'My husband has been in jail for 31 years for double murder
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A wife whose love never wavered during her husband’s 31 years in jail for a double murder he denies has spoken movingly of the freedom she hopes they will soon share.
In a rare and poignant interview, Marita Maharaj, 78, says of former South London businessman Kris: “I just want to be in a nice, quiet place with him.
“To walk near the sea with a dog, to have a cup of tea in bed together.
“If I wanted to hug him I could, if I wanted to kiss him I could.”
Kris, 79, has been locked up in America since 1986 and spent the first 15 years of his sentence on death row.
But he could be free this summer after new evidence linked the killings to Colombian drugs baron Pablo Escobar .
Maria remembers: “When he first went to jail he told me to go home.
“He said ‘This is too much for you’.
“But I said ‘I will never leave you alone.’ Until the last breath I will be beside you.”
(Image: Justin Sutcliffe)
Statistics show that women in Marita’s position usually leave within the first five years. But not her.
Living close to the jail, alone and dependent on the charity of friends now Kris’s fortune has gone, she visits weekly despite her own ill-health.
She is allowed only to kiss and hug him on arrival and departure.
For the rest of the week, contact is ­re­­­stricted to a daily five to 10-minute phone call with guards listening in.
For the long years Kris was on death row she was not allowed even that.
Instead, she wrote every day and she still treasures hundreds of his return letters which she lovingly keeps in boxes.
For 31 years she has never had another ­relationship.
She laughs: “I was once a nice-looking woman but I have never met anyone else. If I felt someone liked me I stop­­ped seeing them.
"Once some­one wanted to marry me but I always wear my wedding ring. I have never been interested in or intimate with another man.
“I do feel incredible loneliness. But if you really love someone you don’t think about other people.”
When Portuguese-born Marita was told of Escobar’s alleged involvement in the killings, she could not believe it.
She had never heard of the Colombian who was gunned down in 1993. She sighs: “It is unbelievable our lives could get caught up in that world.
“What the hell have they got to do with us? We are caring people. Why?”
Kris’s legal team believe they have convincing ­evi­­dence he was framed.
It has emerged that the two murdered men were laundering Escobar’s money and helping themselves.
And cartel associates claim the drugs supremo ordered their murder as payback.
Trinidad-born Kris and Marita, who moved to the UK as a student, met in London and enjoyed an affluent life thanks to his food import business.
Kris even raced horses against the Queen – and once beat her at Ascot. Business took the couple to Florida.
(Image: Reuters)
And it was there, on October 16, 1986, that their world was shattered when father and son Derrick and Duane Moo Young were shot dead in room 1215 of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in Miami.
They were business associates of Kris and owed him £280,000.
Yet, even though he was in the process of suing them to reclaim his mon­­­­ey, prosecutors seized on this as a motive – despite his having no ­criminal ecord.
Kris’s fingerprints were found in the hotel room. He had previously visited it for an unconnected meeting but that fact was dismissed or overlooked.
UK human rights charity Reprieve has fought Kris’s case alongside Marita.
And now a federal judge has ordered Florida’s state government to re-examine it by the end of this month.
Reprieve has also uncovered evidence suggesting the US authorities may have been told about Escobar’s involvement in the killings all along.
Marita shudders as she describes how police arrested Kris without ­explanation as they ate in a restaurant.
She recalls: “I thought they were kidnapping him.
“I could not even dream what was going on.
(Image: Getty)
“Kris was absolutely petrified. That was the last time he was free.”
Marita immediately disbelieved the allegations.
She explains: “If I cut my hand Kris would pass out at the sight of blood.” But it wasn’t just Kris’s character which convinced her. She, along with Reprieve, say the evidence against him is full of holes which were apparent even before the Escobar link was uncovered.
At the trial, the evidence of the key prosecution witness fell to pieces and he failed a lie-detector test.
Kris passed the test and six witnesses said they had seen him elsewhere at the time of the murder.
However, the defence called none of them and he was found guilty.
Marita recalls: “He fainted when they convicted him. I screamed.”
But then and there she was certain of her commitment. She says: “I have to fight to stay alive and to keep Kris alive as well. At first I was worried he would lose his mind.”
Even though he was then on death row, Marita remained convinced he would not die. So she wrote those letters to him each day, and he to her.
(Image: Reuters)
She shrugs: “There is not much you can say. Letters are censored. But I told him I missed him. He has become very low. He says if it were not for me he would be dead long ago.”
Indeed, he could easily be.
In 2012 he contracted a near-fatal bacterial infection in the cramped prison conditions and nearly lost a leg. Today he needs a walking frame or wheelchair.
But, Marita says, he is still the man she fell in love with. She adds: “He has not changed much... only his appearance.”
Reprieve’s founder Clive Stafford Smith has been dedicated to Kris’s case for more than two decades.
It was his lead which took investigators to Colombia where they spoke to six associates of Escobar’s who were willing to say on record he ordered the killings.
In 2014 he told Marita what they had uncovered. And while she prays for Kris’s release this year, hoping the true killer will finally carry the can, she can only allow herself to look ahead day by day.
Kris has said: “All I have to celebrate is the love of my wife.”
And it is those words she clings to.
She says: “When he says this it makes me stronger.”