ADMISSION

U.K. Man Admits to Killing ‘Kind’ American Woman Visiting England

Mary Wells was found dead just a few days before she was supposed to fly back to the U.S.

Adam Butt has finally admitted to killing Mary Wells, a 21-year-old American woman who was found dead at a home in Colchester, England, after months of denial. Wells had allegedly traveled to the U.K. to meet a man she had been talking to online and spent six months there before being found dead in an Essex home back in January, just a few days before she was supposed to fly back to the U.S. In a hearing at the Chelmsford Crown Court, Butt confessed to “manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility” and is currently remanded at a psychiatric hospital. Butt’s defense team is in conversation with the Crown Prosecution Service on how to proceed with the trial. According to assistant coroner Tina Harrington, Wells died from injuries to her neck and torso. In a fundraiser made by her family to cover funeral costs and to send her body back to the U.S., she was described as being “so kind and selfless, she would give someone the shirt off her back.”