LID ON KILLERS’ AFFAIR’ AND SPLIT Evil pair were thick as thieves until they fell out over who was most famous

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.’”

Mr Goatley believes this “was reference to a flowering, albeit shortlived, lesbian relationship”. But he tells how when he visited West a few months later her opinion had changed dramatically.

The book says: “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 flipping dangerous, that one. She ain’t going to take me for a c*** again’. And so heralded the end of their romance.”

Mr Goatley claims the affair with Hindley, who always denied any such relationship with West, was one of many female friendships West enjoyed from the start of her life sentence.

Abuse

He added: “The friendships were genuinely supportive and often sexual. They could also be unstable and end in resentment.”

Mr Goatley first represented West in 1992, when she was accused of aiding and abetting her husband in the sexual abuse of one of their children.

He continued to act for her until 2004, when he says it became clear she was making a life f or herself in prison and no l onger needed him. Now 65, she reportedly has her own cell on the special unit at New

Hall prison in West Yorks, after she was shipped out of Low Newton in Co Durham earlier this year. It comes amid health problems as West has complained of struggling to climb stairs to her cell. Her eyesight is also said to be failing.

Hindley died aged 60 in 2002 after serving 36 years while Brady died in 2017, aged 79, after spending 51 years behind bars.

Calvey says she finally got to know Hindley at Highpoint Prison in Suffolk, years after their stint in Durham, when she was asked to be her hairdresser.

But Calvey, who this year released book Black Widow about her life as an armed robber, said: “She mysteriously never spoke about Rose to me. It was like it never happened. Clearly a sore point.”