A British mother-of-three died from a blood clot after marrying a US killer and jetting back and forth to America to visit him in jail, an inquest heard.

Divorcee Kay Frazier, 50, from Wigan, began writing to Gary Frazier online in 2010 and said when they married in 2012: 'I feel safer with him than any other person.'

The killer, 37, is currently not eligible for parole from his Nebraska jail until 2024 after shooting two people, killing one, during a row when aged 19.

Over five years the couple exchanged 12,000 letters with Kay sending him around 12 love letters every day.

She later flew from Greater Manchester to marry Frazier in his cell and give him a 'passionate kiss' but said they were not allowed to consummate their relationship.

An inquest into her death has heard just seven years before he could be released at the earliest from his 49 year sentence, she has unexpectedly died from surgery following a thrombosis - the medical term for a blood clot. The hearing was told her death was also down to complications from risky surgery, deemed by doctors the only chance to save her life.

Coroner Jennifer Leeming heard she was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital from Wigan Infirmary last May 9 with serious headaches.

Radiologist Toby Williams said there was 'nothing left to lose' in performing the blood clot-removing 'thrombectomy' treatment.

The consultant stressed although it has a 1-10 per cent mortality rate, he was '100 per cent sure' she would die without it.

He said: 'We have treated thrombosis like this before with success.'

But as Mr Williams tried in vain to remove the clot, Mrs Frazier suffered a ruptured artery causing a bleed in her brain.

She lost all brain activity by 7pm on May 10th, finally passing away on May 11th.

Coroner's officer Peter Yates confirmed he had repeatedly tried to contact her children to tell them about the inquest but with no success.

There is no explanation as to why Mrs Frazier developed the blood clot, which is believed to have occurred naturally.

In a 2014 interview, Mrs Frazier admitted friends think 'I'm mad' after 'a normal woman from Wigan ended up marrying a murderer from Nebraska.'

She told how she first married aged 17, had three sons now aged 31, 30 and 25, but divorced in 2004.

In 2010, she started watching documentaries about prisons and saw how US inmates would go online to find a pen pal.

She explained: 'Gary sounded confident and interesting. He got mixed up with the wrong crowd when a teenager.

'One night he and some friends got into an argument with some other lads. Gary shot two, one of them died.

'Prison saved him. If he hadn't been locked up, he would be dead by now.'

Admitting flying out to see him the first time was 'madness' she said: 'I was outside a prison in the middle of Nebraska visiting a murderer.