Prison pals: Killers form an unlikely jail friendship.
Two notorious female killers formed an intriguing relationship behind bars.
They are two names that have become synonymous with evil. Rose West and Myra Hindley are Britain’s most notorious female criminals whose horrific acts triggered shock, anger and disbelief.
They were eventually both sentenced to life imprisonment. But it was behind bars that the pair, who committed their hideous crimes in different decades, formed an intriguing friendship.
In Rose West And Myra Hindley: The Untold Story, Trevor McDonald talks to former prisoners and governors in a bid to discover the true natures of the duo and try to determine who wielded the power in their relationship.
“Between 1963 and 1965 Myra Hindley was involved in the murder of five children and teenagers,” says McDonald. “Three decades later, Rose West was jailed for her part in the killing of 10 women and girls.
“They were the first two women in Britain to be given whole life sentences. What happened to Rose West and Myra Hindley in prison is an extraordinary and untold story. In this film I investigate their special relationship.”
Hindley and her lover Ian Brady, raped, killed and buried their victims in the moors of Manchester in the 1960s.
West and her husband Fred tortured and killed young females at their home in Gloucestershire, including their own daughter Heather, 16, and stepdaughter, Charmaine, 8, before burying them in their back garden.
Myra Hindley had been behind bars for nearly 30 years when, in 1995, Rose West arrived at Durham prison’s high security H-Wing, where a visitor describes Hindley as being the ‘Queen Bee’.
“In the winter of 1995, Myra Hindley and Rose West developed a relationship that went beyond mere friendship,” says McDonald. “But what was it that drew these women together?”
Former prisoner Marisa Merico, describes Hindley as looking “gaunt, menacing and creepy”. While Linda Calvey, who served seven years for armed robbery and 18 years for murder, says that on seeing Rose West for the first she was startled by “this little fat, dumpy woman with huge glasses who looked like a frumpy granny”.
But West couldn’t mask her explosive temper. Marisa Merico recalls seeing her after she had read something in the newspapers about her that she didn’t like. She describes West as “literally foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog”.
The killers quickly became best friends, visiting each other in their cells and having breakfast together at a small table with a red-and-white check tablecloth. Linda Calvey says most of the wing thought they were having an affair.
“An essential part of the story of Myra Hindley and Rose West is that they were both attracted to sexual psychopaths,” says McDonald.
“But could that be because of what happened to both of them in childhood?
“Myra Hindley’s father, Bob, was a violent alcoholic who made life very difficult in the home environment.
“He worked as a labourer and she got to dislike the dirt under his fingernails. She connected with Brady early because she had already decided the man she wanted would be clean-cut, intelligent, well-dressed with manicured hands.
“Brady presented himself as an intellectual, a free-thinker, who was going to be different from everybody else because he was going to do what he wanted to do.
“Rose West’s father, Bill, was a schizophrenic. She had a dreadful childhood. Her mother, Daisy, was a meek and mild little woman. From an early stage in the marriage, Bill was beating and abusing his wife, both physically and emotionally, to the point where she became a nervous wreck.”
At Durham prison, Hindley and West’s relationship fell apart in 1996 and they stopped speaking to each other. West told a fellow inmate that Hindley was “manipulative” and “dangerous”. “They were two very different people,” says McDonald. “Hindley was intent on controlling other people and West couldn’t control her temper.”
Myra Hindley died in 2002 at the age of 60. Rose West is now at Low Newton prison in County Durham.
“Both women’s prison years reveal a great deal about their real personalities,” says McDonald. “Myra Hindley has been described as a devious woman who manipulated everyone she met, including Rose West. And West’s time behind bars exposes a woman with an uncontrollable and violent temper, unwilling to face up to what she had done.”
“An essential part of the story of Myra Hindley and Rose West is that they were both attracted to sexual psychopaths.”
– Trevor McDonald