"I let a kidnapper stay in my home" Scots mum duped into housing child snatch and murder plot suspect

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A mum has told how she was duped into inviting two suspects in a US child kidnap and murder plot to stay at her home with her kids.Miriam Berlow-Jackson was left traumatised after discovering that a woman who had lived with her family near Glasgow for almost four months was wanted in the States for a “horror movie script” scheme to snatch five children and kill their parents.The mum-of-three - who believed she was providing refuge for vulnerable women - said photos of alleged plot ringleader Valerie Hayes, 42, cradling her children sent “shivers down her spine”.And she told how she and her husband unwittingly “harboured a fugitive” when co-accused Jennifer Amnott, 37, turned up at her door days after fleeing the US following the botched plot.

Miriam, 49, said: “I think we’ve had a lucky escape. Valerie was a master manipulator and I was too trusting."Hayes, Amnott and a third suspect, Gary Reburn, 59, are wanted in the States for their alleged parts in an attempt to steal the children from a religious community in Virginia in 2018.

The trio are awaiting extradition to the US in Scottish jails after the latest of their appeals to remain failed.Florida man Frank Jesse Amnott, Jennifer’s husband, is already facing a life sentence in the States after pleading guilty to his involvement.

Legal papers claim Hayes duped the Amnotts, who could not have children, into believing she was a government agent. She then convinced them to help her carry out an abduction in return for a child of their own.The US authorities claim Hayes, who was living with boyfriend Reburn in Maryland, claimed that three of her own children had been kidnapped and were in the custody of two separate Mennonite farming families in Dayton.