A former prison governor has revealed that notorious serial killers such as Myra Hindley and Rose West were treated differently behind bars due to their high profiles. Vanessa Frake, who spent 16 years working in high-security women's prisons, shared her experiences on ITV's This Morning.
Frake recalled an encounter with Myra Hindley, who made her a cup of tea while working as a tea orderly. 'She had longish shoulder-length mousy brown hair, dressed in a dodgy-looking cardigan. You'd see her pushing a trolley around a well-known supermarket,' Frake said, noting that Hindley looked nothing like her infamous mugshot.
Frake admitted that while she would like to say high-profile killers were treated the same as other inmates, they were not. 'You couldn't have someone as high profile as Myra Hindley or Rose West being assaulted in prison... the adverse publicity would be unreal,' she explained.
The former governor also described an encounter with serial killer Colin Ireland, known as the 'Gay Slayer', saying the hairs on the back of her neck stood up when she met him. She noted that women prisoners were more difficult to manage than men, as they often had complex social issues and histories of abuse.
Frake hopes her new book, The Governor: My Life Inside Britain's Most Notorious Prisons, will help the public understand the rehabilitation work done in prisons, rather than focusing solely on retribution.
