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It started with a letter written in a Selly Oak living room and ended with a journey to America’s Deep South on the eve of a man’s execution.

Jane Officer was keeping a promise she’d made to her pen friend Feltus Taylor as he prepared to die for his crimes.

Feltus Taylor always wore leg chains

The last time she’d journeyed to Louisiana he’d eaten his last meal and was 20 minutes away from death when his lawyers had new grounds for appeal accepted by the Supreme Court.

There was to be no reprieve this time and no return to his 6ft by 9ft cell in Angola state penitentiary, America’s largest maximum security prison and home to 5,000 inmates.

After five desperate ‘stays’ of execution, Feltus, 38, was finally killed by lethal injection for the murder of a restaurant worker.

Shot four times

According to the Associated Press, Feltus (or Taylor if using crime reporter parlance) killed Donna Ponsano during a robbery at a fried chicken restaurant in Baton Rouge on March 27, 1991.

One of Feltus's pencil-written letters

Manager Keith Clark was shot four times in the head and left partially paralyzed.

Prior to his execution on June 6, 2000, Feltus apologized to the slain woman's family and to the wounded restaurant manager.

"I want to tell you, Keith, and the Ponsano family that I always regretted what I've done," he said.

"It was my own doing. After this is over with, I hope you can find the peace to move on."

Guns and money

“Feltus was 30 going on 15 and very immature," adds Jane.

Jane Officer with Feltus Taylor

"His girlfriend started putting pressure on him for money and a lot of people in that area carry guns.

“Just before he was killed, Keith got a message through to him to say he forgave him."

The hundreds of letters she'd received from him in nine years of corresponding are stored in date-marked cardboard crates at her home but the memory of his death still haunts her.

Feltus was one of nine men retired teacher Jane has written to who have been imprisoned for murder.

Terrible crimes

She has been writing to men in prison and on death row in America for 20 years and all but one of her pen friends have now been executed.

Fred Tucker

The last, Fred Tucker, is a ‘lifer’ and has been told he will die in prison.

They have been corresponding for 18 years and Jane has visited him several times and has vowed to continue until it’s no longer possible.

It could be a long time.

Fred is 53 and while Jane is nearly twenty years his senior, she looks much younger.

Jane believes the terrible upbringings of the people she encounters, and their problems with substance abuse, are often at the heart of their terrible crimes and that given the right circumstances "we are all capable of terrible things”.

Armed robbery

She says Fred was repeatedly sexually abused by his mother’s boyfriend as a child and when he was put into a children’s home he killed an older boy who did the same.

Jane opposes the death penalty

He was 17 and in custody when he was given the chance of serving two years in the Army in return for his sentence being rescinded.

On being discharged he turned to crime and committed an armed robbery in New Orleans, taking just $20. He has been in prison ever since.

 “He’s murdered and intimated he’s also killed someone inside the prison," she remarks.

Thinking about him

"Once your past’s out you’re seen as fair game. We don’t know a fraction of what goes on.

“He’s a very bright man but he’s life has been completely ruined."

“He’s depressed and absolutely terrified that I will die before him," she says.

“I know it sounds cynical but I can write more or less the same letter every two weeks.

“What's important, though, is that he knows that I’m here and still thinking about him.”

When talking to Jane about her work writing to death row inmates and ‘lifers’ she does not mention the victims of their crimes.

There’s also no mention of the ‘m’ word either and instead she focuses on her belief in extending kindness to all, regardless of what they have done.

 “It’s not saying anyone’s condoning what’s happened but you cannot undo what you’ve done,” she pleads.

Horrendous thing

“It’s about coming to terms with it. It’s an horrendous thing to live with.”

Andrew Lee Jones

Jane started writing letters after seeing the award-winning BBC documentary 14 Days in May, which followed events in the final days of a death row inmate's life.

She responded to an appeal for writers from charity Life Lines in May 1990 and was given her first pen-friend – Andrew Lee Jones.

'Old Sparky'

He had been convicted of murdering and raping his estranged girlfriend’s 11-year-old daughter in a trial Jane strongly believes was weighted against him.

He was the last inmate at Angola prison to die in “Old Sparky” – Louisiana’s electric chair - in July 1991 – which was also shown in the film The Green Mile.

A saline-soaked sponge is used

After his death she set up the Andrew Lee Jones Fund to train UK lawyers and students to go and work in the US alongside attorneys, under the umbrella of charity Amicus.

 “No-one will ever know if Andrew committed the crime," she says.

"You cannot say sorry to someone when you’ve executed them.

“You only have to look at the number of miscarriages of justice in this country to know the death penalty is wrong.”