My Life with a Criminal: Milly's Story

John Kiriamiti's best-selling novel My Life in Crime has become a classic.

When, as an innocent teenage girl, Miriam met John Kiriamiti, alias Jack Zollo, she found him gentle, kind and considerate. She fell into a passionate, romantic love with this man who claimed to be a car salesman, and who continued to present the image of the perfect gentleman — for months, running into years, never abusing her trust and for this long period continuing to respect her virtue and her virginity.

But finally, with a clean conscience and with the blessing of her own mother, she moved in with this man she loved. And that is when she began to notice that her lover led a double life. It started with the realisation that this man never had an office ... he operated from a noisy bar ... Then there were the little, heavy, sharp-pointed, dull-golden objects hidden in a chalkbox ... and, one day when she came home early from the office, the stumbling on five men in her sitting room conspiratorially sharing out bank notes.

Her discovery of her man’s double life did not constrain her to run away from him, for her love was the love of a lifetime. But her life and love started to exact a heavy price: she constantly walked the tightrope of stress as she sat out nights waiting for a man who at such moments was involved in gun fights and car chases with the police. Could she ever hope of settling down with this man, of consummating the love that had consumed her being?

Milly was Jack Zollo’s (alias John Kiriamiti) girlfriend and her story is told from the criminal’s point of view in an earlier book, My Life in Crime. This is now Milly’s poignant story about her life with the bank robber.