HUBBY’S CHILLING DEATHBED CONFESSION: I’M A KILLER

As he lay dying in his hospital bed, Bill Sanders called his wife Mary to his side and told her a dark secret he’d kept hidden from her for 26 years…he was a killer who’d spent his life on the run! “My name isn’t Bill Sanders,” he whispered as she leaned closer to hear his barely audible voice. “It’s Charles Henry Perry – and I’ve been on the run from the law.

“I escaped from a chain gang in Georgia where I’d been sent to jail for manslaughter. A man owed me money and wouldn’t pay. We got in a fight, and he hit me with a pipe wrench. I stabbed him with a knife – and killed him.”

Mary couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“I was numb with shock,” she said. “My God! Here was the man I’d loved for 26 years telling me he wasn’t who I thought he was – and he’d killed a man in a fight.

“It took me a minute or two to catch my breath. Then I reached out, held his hand, and said: ‘Well, honey, that was in self-defense. I still love you. Nothing will ever change that.

“He looked at me with tears in his eyes. He smiled, and I could see the relief flooding across his face. He could now die in peace.”

Mary met Bill in 1971, when she was 28 and freshly divorced, and he was 51. He told her his name was Clarence William Sanders.

“He was so charming,” Mary told The ENQUIRER. “He was going bald, but he had these brilliant blue eyes and a gorgeous smile.

“He said he’d been married before for eight years, but didn’t have children or any living relatives.”

The two hit it off and Mary moved in with Bill.

After eight years of working in ski resorts in Utah and casinos in Nevada – she as a waitress, he as a cook – they got married. They never had children.

“We moved every six to eight months. Bill always had a different reason – he didn’t like this, or he didn’t like that. I liked our gypsy life.”

By 1998, Bill, then 77, was in a hospital, dying of complications from open-heart surgery.

He finally decided to reveal his true identity. He told his stunned wife how he’d been convicted of manslaughter in 1937 and escaped from the prison chain gang in 1940.

For a few moments, Mary’s peaceful life seemed torn to shreds in front of her, but then she pulled herself together and forgave the man she still loved.

The man on the run died less than a month after his confession.

“I know I lived a lie for 26 years, but I’m not mad at Bill,” said Mary on the eve of her 64th birthday. “I’m convinced Bill never told me because he was trying to protect me. He knew if he told me and he was caught, I’d be in trouble.”

Mary, who is now remarried and living in Arizona, says: “Bill was a wonderful man – and that’s how I’ll always remember him.”

By PHILIP SMITH