Alan and Judith Kilshaw, the British couple, with the „much wanted and desired for“ twins.
PHOTO – REUTERS
The real mother of American twins sold twice over the Internet and at the centre of a bitter transatlantic custody battle said she now wanted them back. Tranda Wecker, the 28-year-old mother of Kimberley and Belinda, was quoted as saying she had changed her mind when she saw the six-month-old twins on British television. They have been adopted by British couple Alan and Judith Kilshaw, already locked in a tug-of-war with Californian couple Richard and Vickie Allen who say they also adopted the babies and will fight in court to get them back. „When I saw them on TV with the Kilshaws I thought, ‘Oh my God – they‘re my babies. What have I done?‘,“ she told the Sun newspaper in St Louis, where she is from. „I cannot be happy knowing they are so far away. I just want to see them again and make sure they are safe,“ she added. But her change of heart will not necessarily work in favour of the Allens, who had paid 4,000 pounds through an Internet adoption broker for the children. Wecker said she did not want them to go to the Allens.
MOTHER NUMBER FOUR INVOLVED
The Sun also reported that it had found another woman, U.S. housewife Amy White, who had agreed to pay the same adoption broker Tina Johnson 5,800 pounds for the twins but failed to find the money quickly enough. The Kilshaws, from Wales, are being investigated by local authorities, who have demanded copies of adoption papers. The children were given to the Kilshaws in California in December by Wecker. They had paid an Internet firm 8,200 pounds to adopt the twins. They say they were unaware the Internet firm, Caring Heart Adoption, had already sold Wecker‘s twins to the Allens, who had paid 4,000 pounds for them and raised them for two months. Suffering a change of heart, the girl‘s natural mother told the Allens she wanted two days to say farewell to her twins — and then handed them to the Kilshaws in a San Diego hotel. The British couple, pursued by the Allens, raced across the United States to Arkansas, where adoption laws are more lax. They then flew back to their farmhouse in Wales with the girls. Reuters
