Wedding bells are never going to ring for British serial killer Levi Bellfield. A law that came into force on Friday blocks the 56-year-old inmate and other inmates serving life with no possibility of parole, known in the UK as a "whole-life order," from getting married or entering civil partnerships. The UK's Ministry of Justice says the law aims to "deny the most heinous criminals from enjoying the important life events they callously took from their victims," the BBC reports.
The law was drafted in 2022 after Bellfield, who received the first of his two life sentences in 2008, applied to marry his girlfriend and won the right to receive up to $38,000 in legal aid to challenge a decision to block the marriage, the Telegraph reports. It was fast-tracked after Bellfield submitted an application for a civil partnership two weeks ago, sources tell the Telegraph. Civil partnerships, introduced before same-sex marriage was legalized in the UK, are essentially the same as marriages under British law.
Bellfield was serving a life sentence for the murders of two young women and the attempted murder of a third in 2011 when he was convicted of the 2002 murder of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose case was at the center of the UK's phone-hacking scandal. The woman Bellfield sought to marry wrote to him for years before becoming a regular visitor, reports the Telegraph. "There is a history of vulnerable women who have become pen pals with serial killers or particularly nasty offenders who get into relationships and then there is an issue around marriage," then-Justice Secretary Dominic Raab said when he introduced the legislation. "We're doing this as a safeguarding issue but also as a public confidence in the justice system issue." (More serial killer stories.)
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