00:00Why do so many women look for love with men locked up in prison?
00:02The bizarre phenomenon of average women seeking romance with dangerous convicts isn't new.
00:08But thanks to social media, it's never been easier to find a boyfriend behind bars.
00:12I'm Lando. I'm 21, about to turn 22 next month. I'm gonna be down a couple years,
00:17and it's boring in here, so I just want some shorties to talk to.
00:22Psychologists have studied the disturbing trend of high-profile criminals,
00:26who gain a fan base of devoted women, and what makes them so desirable.
00:29The term hybristophilia describes the strong attraction some people have to those who commit
00:34crimes. In extreme instances, some of the most violent offenders are the ones flooded with
00:38marriage proposals from hordes of women. But for some women, their desire for an incarcerated
00:43husband goes much deeper. Sheila Eisenberg, author of Women Who Love Men Who Kill,
00:48spent years with such women to understand the phenomenon, and was totally stunned by what she
00:52learned. For many women who date inmates, the desire to soothe and nurture an inmate's loneliness
01:12lures them in. These women just want to offer support to people that do not have a connection
01:16to the outside world. Inmates have nothing but time. You really get to know that person,
01:20because you talk about everything and anything, Sheila writes. Another common theme she discovered
01:24among women who date inmates is some kind of emotional damage in their past. For those who've
01:28been cheated on and betrayed in previous relationships, some women find that the
01:32best boyfriend is one who's locked up in prison. One woman explained,
01:35He's in prison. He's not going to hurt you. He can't hurt you. So you're always in a state of
01:39control because you're the one who's on the outside. You're free. You go in and you visit
01:43him. You can decide whether to accept his collect phone calls. Ash Trevino, a controversial TikTok
01:47star who calls herself the Inmate Hopper, shares her life while dating different incarcerated men.
01:52She uses live streaming features on Instagram and TikTok to earn money from her fans, who send her
01:57monetary donations, which Ash then distributes to her locked-up lover boys. Ash's lives are
02:03scandalous and sometimes appalling, especially when she tries to rationalize her boyfriend's
02:07violent crimes to her concerned followers. I've seen the live last night. A lot of these females
02:11were from like 2013. Why would you wait so many years, 11 years, and now you want to say something?
02:18Why not say something when it first happened, right? And it's not just regular women who fall
02:23for imprisoned criminals. Bloomberg reporter Christy Smythe made headlines in December when
02:27she revealed she had quit her job and divorced her husband after falling in love with pharma
02:31bro Martin Shkreli, who was arrested for securities fraud in 2015. Smythe insisted that her beau was
02:37just misunderstood. In fact, though rare, there are some cases where the same phenomenon occurs
02:42with men who become romantically obsessed with women serving time for violent crimes. Just look
02:47at Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who infamously took the life of her mother and landed behind bars.
02:52She married her pen pal Ryan Anderson inside of the prison while serving her sentence.
02:56So is a police lineup the best place to find love? Probably not, but that certainly isn't
03:00stopping women who are drawn to bad guys. And while some of these unorthodox relationships
03:04get there happily ever after, many end in heartbreak because, well, they're called conmen for a reason.
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