LIFE OF CRIME IN AND OUT OF JAIL I earned £100k a job as a getaway driver for armed robbers.. and Reggie Kray asked me to marry him
I cut Myra’s hair in cell... she was bitter to the end
Picture: ROLAND LEON
‘Oh my God, that must be how people felt when we did it to them’.”
By the end of the 1980s, Cook was due for release and Linda was worried he might discover her infidelity. A jury later heard how Linda offered hitman Danny Reece £10,000 to kill Cook. Reece was also in jail but on day release on the day of the murder.
Linda picked Cook up from Maidstone prison in 1990 and drove him to her home in East London. Reece was lying in wait.
As Cook walked in with the milk, Reece shot him – in the elbow. He was allegedly unable to finish the job. Linda grabbed the shotgun, shouted “kneel”, then blasted Cook in the head, the court was told. Linda was convicted of murder. Yet she maintains her innocence to this day. “I never killed him,” she says.
“I was notorious and the police wanted me locked up.”
Linda and Reece – both convicted of Cook’s murder in 1991 – later married at Durham Prison, though the relationship eventually failed. After Myra Hindley died, Linda briefly became England’s longestserving female lag.
Now she hopes her book will encourage someone to come forward to back her version of events.
She says: “Why would I lie? I served my time and have nothing to prove.
“I’m different from the woman I was 30 years ago.
“I look back and sometimes think I don’t equate me with that person.
“I regret everything after Mickey, JAILED Linda served alongside Moors Murderer Myra Hindley three times – and even did her hair.
In her book, ex-gangster Linda says Hindley – convicted with Ian Brady over the deaths of five Lancashire children in the 1960s – remained bitter and twisted until her dying day.
Bleating Hindley blamed her actions on Brady and even insulted the mother of victim Lesley Anne Downey, 10.
Linda says: “She was very bitter and believed she shouldn’t be in prison. She was especially bitter towards Lesley Anne Downey’s mum and called her ‘that bloody woman’.
“She had a locked briefcase under her bed and told me it was her personal papers. I found it when a spider crawled from under her bed and I asked her to kill it. But she wouldn’t. She told me to kill it as I’m the Black Widow.”
Linda and Hindley, who died in 2002 aged 60, rubbed shoulders at Cookham Wood jail, Kent, at Durham Prison and finally at Highpoint, Suffolk – where she became her hairdresser.
Trained crimper Linda goes on: “She was fussy about her hair as that was the only control she had left. She’d send me Christmas cards and phoned her mother to say she had a lovely friend.
“I would think ‘I’m not your friend’ but I would talk to her mum as I felt sorry for her having a daughter like that.” but I’ve never felt sorry for myself.” One of Linda’s great sorrows is not being at the 1994 wedding of daughter Melanie. “What should have been the happiest day of my life was awful . I was gutted. I couldn’t stop crying,” she says.
After a rollercoaster of crime and passion, Linda was freed in 2009 and found love again with retired businessman George Ceaser, 76.
But four years ago he was diagnosed with 12 tumours and died within a month. Despite her Black Widow nickname, Linda does not believe that she – or the many men in her life – were cursed.
She says: “All the other men I met, other than George, were criminals. If Mickey hadn’t been an armed robber he wouldn’t have got shot. And then I wouldn’t have met Ron and he wouldn’t have died. Maybe bad judgment but certainly not a curse.”
And of the future? “I’d never say never when it comes to love,” she says. “But is anyone brave enough? With my past I can hardly join a dating website. What would I put in the bio?”
I’d never rule out love again but can’t use dating site... what would I put on the bio? WIDOW LINDA ON MARRIAGE, MEN AND TALK OF A ‘CURSE’