FREED Kenny Richey has recruited a former Blue Peter presenter to help him adjust to his new life in Edinburgh.
The former convict, who was released last week after spending 21 years on Death Row in Ohio, told TV viewers last night that he had suffered from "suicidal thoughts" during his first week back in Scotland.
And today it emerged he is being counsell
ed by life coach Diane-Louise Jordan, who presented the popular children's TV show in the early 1990s.
The actress and presenter, who is also a patron of the BBC's Children in Need appeal, said: "He (Kenny] needs somebody he can turn to at any time, night or day, and that's what I have been doing."
Speaking in a BBC Scotland interview, Richey admitted that he had felt so out of place on his return to the Capital that he had considered suicide. He told interviewers that he felt like he "didn't fit" in the outside world, which he had not seen since he was jailed in 1987 over an arson attack in which a two-year-old girl died.
The 43-year-old, who left Scotland aged 18 to live with his American father in Ohio, said the Edinburgh he had once known was no longer there.
He added: "It's going to be hard for me to adjust back into society. This is a society that has grown up without me. I was left behind, essentially, and it feels like I'm still stuck in 1986."
He also said that his darkest period had come in the past few days and added: "It's like I don't belong in this time period – everything has changed, people have changed, everyone has moved on. I just feel like I'm not a part of anything and it breaks my heart."
Asked if he felt bitter, he said: "They took twenty-one-and-a-half years of my life for something I didn't do, of course I'm bitter. Who wouldn't be?"
Last week, friends of the former Death Row prisoner revealed that he had talked of suicide after struggling to cope with his first few days of freedom.
One friend was reported as saying: "Everything has changed so much since he was last home. Kenny barely recognises Edinburgh, the place he loved.
"Everything is different and it's killing him.
"The one place he thought he'd feel OK in is like a different world.
"He had dark times inside but he's said he's never thought about taking his own life more than he has in the last few days."
The full article contains 437 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
