My love for man who spent 22 years on death row

A British woman told today how she is to marry a man who spent 22 years on death row in America wrongly convicted of rape and murder.

Karen Karbritz, 30, is the UK manager for a US commercial property firm. Nick Yarris, 43, has spent almost half his life in solitary confinement fighting to clear his name over the killing of mother-of-three Linda Craig. DNA evidence proved his innocence and he now campaigns against the death penalty.

Today Ms Karbritz, from St

Albans, told how she was mesmerised by her future husband when she attended a lecture he gave in Canary Wharf.

"There was a certain chemistry," she said. "I actually saw him for the first time a few days earlier on breakfast TV and I knew there was going to be a friendship or a relationship. It was love at first sight."

The pair spoke briefly after the lecture in October - nine months after Mr Yarris was freed - and exchanged numbers. They met again in December, after speaking on the phone and exchanging emails, on the last day of a visit by Ms Karbritz to family in the US.

"I told my relatives I was off to the airport but drove to Philadelphia to meet him - a man I hardly knew. I wasn't nervous at all," she said.

They spent two days together before Ms Karbritz returned to Britain and ended her five-year relationship with her boyfriend.

Three days later, on 11 December, Mr Yarris flew to Britain. He proposed on bended knee at Gatwick and Ms Karbritz accepted. They will marry in Enfield on 15 May.

In 1982, Mr Yarris was convicted of the 1981 killing of Linda Craig, who was found dead in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She had been abducted, beaten, stabbed and raped. Mr Yarris maintained his innocence, and it emerged that evidence in his trial had been unreliable.

Finally, in 2003 - just after he had given up and despairingly written to the authorities asking to be executed - DNA tests came through proving his conviction was wrong.

Ms Karbritz said: "My parents are being really cool and my mum's organising the wedding.

"When my friends heard they said, 'Are you mad?' But once people see us they understand. I've got no doubts. I've never been with anyone I would have considered having babies with. But I do now."

Mr Yarris said: "It's the craziest thing. I fought to get home for 22 years, but the people I knew were no longer there, so I was a stranger in my own life. Then I end up here and have this amazing sense of home."