Her daughter says Joan Blass was 87 and had dementia when a man befriended her, then married her quietly, inherited her estate when she died – and buried her in an unmarked grave. Now Franks works tirelessly to make such marriages a crime
According to Daphne Franks, her mother was 87 when she met Colman Folan. He passed by when Joan Blass was trimming her hedge, the two got talking and she invited him in. Even this was out of character for Blass, says Franks, who lived about 30 metres from her mother in Leeds. She would once have been a bit more cautious, but Blass had been widowed three years earlier and diagnosed with vascular dementia.
“I remember her saying at the time: ‘There are a few old ladies he visits,’” says Franks, 64. “That rang alarm bells. I wish I’d listened to them.”
