They're two of Britain's most notorious serial killers. But Rose West and Moors Murderer Myra Hindley may also have been prison lovers.
It's claimed the twisted pair got together in 1995 after both were locked up HMP Durham's 'Hell Wing' - but their short-lived affair ended due to a row over who was the most famous. Hindley was convicted of killing five children and being involved in sexually assaulting four of her victims along with her boyfriend, Ian Brady in and around Manchester in the 1960s in crimes which shocked Britain to its core.
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She was jailed in 1966 and would spend the rest of her life behind bars, dying in 2002 of pneumonia aged just 60. In in the mid-1990s Hindley was joined in prison by fellow female serial killer Rose West.
Alongside husband Fred, West carried out a killing spree at their home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester, which was dubbed the house of horrors. The couple raped, tortured and murdered an unknown number of people between the 1960s and the 1980s.
West was jailed for life for 10 murders in 1995 and shortly after her conviction was banged up at HMP Durham. There she met Hindley and the two women are said to have quickly become close.
The alleged affair was revealed in ITV documentary Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story With Trevor McDonald broadcast in 2020. According to West's ex-lawyer Leo Goatley, who represented her in her 1995 trial, the pair hooked up shortly after West was jailed.
Writing in his book Understanding Fred & Rose West, he says: "Rose's first paramour was the Moors murderer, Myra Hindley, who happened to be on the hospital wing at HMP Durham at the same time in 1995 and early 1996.
"Hindley was there because she had 'fallen over' in the exercise yard of F Wing. It was prison policy that a new inmate who was a lifer would first be assessed on the prison wing.
"I recall that Rose was quite taken with Hindley, impressed by her knowledge and ability. Rose said Hindley had studied various Open University courses.
"She said, 'Yeah, Myra, she's all right, we get on, I want to see how it goes'. This was a reference to their brief lesbian relationship."
Those claims have been backed up by fellow prisoner Linda Calvey, who has insisted Hindley and West were more than just friends. Calvey, known as the Black Widow after the shotgun killing of gangster lover Ronnie Cook in 1990, said: "I remember a prison officer told me, 'I would love to know what the gruesome twosome are up to'.
"Then he said, ‘Actually, on second thoughts I wouldn’t'. They were thick as thieves."
But it appears the affair turned sour pretty quickly. Goatley, who visited West regularly in prison told the Daily Mail: "When I visited a few months later, Rose's opinion of Hindley had changed dramatically. She was saying, 'You have to watch Hindley, mind.
"'She is very manipulative. You don't realise it, but she gets you doing stuff for her. Oh, she's clever, all right. She's flippin' dangerous, that one. She ain't going to take me for a c*** again.' And so heralded the end of the romance."
Calvey said the pair 'just stopped talking' amid rumours they had fallen out over 'who was the most famous'..
She said: "It was really weird. Something happened and then that was that, and it was like they never knew each other.
"As fast as it happened, it ended. There was talk that because Rose was more famous than Myra it had put her nose out of joint."
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