling for a monster?
As soap actress Paula Williamson announces her engagement to violent prisoner Charles Bronson, best asks: why do seemingly successful, sane women end up…
Dubbed Britain’s most violent prisoner, Charles Bronson has now spent 41 years behind bars for numerous brutal offences. Hardly a man you’d want to bring home to meet the family. However, his history of aggression has not put off actress Paula Williamson, 36, from planning a future with ‘Charlie’. ‘I’ve had relationships with men in the past, but none of them come close to my love for Charlie,’ said the former Coronation Street and Emmerdale actress. ‘It’s a perfect match.’
Paula first came across Bronson, 64, during a visit to Waterstones, when she stumbled across his 2015 book, Broadmoor: My Journey Into Hell.
‘I’d suffered from dark times myself mentally, and hearing about his experience... inspired me,’ she said. ‘So I wrote to him to say, “Thank you. It has really helped”, not thinking about getting a response.’
However, Bronson – now calling himself Charles Salvador, in honour of his favourite artist, Salvador Dalí – replied, and the pair began corresponding.
‘It wasn’t an infatuation,’ Paula insisted. ‘I’m not one of those women who thinks, “I’m going to write to this prisoner, isn’t it exciting?” I didn’t even tell people about it.’
Over the next three years, the pair formed a close bond – initially through letters, then via weekly phone calls. When he split from his then-fiancée, Lorraine Etherington, in 2015, it was perhaps inevitable that the pen pals’ relationship would intensify.
A visit to maximum security prison HMP Wakefield, where Bronson is held in lockdown for 22 hours a day, was arranged, after Paula had undergone stringent checks. In October last year, the pair finally came face to face.
‘My feelings changed when I met him,’ she said. ‘It was a chemistry I can’t describe.’
The couple met a further three times before Bronson officially proposed during one of their weekly Sunday morning phone calls. He’d arranged for a diamond ring to be delivered, and told her, ‘If you put that on your finger, you are officially on the road to becoming Mrs Salvador.’
Paula is the third fiancée Bronson has had while in prison, and he has married and divorced another admirer during that time.
Now, the pair plan to wed in August in the prison chapel. They will not be allowed to consummate the marriage.
Death row love
But Paula is far from the only person who has fallen for a felon. Anna Curtis, a mum-ofone from Mitcham, London, fell in love with William Speer while he was on death row in the Allan B Polunsky Unit in Texas, USA, after he was convicted of strangling an inmate in 1997. He’d originally been imprisoned in 1991 after shooting and killing a man.
‘ With some people, you can see the evil in their eyes but, just from looking at his photo on the internet, I knew he wasn’t like that,’ Anna said.
‘ William’s a massive flirt. When he writes to me, he calls me his “peach” and I get butterflies.’
In 2008, Sandie Blanton, from Yeovil, became engaged to Reginald Blanton, 28, and took his surname, despite the fact he was facing execution for murdering his friend. In October 2009, she watched him die by lethal injection.
‘Reg was a beautiful man,’ said Sandie. ‘Although it was death row that brought us together, that certainly wasn’t why I was attracted to him.’
Odd fascination
So, is it ever a good idea to befriend a violent criminal, however well intentioned your interest may be?
‘Many of these contacts can be positive and constructive, with both parties benefiting, especially if they’re conscious of the limits of the situation and recognise the dangers of moving beyond them,’ says consultant forensic clinical psychologist Ian Stephens.
‘However, the motivation of the contact on both sides is important, and there may be issues of either one… being used by the other in an unhealthy way,’ he explains.
‘Notorious prisoners can be attractive to some correspondents, who may become fascinated by them.’
Now, Paula is campaigning for a sympathetic hearing when Charles Bronson goes up before the prison parole board later this year.
‘ We talk about when he gets out, not if…’ she has said. But, given Bronson’s propensity for violence – he has already served 14 years beyond his original sentence because of his behaviour in prison – the reality is that they may never live together.
‘My dream of having a child may never happen,’ said Paula. ‘But I’ve genuinely fallen in love with this man’s soul.’
‘With some people, you can see the evil in their eyes. He wasn’t like that’