This article is from page 3 of the 2011-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG
THE organisers of the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival have warned against the dangers of online dating after the festival was contacted by a convicted murder who was looking to find love in Lisdoon.
Festival organiser Marcus White received a letter from Steven Michael Sherrill, with an address at the Amarillo Prison in Texas last week, asking for the festival to find him a European woman to be his “pen pal”.
After further investigation, however, it was revealed that Sherrill is serving life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Christine Van Osdall, on February 3, 2000. Sherrill met Christine through an online dating service in November of 2009 and shot her in the head three months later, when she told him that she wanted to break off their relationship.
Sherrill was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 after Texas police tracked him down in Las Vegas. He had fled Texas after he was interviewed by local police in 2000 and was discovered living with a woman from Montana, who he had met using an online dating service, in Las Vegas.
In his letter to the matchmaking festival, Sherrill asked that an announcement be made on his behalf at the Matchmaking Festival, saying that he was looking for a “middleaged European woman” to begin a letter-writing relationship with.
He describes himself as a 50-yearold white male who used to be a professional poker player and currently works as a fiction writer. Sherrill closes the letter with a quote from the film Seabiscuit.
“There is a line in an America film, from horse trainer Tom Smith – ‘you don’t have to throw a whole life away just because it is a little banged up’,” he wrote.
“People using the internet and dating sites must be very vigilant as you never know who you are communicating with over the internet.
“That is why Lisdoonvarna is so successful in that you actually meet the people, thus minimising the risk of a bad experience,” Marcus White told The Clare People yesterday.
“Safety is a key factor and people come here with friends and socialise together. Clients feel safe here and would know a lot of the other festival-goers who come here each year.”
Irish singer Sinead O’Connor travelled to Lisdoonvarna to engage the help of matchmaker Willie Daly earlier this month because she said that she didn’t feel comfortable using online dating sites and preferred the old-fashioned way of finding a match.