JUSTICE

Un-bridaled enthusiasm: Young stands by her man­­—at least metaphorically. (Photograph by Michael Persico)

Prisoner of Love

What’s a nice British tourist doing on our death row?

by Frank Rubino

She isn’t Demi Moore, but at 45, Linda Young has winning traits nonetheless. She’s blond and attractive. She’s agreeable and quick to laugh. She’s witty and articulate. Her Irish lilt is lovely.

You can understand why an unattached middle-aged guy might take an interest in her.

Young’s interest in Herbert Blakeney—whom she more or less married last month—is more of a head-scratcher.

The 42-year-old Blakeney, a retired Philly cop’s son, is on death row at the state correctional institution in Greene County (SCI Greene). A jury put him there after convicting him of slaying his 14-month-old stepson eight years ago.

“This is a guy who took a knife to an infant’s throat,” says Dauphin County district attorney Ed Marsico, who prosecuted Blakeney in 2002.

Young, a native of Northern Ireland who now lives in Yorkshire, England, realizes most people think she’s lost her mind.

“Years ago I would’ve thought the same thing,” she says on an early May afternoon while relaxing on a leather couch in the Upper Darby apartment of Blakeney’s nephew.

But that was before she saw a British TV documentary about American death row inmates in 2004 and subsequently became Blakeney’s pen pal. Before she fell in love with him. Before she flew over to meet him at SCI Greene in southwestern Pennsylvania.

And before she researched his conviction, which she contends is full of holes.

“Herbert could not have killed the baby,” she says. “It isn’t possible.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which affirmed Blakeney’s death sentence on May 1, disagrees.

This doesn’t faze Young. Nor does the realization that she might never touch the man she considers her husband.

“Our relationship isn’t based on the physical,” she says. “It’s based on our feelings and our thoughts and what we like and what we can share.”

For now, they’re sharing a condemned man’s cell, at least psychologically.

“I feel like I’m right there with him,” says Young, just back from a week of daylong non-contact visits to death row, which she describes as “terrifying,” though not terrifying enough to shake her commitment to Blakeney.

In days she’ll return to England, where her first order of business will be legally changing her name to his.

“We don’t have to,” says county clerk Shirley Stockdale.

So the couple mailed documentation to a mosque (Blakeney is a Muslim) and settled for a no-show Islamic union.

Of course the operative question regarding their pairing isn’t whether. It’s why.

Young insists she harbors no ulterior motive. For example, she isn’t hoping marrying an American will help her attain citizenship here, something she doesn’t even want.

“This is a lovely country to visit,” she says, “but I’d never want to live here.”

She’s convinced Blakeney isn’t using her either.

“Neither of us was looking for a [romantic] relationship,” she says. “When we met he was as cautious as I was. I didn’t know him; he didn’t know me. He’s always been completely honest with me, and he’s never asked me for anything.”

So with exploitation out of the picture, is this true love? Young says it is, although she knows not everyone hearing of it is going to get choked up.

A call to Marsico’s Harrisburg office confirms the latter. Upon learning a journalist is writing about someone who’s fallen in love with Blakeney, the woman who’s answered the phone goes silent for 15 seconds before remarking, “I’m sorry. But that’s so messed up.”

To cut to the chase, Young fervently believes Blakeney’s contention that Harrisburg police officer William Vernouski actually slit 14-month-old Basil Blakeney’s throat early that morning.

“The cop did kill the baby,” she asserts.

Marsico and the state have never bought it.

What’s clear is that Herbert Blakeney, who lived in the apartment with his then-wife Sacha, their four children and little Basil (whom another man fathered), argued with Sacha the day before the murder, and she threw him out.

Intoxicated, he returned early on Groundhog Day, cutting phone lines, tussling with Sacha’s babysitter (Sacha wasn’t home) and stabbing her. When Vernouski and several other cops arrived, Blakeney picked Basil up and held the baby in one hand while wielding a knife in the other.

Vernouski shot Blakeney three times, once in the face, after Blakeney slit Basil’s throat, the ex-cop and two others testified at trial.

But Blakeney has always maintained that Basil was unharmed when Vernouski fired, and that the cop, fearing he’d killed Blakeney, murdered the infant and blamed Blakeney to justify the shooting.

Young points out that only a minute amount of the baby’s blood was discovered on Blakeney’s clothing afterward. “It doesn’t make sense,” she says. “Wouldn’t his jacket and boots be soaked with blood?”

She says there are other discrepancies too.

While acknowledging that little of Basil’s blood was found on Blakeney’s clothing, Marsico characterizes the couple’s fingering of Vernouski as “ludicrous,” adding that “Blakeney is a cold-blooded killer of an innocent child, in my opinion.”

The courts have consistently agreed, and because Pennsylvania rarely executes, Blakeney could languish on death row for decades.

Young, aware that people think she’s crazy, vows she’ll remain faithful even if Blakeney never walks free again.

“I’ll wait for him,” she says. “He’s worth it.”