When you find true love, it's hard to pass up--even for murderers. It turns out "The O.C." isn't known just for reality shows. There's a famous pair that resides behind "the Orange Curtain". Two jail inmates share a wedding ceremony behind bars, and they're ready to live a life together, forever. That's as long as the groom isn't sentenced to the death penalty first.
It's an absolute "first" -- at least for the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana: Jail officials believe it's the inaugural wedding ceremony for the Southern California correctional facility.
The Orange County correctional facility in Santa Ana seems proud of its unique foray into nuptials services: “Nobody can ever remember doing an inmate marriage like this,” says Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman John McDonald. “Inmates marrying visitors is kind of common. Not this, two inmates marrying each other."
Way to up the ante, O.C. jail officials.
O.C., California residents can feel fortunate to be from a place where law enforcement officers care enough to make it all happen. Perhaps the jail or its employees was feeling skipped over -- in the 'fame department' -- for the county's reality shows over the years.
Monday, June 27, was the big day. 20-year-old bride Marissa Star Bilotti got married for the first time -- a necessary clarification, since Star will probably be looking for a second hubby somewhere in the near future. Marissa's a Huntington Beach local, the inmate jailed for roughly the past year and a half, since December 2010, after allegedly helping an ex-boyfriend kill a man in a dispute over a woman. Marissa Bilotti is looking at a 32-years, to life in prison, sentence if she's convicted for murder.
Marissa is now wedded in bliss to 26-year-old groom Iftekhar Murtaza, who may be able to look forward to another "big day" in his not-so-far-off future: his death.
The happy new husband's being held without bail in Santa Ana right now. He's awaiting trial -- after being accused of participation in a brutal 2007 attack where he allegedly killed two of his ex-girlfriend’s family members, his ex-girlfriend's father and sister. The details are too grotesque to go into, and the brutality doesn't end there: Iftekhar Murtaza's additionally accused of severely beating his ex-girlfriend’s mother.
Apparently the happy couple shares some commonalities that could lead to a lifelong bond -- if they both live, but that's a big "if".
Bilotti and Murtaza shared roughly five minutes in a wedding ceremony taking place in an Orange County Jail's visitors area. The exciting consummation took place in Santa Ana on June 27 -- where bride and groom were just inches apart, except for those chain-link "cages" to provide some boundaries. Reverand Cynthia Richardson asked each: "Do you take this person in freedom and incarceration?" and, after the fast "I do-s" the couple was told they were free to blow each other kisses.
So, how -- exactly -- did the lovebirds meet? The Orange County Register says the pair got introduced in early 2011, through letters. No word on how those "letters" came to be. "Friends" are known to make the best introductions -- after all, friends do know us best.
The engagement was a fast one, in more ways than one: Murtaza proposed just two months ago, in April 2011, during a visit in the attorney-client visiting area located in the main jail.
It must be a match made in heaven: Photographic evidence shows the new bride and groom have got the same (vacant) eyes -- and eyebrows. The happy couple's also got a matching semi-smirk. The similarities are eerie, really.
Now married, the two may never dine alone. Murtaza is sort of facing a major life change -- like the death penalty. If sentenced to death, the groom will never be allowed conjugal visits on death row.
But at least the new bride will be left everything he's got.