News that speedboat killer Jack Shepherd is planning to marry a woman he met while on the run will come as a sickening blow to his victim’s family.
As he plans his “happy ever after” with glamorous TV producer Maiko Tchanturidze, Charlotte Brown’s family face a lifetime without their daughter.
Shepherd displayed extreme arrogance when he fled to Georgia while facing trial for killing Charlotte, 24, during an internet date.
During his 10 months on the run, the swaggering web developer showed little remorse for her death, instead courting Maiko, who seems bizarrely smitten by him.
Then there’s the matter of his first wife. Shepherd is already married and has a child.
But, once again, he won’t let the past stand in his way.
Maiko describes how she was wooed by Shepherd during romantic walks in the park and is convinced of her lover’s complete innocence.
She whines of “suffering” over being apart from Shepherd and complains that he is “not feeling great”.
There will be few who have any sympathy.
And no one will welcome a happy ending for a man who left Britain to evade justice, courted a new woman while on the run and showed total disregard for the law.
Even after offering an “unreserved” apology to Charlotte’s family, he sickeningly continued to rub salt in the wounds by claiming it was HER decision to accelerate the boat.
There is no end to the man’s cavalier attitude.
Maiko would be wise to consider all this before she walks down the aisle with him.
She claims to have been “shocked” by his past. Not as shocked as everyone else will be if she goes ahead with the wedding.
The vow factor
They say love comes from the most unexpected places.
And that’s certainly true in the case of Sue Gardner, her ex-husband John Featherstone and her new love Kevin McPhail.
Far from being at loggerheads, Sue and John remained friends after their split and now she is nursing him through terminal cancer.
And what’s even more incredible is that the man she left John for is helping too.
In an age where divorces are mostly acrimonious and played out in public on social media, it’s nice to see someone standing firm in their vow to care “in sickness and in health”.
DIY another day
A staggering 20,000 DIY enthusiasts ended up in A&E this year after accidents.
They included plunging off ladders, falling off furniture and hurting themselves with power tools. Maybe it should be more a case of Don’t Involve Yourself!
