'We're older and wiser now. I'm feeling good about it ... I'm happy'

Wendy has spoken for the first time of how the couple's son, Sean, helped rekindle her love for the man who spent eight years engaged to another woman - and who might yet face execution in the electric chair.

"We're making plans for the future together and hopefully that's how it will go," she says from her home in Minnesota. "It's not a given what will happen, but both of us hope it will work out - we both want it to. Once, we felt we had a good future together and it didn't work out that way, but we're older and wiser now. I'm feeling good about it...I'm happy."

Earlier this week, Richey, told The Scotsman that his eight-year engagement to Karen Torley, a mother-of-four from Cambuslang who has led the campaign for his release, is over. Wendy says: "Karen and I have talked three or four times. I agree with Ken and his family that they all appreciate and are very grateful for what she's done. She's worked hard for him."

For the last year, Wendy has been rebuilding her relationship with her ex-husband through telephone calls and letters, swapping memories and news of their "adorable" two-year-old grand-daughter: "I will visit him, for now we're taking it one step at a time. It will be really something to see him again after all this time, it will be strange. At the moment we talk a lot and we get along.

"At first it seemed weird to be back talking - of course, circumstances are a little different now. I think he's changed. He's grown up a lot; he's certainly a lot calmer, more gentle and he's not quite as impulsive; he thinks about things; he's changed."

Richey is currently on death row at Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio after being found guilty of starting a fire that killed a two-year-old girl, Cynthia Collins, in 1986.

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned his conviction and death sentence in January last year, saying that it was unsafe. But hopes of a release were blocked by a subsequent ruling in the US Supreme Court, which has ordered the judges of the Sixth Circuit to reconsider.

Richey has always protested his innocence, but Putnam County prosecutor Gary Lammers, in Ohio, has vowed to continue the fight to keep him behind bars. "The evidence supports that Mr Richey set the fire that callously ended this little girl's life," he insisted last June.

Wendy says she has every faith in her ex-husband's innocence, but admits the tortuous legal process has left her bewildered and uncertain of his fate. Conducting a relationship with someone who could end up in the electric chair "has its challenges," she admits.

But she adds: "Of course, I hope that one day he will be released, because that's what he deserves. I wouldn't say I'm confident that it's going to happen, but I'm also not confident it won't.

"I know he is innocent - partly just from knowing he would never hurt a child that way, he's not that kind of person, and, of course, from what I have read of the case and the documents."

Richey's American odyssey began in 1982 when he left his hometown of Edinburgh - and his mother, Eileen - to live in Ohio with his father, James, after his parents divorced. Shortly after moving to Brainerd, Minnesota, in 1984, he met and fell in love with Wendy Amerud, who worked on a local military base.

"We met in a local bar, just before he went into the Marines. He was handsome and fun; we got along. When he asked me to marry him, I guess I just felt we had a good future together," she recalls. They walked down the aisle on 26 May 1984, the bride in a white, button-collared wedding gown and her groom in his new Marines uniform with a carnation on his left lapel. But the joy was not to last.

"We married happy, but life changes, things happen. I think it probably was too soon for Kenny to settle down at that point in his life.

"We were together every day, when I finally got to be with him when he was out of basic training, and we were close - it wasn't all a rocky road, we had some fun times. But he was impulsive, he was into the party life, he was young.

"Soon after our son Sean was born [in 1986], Kenny left to go to Ohio to stay with his dad, then he planned to go back to Scotland. Things had kind of drifted towards divorce by that point. I didn't tell him that we were going to be divorced, but I knew I had to. He wasn't ready for that marriage."

The divorce was finalised in April 1986 and the pair did not speak again. Three months later, Richey was arrested and charged with arson and aggravated murder after an acrimonious break-up with another girlfriend, Hope Collins, whose daughter died in the fire he was accused of starting.

"We had no contact by that point and I distanced myself for all these years. I didn't tell Sean much about his dad when he was a child. I didn't want him to have negative feelings about himself because of it, I didn't think at a young age he could handle that. It's a pretty big thing to tell your son his father is on Death Row."

Sean, now 20, met his father for the first time last year during a prison visit. Wendy - who suffers from multiple sclerosis and works full-time as a civil servant near her home in Baxter, Minnesota - has not yet made the 870-mile journey to the prison, but has sent her ex-husband a photograph of herself.

"For several years, once he was older, Sean knew Ken was in prison and that he could write to him, but chose not to until they got together recently - that was his choice. Initially I wasn't sure - I wanted Sean to know his father and he was at an age that he could get to know him, but I just didn't plan to have anything to do with Ken myself. Then Sean got involved and it all led from there.

"It's hard to say for sure where things will go from here. We've talked about going to live in Scotland if he's released - I'm certainly willing to do that if things work out between us, it sounds beautiful. He dreams about going back to Scotland - it would be very emotional, very overwhelming for him."

Speaking from prison, Richey echoes her dreams of building a life together, and eagerly awaits a reunion visit. "Wendy is a good woman," he says. "It all went wrong when I was in the military. After a hard day on the base, I'd grab a beer and sit on the sofa.

"But she sees how I've changed now. Wendy can't afford it right now to come and see me, but when she can, she'll be there.

"She's sent me a photo and she's a good-looking woman, just like the day we were married. Back then, I was always buying her little trinkets and she still has one of the hearts I gave her, a necklace. That means something, doesn't it?"