British Woman ‘On Holiday’ In US Marries A Double Murderer, Her Penpal, In Arizona Prison

Rebecca Short, trainee dental nurse from Oxfordshire in England, married Mexican-American Manuel Ovante at Eyman state prison in Florence, Arizona. She had told family that she was going on a holiday.

Representational image of a prisoner

Source : Getty

New Delhi: A 26-year-old British woman flew all the way to Arizona in the United States to marry her penpal, a convicted double murderer who is on death row. 

According to an Independent.co.uk report, Rebecca Short, a trainee dental nurse from Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, married Manuel Ovante Jr, 35, in Arizona’s Eyman state prison that houses over 4,500 prisoners.

Mexican-American Ovante was sentenced to death in 2010 after he killed a man and a woman in a botched 2008 drug robbery, the report said.

Short reportedly did not tell her family the real reason why she was travelling to the US. The report said she told them she was going on a holiday, and even posted photos from Florida and San Francisco.

But she married Ovante on April 14 and then posted photos of her wedding, which took place at the prison in Florence, leaving her friends and family shocked, according to the report.

'Till death do us part'

Photos shared on Instagram showed that Short wore a black dress at the ceremony, while Ovante was in his bright orange prison jumpsuit.

“She was always obsessed with watching Netflix documentaries about serial killers in America, but no one thought she’d run off and marry one,” The Sun quoted a friend of Short as saying. 

The report also said she brought a black wedding cake along, and the red icing on it read: “Till death do us part”. 

She later met Ovante’s family too and posed with them for a photo.

According to the Sun report, Rebecca became a penpal to Ovante after finding his ­profile online.

The Sun found the Mexican-American on prisonlifeandbeyond.com where he describes himself as single, and also calls himself a “goofball” who loves to read and listen to music. 

The profile said he is father to a daughter, and is “very loyal” to his friends. “Not sure what I’m looking for in a pen pal so, I guess you’ll have to surprise me.”