Teen Plans to Marry Man She Met on MySpace

ByABC News via logo
June 23, 2006, 8:13 AM

June 23, 2006 — -- A Michigan teenager who met a man on the Internet and secretly flew to the Middle East to meet him before being captured by the FBI still plans to marry him, she says.

"I love him very much," Katherine Lester told "Good Morning America" in an exclusive television interview. "I'm definitely going to marry him."

Lester, who turned 17 on Wednesday, first met Abdullah Jimzawi, 20, seven months ago on the popular Web site MySpace.com. She said she fell in love with him, and together they devised a plan so the two could be together.

Lester lied to her parents, told them she needed a passport to go to Canada with friends, and then disappeared from her mother's home on June 5. The family was frantic.

"Please come home, Katherine," Mary Lester, Lester's sister, tearfully pleaded to cameras when the teenager disappeared. "Please. We need you."

Lester flew from Detroit to New York and then headed to Israel. The FBI tracked her flight and persuaded her to get off the plane during a layover in Amman, Jordan, on June 8. Her parents were relieved as their prayers had been answered.

"I was very excited, happy," said Terry Lester, the teenager's father. "But up until that moment I was terrified and sad and just praying every moment."

Lester never saw Jimzawi, but ABC News found him at his home in Jericho in the West Bank.

"We can't live without each other," said Jimzawi, a delivery man who lives at home with his parents. "No one is going to stop us from loving us, you know. And she is going to be with me, and she wants me to be with her. And we won't leave each other ever because we love each other."

Lester and Jimzawi still communicate, but the Lester family now supervises her online activity. A local court took away her passport.