A CALIFORNIA mother married her husband in 2012, two years after becoming his pen pal - and 18 years into his two life sentences for double murder.
Kacey Rush, a 43-year-old realtor, former model and mother of one from Los Angeles, CA, began writing to 49-year-old former Crip gangster and crack dealer Travis Berry in 2010.
She is convinced he did not commit the crimes he was imprisoned for and has spent thousands of dollars in legal fees appealing his conviction.
Kacey told Barcroft TV: “In 2010 I came across a website that had Travis’s name on it. I was more inquisitive about the psychology of people who commit these crimes, and I was digging about the psychological side of how they can say they are all innocent in prison and how everyone is innocent in prison.
“So I wrote him, I wanted to see what his answers would be as to why is he innocent. Like, 'I don’t believe you, so tell me why I should believe you?'
"I sent him a picture, just so he knew what I looked like, but it wasn’t for a love interest, it wasn’t to have a pen pal, I didn’t want any of that. It was more like I wanted to know how his brain worked.
"I waited for the mail, not really thinking about it, and then he wrote me back and I got a letter from him.”
What Kacey knew was that on January 30, 1992, two men were shot dead in the back of a rental car. Travis was charged with two counts of murder, kidnapping and burglary, and found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The pair corresponded via letters for three months, during which Kacey became increasingly more convinced of Travis’ innocence, and decided to visit him in prison and meet him face-to-face.
She said: “He popped out with the big ol' cheesy smile he has, and I knew I was in trouble then. I was in trouble like ‘Oh my god, what have I got myself into?' because I knew he was The One.
"He might be my complete opposite, he might be my biggest headache, he might be the biggest kick in my ass but he is the one that I am bound to. I felt that all in that moment, it was really weird."
Travis said despite being perplexed when Kacey first got in touch with him, his emotions ran high when she visited him for the first time.
“In the beginning, things are like a game to a certain extent, but when I actually saw her, things started changing for real,” Travis said.
“I got butterflies, my emotions were really out there, and I just kissed her."
Kacey began working with Travis to overturn his conviction, doing her own investigations off the back of their conversations, before handing the case over to the Innocence Project, a legal non- profit organisation that works to exonerate wrongly convicted people.
The pair decided to commemorate their love by getting matching tattoos on their ring fingers.
Travis said: “I thought I had to do it on my ring finger as for me that symbolises life, there is northing in the world that can ever separate us. We’re forever, and we’ll never divorce - we’ll always be together.”
In February 2012, after a year long wait for the prison to find a chapel, the couple got married, with only Kacey’s daughter Taylor present, and one of Travis’ inmate friends there to act as a witness.
The pair had still never had never been alone without prison supervision, and wouldn’t be for another five years after their wedding.
“We’d never had our chance to actually be alone one-on-one as a married couple, or as a regular couple, as anything,” Kacey said.
"The laws changed and lifers were granted family visits, so our first conjugal visit was in July 2017. That was the first time we ever got to have sex, and that is what changed our marriage.”
Explaining to her family that she was romantically involved with a man convicted of a double homicide was a lot for them to take in, Kacey admits.
She said: “But they can either accept it or they can move on. I am going to do what I am regardless of what someone tells me to do, unless it was detrimental to my daughter."
When her mother told her she was dating an inmate, Kacey’s daughter, Taylor Christensen, said she saw it as a passing phase that would be over in a few months, but now describes it as a blessing in disguise.
She said: “I didn’t have a male figure in my life to look up to and at that point in my life I didn’t want one. He has done a lot for me, more than a lot of people have, and he’s done it from behind prison walls, and it’s meant so much to me.
“He has shown me a true father figure. We are so close."
Travis’ family were no less confused by his budding romance with a stranger from the outside.
Shawn Johnston, Travis’ younger sister, who created the website Kacey came across calling for help with Travis’ appeal, said: “I would never date someone in prison. I didn’t think it’s possible - you can’t come home to them, you can hold their hand but you can hardly be intimate with them. There are lots of rules and regulations when you go for prison visits.
"I thought she was crazy, but the more visits she had with him, the more Travis started becoming himself again.
"His voice was lighter, the laughter was back, and I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes, so Kacey’s been a godsend. She’s given him the hope he needed to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel."
Finding the Innocence Project ‘too slow’, Kacey has used her own savings and borrowed thousands of dollars off her mother to hire attorneys to fight Travis’ case.
The family are now going through their fourth appeal to have his conviction overturned, with the decision pending.
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