THEY say a person can be judged by the company they keep, but when it comes to ‘House of Horrors’ monster Rose West, the supply of potential new friends is limited at HMP New Hall.
This week, The Sun revealed how the killer remains alone and despised despite her sick attempts to bond with other lags. But she is not the only inmate to ever seek comfort from deviants like herself, as a top criminologist reveals what has driven some of the sickest ‘friendships’ ever seen behind bars.
The 71-year-old has been trying to “buy people’s friendship” by posting Christmas cards under the cell doors and handing out chocolate selection boxes to a special few.
A source who was handed one of her cards told The Sun: “I ripped mine up because I thought it was disgusting. A few other women did the same thing, or just binned them.”
West even changed her name to Jennifer Jones in an attempt to escape her troubled past and has been known to give out vapes in an effort to make friends, but it hasn’t worked.
The source added: “Everyone in there knows who she is and what she did. She might have changed her name, but she cannot escape her crimes.
“She tries to buy people’s friendship in New Hall because she is lonely, but she knows how much she is hated.”
Two of her only successful attempts at making a connection behind bars were with fellow monsters, Moors Murderer Myra Hindley and Baby P killer Tracey Connolly, and she was romantically involved with both women.
It’s often the case that some of Britain’s most depraved killers have found common ground with others of equal notoriety, according to forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes,
She tells us: “Many friendships forged in prisons are more about survival and availability, rather than compatibility.
“Prisoners who are despised for their crimes – particularly sex offenders or child killers – find themselves isolated and often bullied. There is some safety in numbers, and so the most excluded tend to stick together.
“Any alliance is better than none. Sometimes, shared isolation alone can be enough for them to bond.
“And these bonds can become intense; humans need social connections, loneliness is psychologically crushing – pairings of notorious inmates provide a rare space where someone feels that they are not being judged and have a normal social identity.”
Here we look at how some of the UK’s most notorious names have become close to murderers, perverts and other convicts while serving time.
Wayne Couzens and David Fuller
The killer cop became friendly with morgue monster David Fuller, who defiled the bodies of more than 100 women and children.
Prison officers labelled them ‘The Odd Couple’ after they were imprisoned on the same wing of HMP Frankland in Brasside, Co.Durham.
The pair carried out their murders in Kent, and a source said they enjoyed swapping stories about their old haunts.
A source told The Mirror: “The idea of them swapping stories turns my stomach.”
Couzens was jailed for life in 2021 for the kidnap, rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard.
He used his job to approach marketing executive Sarah, faking an arrest over Covid restrictions and putting her in handcuffs.
Couzens, 49, then drove Sarah out of London to a plot of land he owned in Kent, where he raped and killed her. Her body was found in a builder’s bag a week later.
Her death sparked vigils across the country and demands for action to tackle violence against women.
Fuller, 68, was given life for killing Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.
Police found around 100 victim videos he recorded while abusing the dead in morgues – but it’s understood there could be many more.
Kerry tells us the standards for friendships “shift considerably in a jail environment” – especially when you’re a notorious killer, like Couzens and Fuller.
She adds: “There isn’t much choice in prison – so minor shared traits can snowball into connections that would never survive the real world.
“Many jail friendships are more practical than emotional, whether it is sharing food, stories, humour, or just watching each other’s backs, which forms strong alliances.
“Inmates are prepared to turn a blind eye to others’ crimes when their company otherwise meets a need.”
Roy Whiting and Sidney Cooke
The killer of Sarah Payne is believed to be pals with notorious paedophile Sidney Cooke at Wakefield’s ‘Monster Mansion’ prison.
Wakefield prison got its nickname Monster Mansion because it houses 700 killers, rapists and sex offenders.
Roy Whiting, who murdered Sarah in 2000, is said to be close to Cooke, one of Britain’s oldest prisoners, at the age of 96.
Whiting took Sarah from the idyllic village of Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, while she was out playing and pushed her into a van containing an ‘abduction kit’ including a knife, ropes, baby oil and plastic ties.
Whiting, 64, was told he will spend the rest of his days in prison after Sarah’s tiny body was found, naked and dumped in a shallow grave 16 days after her disappearance in 2000.
Sex pervert Cooke will also die in jail after he was rejected parole for the tenth time last year.
He was part of a horrifying paedo ring known as the Dirty Dozen, which traded in the abuse of young boys who became their “meat” in the 1980s.
Ringleader Cooke was convicted of manslaughter for his involvement in the sex killing of schoolboy Jason Swift in 1989.
The 14-year-old vanished from his east London home, and it was later revealed that gang members had paid £5 to gang rape the teen.
His naked body was then found buried on a farm in Essex in November 1985.
Kerry warns that sex offenders who become friends in prison do “bond over shared deviant sexual fantasies” and, most sickeningly, may “even swap offence details”.
“It is naive to think otherwise,” she says. “But, generally speaking, even when society strongly condemns a person’s offending behaviour, the drive towards human connection, emotional or physical, doesn’t disappear.”
Cooke, nicknamed Hissing Sid, was sentenced to 19 years but was released in 1998, sparking national outcry.
However, just one year later, he was rearrested for abusing two boys on 10 occasions in the 1970s and thrown back in jail.
His gang are suspected to be behind the disappearance of at least nine kids, and there are suspicions they may have snatched eight-year-old Vishal Mehrotra, who vanished on the day of Princess Diana’s wedding to the then-Prince Charles.
Harold Shipman and Peter Moore
Britain’s most sinister GP befriended mass killer Peter Moore before killing himself at Wakefield Prison in 2004.
Shipman, 57, was found hanging in his cell at the jail on the eve of his 58th birthday after being convicted in 2000 of murdering 15 patients.
A public inquiry later found him responsible for 250 patients’ deaths in Hyde, Greater Manchester, Todmorden, and Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
His inquest heard extraordinary details about his life in prison, playing Scrabble and writing a biography of Napoleon. Shipman kept his cell free of clutter but had a radio, a jigsaw, books and newspapers.
He enrolled in an English literature course that his prison pal, Peter Moore, was taking, and Moore was the last person to see him alive before his death. He was even questioned about his suicide.
Moore, 77, was labelled the “most dangerous man to ever step foot in Wales” after murdering four men and was dubbed ‘The man in black’
His killing spree began with retired railway worker Henry Roberts, 56, who was stabbed to death in his Anglesey cottage in September 1995, and ended three months later with the death of father-of-two Tony Davies, 40, of Pensarn Beach, North Wales.
Rose West and Myra Hindley
Two of the country’s most reviled female killers, West and Hindley, were said to have had a sordid affair behind bars.
But the relationship in 1995 ended a few months later when West decided the Moors murderer was just too “dangerous”.
The fling was revealed in a book written by West’s lawyer Leo Goately, who represented her at her 1995 trial with husband Fred for murdering ten girls and women.
In his book, Understanding Fred & Rose West, he wrote: “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 a flowering, albeit short-lived, lesbian relationship.”
However, the startling book also reveals why things soon turned sour.
Mr Goatley adds: “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.’”
Hindley, who murdered five children with partner Ian Brady, between July 1063 and October 1965, died in prison in 2002.
West has had a string of affairs since being banged up in 1995.
Her highest profile fling was with evil Baby P mum Tracey Connelly.
They became a couple in 2009 after West seduced Connelly, who allowed her son to be tortured to death.
Soon after West was sent down, she began a relationship with murderer Julie Campbell, who was in for life for setting her husband ablaze.
West also befriended child rapist Fishburn, who was branded ‘wicked, depraved and dangerous’ by a judge who jailed her for 16 years in 2015.
West is said to have helped Fishburn, 50, of Newcastle, settle into life at high security prison Low Newton in County Durham.
A source said: “In prison, it’s a case of birds of a feather flock together, and these women have a lot in common.
“West has been showing her the ropes on the wing – how to order treats and magazines, and they have been spending time in each other’s cells, reading and watching telly.”
Fishburn was convicted of a total of 11 charges, including rape, sexual activity with a child, inciting a child into sexual activity, taking and distributing indecent images and child cruelty.
She gave one of the youngsters alcohol before sexually assaulting her, and abused another whilst forcing the girl to watch pornography.
Kerry adds: “People seek companionship and intimacy even when they are disliked, disgusted and heavily controlled.
“Look at the relationships between Rose West and Myra Hindley and Tracey Connelly, we can only guess whether or not they discussed their crimes together, or in what manner.”
John Warboys and Levi Bellfield
Black cab rapist Worboys bonded with killer Levi over their love of football and food.
Bellfield became “best friends” with rapist Warboys and even offered legal advice, said insiders.
A source told The Sun how they kept in touch by letter when Worboys was moved to a different prison.
They said: “John was close to Bellfield and was upset when he moved. They were always in each other’s cells having coffees and meals together.
“They would chat and banter about football and I expect John will visit Bellfield once he is out.”
Worboys, now 66, , was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for 19 offences against 12 women passengers.
Bellfield is serving multiple life sentences for the murders of Marsha McDonnell, Amelie Delagrange and Milly Dowler.
Both men are believed to have also been responsible for scores of violent crimes which they were not convicted for.
Despite their friendship Bellfield later wrote to a pen pal claiming they were only pals because he believed Warboys was innocent.
He wrote: “He told me he was innocent when I was there. And if he’s admitted his guilt now I’m a little bit disappointed because I looked to him as being innocent.
“Like a mug I was, but that’s what he told me. That’s what he told everyone.”
Joanna Dennehy and Hayley Palmer
Serial killer Dennehy sent dozens of letters to her lover when she was released in the hope of getting married.
Street robber Hayley Palmer, 40, later told The Sun on Sunday how remorseless Dennehy laughed and said she had “no regrets” about killing her three male victims in Peterborough in March 2013.
Dennehy was given a whole life tariff in the same year for stabbing the three men to death and dumping their bodies in ditches.
The convicts met and became lovers while serving time at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey.
In letters sent to Palmer, Dennehy wrote: “To me you will never be anything other than real, the first person to creep under my skin.
“You have a fully committed psychopath.
“Together we will travel a path so beautifully dark, so mentally and physically dangerous we will cease to know where I begin and you end.”
The pair tried to take their lives together in 2018 after prison bosses planned to split them up. They both survived, and Palmer was transferred before her release in 2022, and the couple have since split.
Palmer later said: “She would have carried on if she wasn’t stopped.”
Dennehy pleaded guilty to the murders of Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, her landlord Kevin Lee, 48, and housemate John Chapman, 56.
Her crimes were dubbed the “Peterborough Ditch Murders” after she disposed of her victim’s remains in ditches around the Cambridgeshire city with the help of accomplices Gary “Stretch” Richards, 47, and Leslie Layton, 36.
Roksana Leck and Sabrina Kouider
Dubbed the “glam lags”, vile child abuser Roksana Lecka and nanny killer Sabrina Kouider have become “best pals” since their incarceration at HMP Bronzfield.
A former prisoner says they “strut around” the wing like they “own the place” and sit around mocking other prisoners.
These displays proved they had “no remorse” for their sickening crimes, according to the lag, who also said they spent more time applying make-up and fake eyelashes than soul-searching.
Lecka, 22, was jailed this year for “gratuitous” and “sadistic” acts of cruelty towards 21 babies while working at two nurseries in Hounslow, London.
Recalling the monster’s crimes, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC said: “You pinched, slapped, punched, smacked and kicked them.
“You pulled their ears, hair and their toes. You toppled children headfirst into cots. You caused bruising and lingering red marks.”
The judge, who sentenced Lecka to eight years, noted that the children would be “quietly and happily minding their own business” when she attacked.
“You deliberately inflicted pain, causing the child to cry, arch, try to get away or writhe around in distress,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kouider, 35, was imprisoned for a minimum of 30 years, alongside her partner Ouissem ‘Sam’ Medouni, 40, for the horrific killing of their nanny.
The couple had subjected Sophie Lionnet, 21, to weeks of torture, including waterboarding, and interrogated her on film prior to her death in 2017.
After they built a bonfire, put her severely emaciated body into a suitcase and set it alight in a bid to cover their tracks.
Sophie’s corpse was so badly burned that officers couldn’t tell exactly how she had died. But it was clear she had been tortured for a long time.
Analysis discovered she had suffered four broken ribs and a cracked sternum three days before her death. On the night of her killing, her jaw was broken.
The vicious attacks were carried out by twisted Kouider to get revenge on her ex, the former Boyzone singer Mark Walton, by framing him for Sophie’s murder.
During the interrogation sessions, the nanny was subjected to “relentless interrogation” by “deluded” Kouider to admit she was in league with the pop star.
