If you end up with a bad man, run to the police

Rose West's chilling advice to inmate on prison release

- SUE LEE

A slight, elderly woman with skinny legs and a noticeable tummy gave a fellow inmate heartfelt advice the night before her release from New Hall Prison.

She told her: “If you end up with a bad man, then run away from that man and run to the police. Wherever you're going, whatever you do, I hope you don't come back here.”

The woman giving counsel in the West Yorkshire jail was serial killer Rose West. Stunned, the inmate up for release, said: “It was surreal.”

This extraordinary revelation comes in a new book, Inside: Women Behind Bars, by Bafta-nominated documentary filmmaker Jonathan Levi and his wife, Dr Emma French.

Both are bestselling authors. Jonathan says of the West conversation: “It's almost admitting to regretting her whole relationship with Fred and what a terrible impact it had on her life.

“It also illustrates the gap between the public perception of these people as monsters and the underwhelming reality of that person after decades inside.”

Granted unprecedented access to former prison staff, governors and prisoners, the authors gained astonishing insight into the private personalities of notorious female felons including West, Myra Hindley, Joanna Dennehy, Lucy Letby and Beverley Allitt.

Former governor Vanessa Frake-Harris recalled running HMP Holloway's segregation unit in North London where West, who uses a pseudonym inside, was first held.

She says: “The media portrays Rose West as this very violent, very evil, psychopathic, narcissistic personality, but she was very quiet; a thinker.” But recalling the prison governor telling West, now 72, that her husband was dead, she adds: “The governor said ‘Rose, I'm really sorry to tell you that Fred has committed suicide’.

“All she said was, ‘Oh, okay’. There was no emotion. There was an absolute blankness there.”