When serial killer Rose West heard her husband and partner in crime Fred had killed himself she didn’t turn a hair, according to author Vanessa Frake.
And she should know. Frake was there when the news was broken. The ex-prison governor describes the woman behind some of Britain’s most chilling murders as looking like: “the auntie you’d have a cup of tea with on a Sunday afternoon”.
The former prisons boss has just released her gripping memoir, written with Ruth Kelly, in which she relives being served tea by one of the world’s most reviled child killers, Moors murderer Myra Hindley.
During her 27 years in the prison service, Frake has encountered some of the most notorious criminals Britain has seen. She has been bitten and punched by violent prisoners, and dealt with inmates who harboured home-made weapons such as razor blades embedded in toothbrushes.
“You are trained for it,” she says. “You were taught how to de-escalate situations, how to defend yourself and talk your way out of trouble. I got assaulted, but so did a lot of other prison officers.”
Frake, 58, who retired from the prison service in 2013, has a and fearless approach that propelled her up the ranks. She started as a junior prison officer at Holloway, the high-security women’s prison in London, and later worked as governor of security and operations at Wormwood Scrubs.
While escorting four prisoners to HMP Cookham Wood, she encountered Hindley, who made her a cup of tea.
“I didn’t recognise her,” she says. “You automatically think of the pictures of the bleached blonde hair, the intense stare and she didn’t look anything like that. These people look as normal as the next person.” Rose West was constantly knitting while on remand at Holloway awaiting trial, Frake recalls. “When I first met Rose West we were expecting this horrendous monster, but she was quiet. She looked like the auntie you’d have a cup of tea with on a Sunday afternoon.”
Frake was present when West was told her husband, Fred, had killed himself in prison. “Nothing had altered in her expression,” she reveals. “No tears, no nothing, just that glazed stare. The level of control and disassociation was staggering.”
Later, at Wormwood Scrubs, celebrity inmates she crossed paths with Pete Doherty, frontman of The Libertines, who in 2008 was serving a 14-week sentence at Wormwood Scrubs for a probation breach. “I’d never heard of him,” she says. “He was young and cocky.”
Frake admits to becoming desensitised to the suicides and self-harm she witnessed among prisoners and still harbours guilt over a prisoner escape.
The convict feigned serious illness and was taken to hospital on the doctor’s insistence, but the ambulance was ambushed by armed men. No one was hurt but she says: “I know the staff went through horrendous post-traumatic stress with that, to have a gun pointed in your face, I can’t imagine how they felt. I always feel guilt.”
She suffered panic attacks after her retirement. Now settled with her partner Julie whom she married in 2014, “the governor” spends her days baking and volunteering at an animal sanctuary.
She smiles: “My demons have been dealt with now. Having written them down and talked about them and spoken about the emotions, a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.”
Venessa Frake – The Governor, HarperElement, £8.99
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