THE physical and metaphorical miles between them have not stopped an ex-Hampshire school teacher and death row murderers and rapists from becoming friends.

Maggie Allder spent 36 years teaching religious education and has found a unique way to spend her retirement through penning letters to inmates in America.

She has been exchanging the hand-written notes for 11 years after striking up a friendship with Karl Chamberlain, of the Polunsky Unit in Texas in 2004.

Known as ‘KC’, he had been on death row since 1997 for raping and murdering a woman.

Maggie frequently visited him during the school summer holidays, even attending his execution by lethal injection in 2008, when he was aged 37.

Through organisation Human Writes, the 63-year-old chronic fatigue sufferer coordinates voluntary pen friends from the UK for the entire state of Arizona, which has around 125 death row prisoners.

She also still writes to another Texas inmate who she met whilst visiting KC. She did not want to name him or his crime because he is still alive.

The Winchester resident admits the experience was “terrifying” to start with, but says she has learnt a lot about America from her visits.

“The first time I went I was scared witless,” she said.

“I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. It was like going to a really important interview times three.

“It’s about the safest place you can be if you are a visitor, when you walk through you are surrounded by guards and the prisoners are all shackled up.”

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Whilst in Texas, Maggie would spend four hours a day speaking to KC through a glass panel.

“I don’t think I connected his crime to the person who was sitting on the other side.

“They are nice people to visit and immensely grateful.”

The ex-Thornden School teacher said KC “changed immensely” during his time behind bars and became a long-distance member of the Winchester Quaker meeting – of which Maggie has been attending for more than 25 years.

She says her faith means she does not believe in violence, but does think everybody has an element of good within them that can be accessed.

“Like all Quakers I don’t think that anyone is entirely bad or good, it’s all a question of degree,” she said.

“By the time he died he had a strong sense of guilt for his crime. He believed that death was not the end for him.”

Maggie said she felt traumatised after the execution and wanted to give up her unusual hobby.

“It did traumatise me. It is not familiar in British society. To see it happen in front of you was very shocking.

“When KC died I would like to have given up at that point but I could not just dump the other guy so I stayed with it.”

In 2010, three weeks after her retirement, Maggie took up the voluntary coordinator post with Human Writes.

“I leapt at it. It seemed like what I wanted to do with my retirement,” she said.

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Four years ago Maggie put on an exhibition of inmates art work at the Quaker meeting, which attracted attention nationally.

Now she has written a novel based on her experiences of America not only from death row, but also from volunteering at a Black Feet Indian reservation in Montana, the mountains in West Virginia, and studying for a masters from 1974-1975.

It is her first book to be published, although in the 80s she wrote a trilogy for teenagers which never made the shelves.

Courting Rendition was published by Matador in January and follows a seemingly ordinary woman as she discovers social unrest, political intrigue and calculated injustice in the most unlikely places.

Set in 2030 it takes the form of a journal following the woman’s life as she moves from the predictable and pleasant to subterfuge, confusion, catastrophe and redemption.

At the Winchester book launch P&G Wells Booksellers sold all their copies, ordering more the next day, and Maggie said the response has been “remarkable”.

“Some people have said that the book is very dark, some people have said that it is optimistic. It’s a bit political.

“I’m just concerned that some of our politicians left and right seem to have this admiration for the USA and a special relationship.

“Although there’s much to be admired, there’s much to cause concern and I would hate to see us becoming like the America I have experienced.” As the chat draws to a close Maggie takes five minutes to show off her bulging folders of letters and pictures, stored under her desk in alphabetical order. On the table sit five unopened letters with bright air mail stamps.

“I reply to them all,” she says.