British gran Ada Wilson wrote to serial killer David Gore for 28 years - The Sun

SIFTING through piles of handwritten letters, Ada Wilson could be any gran looking back over precious mementos of her life.

But these beautifully penned letters aren’t love notes from her late husband, or postcards from her grandchildren.

They are from one of America’s most notorious SERIAL KILLERS.

Ada, a retired tailor, exchanged letters with Death Row psycho David Gore for 28 years.

Their bizarre pen-friendship only ended when Gore was killed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in April last year.

American psycho … serial killer David Gore

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Ada, 81, says: “We had been writing for 18 years before I found out he was a serial killer.

“He was just so polite — nobody would have guessed it.

“Obviously, I presumed he had killed somebody or he wouldn’t have been on Death Row — but it was my daughter who found out the extent of his killing via the internet six years ago.”

Despite discovering his horrific history — Gore tortured and murdered six women — Ada continued to write to him from her home in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire.

She says: “I told him that I knew of his crimes and that nothing was secret on the internet.

“He replied in a letter a few weeks later saying, ‘What you have read is true. I have committed six murders but, between you and me, I have committed many more with my cousin Fred Waterfield.

“‘There have been many books written about me here in the States but none of them know anything of me or my crimes, really.

“‘I know you’re a writer, Ada, and you have been my friend all these years. How about you help me write my book?’ ”

It was then that Ada realised she was communicating with a monster.

She says: “Despite being one of the most evil men on the planet, I saw a nice man in him for all those years.

“He told me lots of lovely stories about his childhood and his letters were always polite.

“He didn’t talk about his crimes initially. He’d tell me about his auntie who owned a nursery. Every year he went to the nursery and was Santa Claus for the children.”

But once Gore asked Ada to help with his biography, and began telling her the full horror of what he had done, everything changed.

She says: “He sent me what he had started writing and I saw the most evil man in him. He had written in detail what he had done to those innocent girls. I can’t even describe it — it is beyond words.”

Ada believes Gore felt no remorse for his crimes. She is considering publishing his autobiography but says she felt sickened that he might be enjoying telling her the gruesome facts.

She says: “I could tell by the way he wrote about what he did that he was enjoying doing it all again in his head.”

Gore’s letters were vetted by the prison, so Ada was not withholding information from the authorities.

In them, he described how he would down a bottle of vodka before committing his murderous assaults in the back of his vehicle.

He told Ada how he would attack his victims “like butchering an animal”. He also admitted being “into cannibalism”.

Even at the end of those horrific letters he would sign off the way he always did — “take care of yourself for me, eh? Love David”.

Death row … David Gore in prison uniform

Ross Parry Agency

Ada adds: “The worst part was his sexual fetish for hair. He would cut their hair and keep it as a trophy. The hair was then put in a holdall and buried.”

Shockingly, Gore was a policeman and father of two young boys.

Most of his victims were teenage girls who were hitch-hiking around the sleepy coastal town of Vero Beach in Florida.

David would pull over, flash his police badge and the girls would believe it was safe to jump in.

Ada says: “Once they were in the back of his van he would handcuff them and, as he put it, ‘They were history.’ ”

She adds: “He told me he only killed the girls because he was so hurt and angry that his wife had left with his two boys.

“I asked him why he didn’t kill her rather than innocent victims, and his response was that he didn’t want to hurt his boys who loved her so much.”

When Ada first became a penpal aged 12, she could never have imagined her love of writing letters would take her deep inside the mind of a serial killer.

She says: “My teacher had a teacher friend in America. They provided their students with penpals to practise their writing skills.

“I was given a little boy called Samuel who I wrote to for 26 years. Samuel grew up to be a minister and one of his jobs was to visit prisoners.

“One day he told me how he visited Death Row and explained how sad it was to see the inmates get only one letter delivered between them.”

Samuel asked Ada if she would like to set up a penpal service for prisoners.

She says: “I wrote to Prison Reform and put an ad in their magazine for potential penpals.”

One day Ada got a letter from Mel Pope, a man on Death Row.

She says: “He asked if I’d write to him because he was dying from lung cancer and wanted someone to talk about nice things with.”

Signed, sealed, delivered … letter from a serial killer

Ross Parry Agency

Ada gave Pope the benefit of the doubt and they started exchanging letters once a fortnight.

She says: “His letters were really nicely written. He’d talk about his grandma and how he was a dab hand at knitting baby clothes.

“He always talked about the man in the next cell, David Gore.”

Pope told Ada how kind Gore was and that he was an artist.

After three months of overseas correspondence, Ada never heard from Pope again. Then she got a letter from David Gore, the man in the next cell who he had written to her about.

Ada recalls: “He said, ‘I’m writing to tell you that Mel has died of lung cancer in the prison hospital. He left me your address and told me to write to you and give you respect and love.’ ”

That is how Ada and America’s answer to Jack the Ripper began an unlikely pen-friendship lasting 28 years.

Words of a killer … letter from David Gore

Ross Parry Agency

The mum-of-three, who has three grandchildren and one great-grandchild, was widowed 18 years ago. But she insists that Harry, her husband of 46 years, was happy with her hobby.

She says: “My husband knew but he wasn’t bothered. He knew I loved writing and could understand that I was interested in helping those less fortunate.

“He wasn’t afraid and nor was I. David was locked up in Florida — he couldn’t come and get me.”

In all, Gore, of Vero Beach, killed four teenage girls and two women. After spending 28 years on Death Row he was killed by lethal injection on April 12 last year, aged 58.

Every day he would swap his pudding for stamps to write to Ada, and told her she made his life worth living.

She says: “I wasn’t sad when I found out he had been killed. He deserved to die and I knew it was inevitable. It was more a case of when.”

Asked if she would have another penpal Ada says, firmly: “No, I would never do it again now.

“I still get letters from prisoners every now and then. I ignore them. I don’t want to do it any more. It was a big burden.

“I don’t believe that David was offloading by talking to me because he said he felt no remorse or guilt. He called his killings ‘huntings’ and I am sure he was addicted to murdering young girls.

“In fact, I’ve often wondered if I had been around when he was on one of his ‘hunts’, what would have happened to me?”

British gran Ada Wilson wrote to serial killer David Gore for 28 years - The Sun