Why do so many women look for love with men locked up in prison? The bizarre phenomenon of average women seeking romance with dangerous convicts isn’t new, but thanks to social media, it’s never been easier to find a boyfriend behind bars.
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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.