EXCLUSIVE Killer nurse Lucy Letbys life behind bars exposed: Card games with a notorious child killer, her astonishing cell perks, why she lives in fear of attacks and how she feels shes wasting away
Three weeks ago and in a packed hall on the outskirts of west London there’s a standing ovation as the cast of Made in Dagenham take their first night bow.
Three weeks ago and in a packed hall on the outskirts of west London there’s a standing ovation as the cast of Made in Dagenham take their first night bow. That they have been playing to a captive audience there can be no doubt – the venue is HMP Bronzefield, the biggest women’s prison in Europe.
The message behind the musical – a downtrodden group of women take on the establishment and win – clearly appealed to the female inmates filling the jail’s gymnasium.
Of course, putting on a show in a Category A prison was not without its challenges for the charity behind it.
Every item, from spotlights to screwdrivers, had to be checked in and out again by security guards at the gates.
But then a jail that holds some of the most dangerous women prisoners in the country – paedophiles, murderers and terrorists – cannot afford to take any chances.
Fifteen of the jail’s 500-odd inmates had been chosen to take to the stage alongside the show’s professional cast. Many more helped in the wings.
The idea was that it would provide inmates with ‘purposeful activity’ and be a change from the day-to-day routine.
Bronzefield is certainly home to a diverse community. After all, where else could you find Russian spies washing the sheets, an Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist helping out in the beauty salon and a would-be bomber taking part in craft sessions?
Lucy Letby was handed 15 whole-life terms after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more at the Countess of Chester Hospital
Beinash Batool, who murdered her ten-year-old stepdaughter Sara Sharif, is said to play cards with Letby in Bronzefield
It’s not known whether the jail’s most notorious inmate, Lucy Letby, was involved in the production in any way but, according to recent reports, her patience with the place is wearing very thin.
The nurse, who was handed 15 whole-life terms after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more at the Countess of Chester Hospital, has been moaning to other prisoners that life is passing her by. Letby’s defence team claim she suffered a miscarriage of justice and are trying to have her convictions quashed.
‘She’s worried about the time this is all taking, the last trial was one year long,’ a source recently claimed. ‘Meanwhile, she’s 35 years old, she’s in the prime of her life and her life is wasting away.’
Daily life inside for Letby includes making toast for breakfast for inmates on her block, and she is also said to have been put to work doing the laundry for those on her wing.
As for relaxation, a former inmate told the Mail that the prison has a wellbeing centre that operates seven days a week.
As well as yoga classes, other fitness sessions on offer include pilates, boot camp, and ‘legs, bums and tums’.
Letby is on House Block Four, where each en-suite cell has its own shower, TV and a phone, which can make pre-booked outgoing calls to numbers approved by the prison authorities.
Inmates on the block mainly consist of women serving life sentences as well as so-called ‘vulnerable prisoners’, such as paedophiles, known as ‘nonces’, and child killers who are at risk from attack by other inmates.
Among them is Beinash Batool, who last year was convicted of the murder of her ten-year-old stepdaughter Sara Sharif. Held in Bronzefield since her arrest, she and Letby have apparently become firm friends. Batool is 30 so the pair are a similar age.
Joanne Dennehy murdered three men for fun in what came to be known as the Peterborough Ditch Murders, stabbing her victims to death
‘They hang out on the landing together most days, playing cards and chatting,’ a source at the jail revealed earlier this year.
‘The child killers always stick together because they want to protect themselves, so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that they get along so well.’
The risk of attack is a serious one. The Mail can reveal that from January to September 2024 there were 243 assaults at Bronzefield, with 16 being classed as ‘serious’.
Keeping a prisoner at Bronzefield on average costs £102,000 a year, according to the latest Ministry of Justice figures.
But Letby is no ‘average’ prisoner and sources at the jail – which is privately run – have described how she has to be accompanied by at least one prison officer wherever she goes.
‘So if she goes to a class and everyone leaves to go back to her wing, she will have to sit and wait until an officer has picked her up, so she is protected and no-one can get at her,’ said one.
‘She would be seen as being just as bad as a nonce, she will get abuse screamed at her through the windows as she is walking with an officer.’
Former inmate Francesca Fattore previously served time on Block Four after she was jailed for drugs offences.
She gave the Mail an insight into what it’s like to be a resident on the block and was one of several ‘enhanced prisoners’ given a ‘superior’ cell because of good behaviour. The theory is that enhanced prisoners are unlikely to attack other prisoners for fear of losing their privileges.
During the 45-year-old’s time there, Mairead Philpott was in the cell next door. Philpott was jailed for 17 years for manslaughter in 2013 for her part in starting a house fire that killed her six children.
‘People started telling me “that person has done that, and that person has done that”,’ Francesca told the Mail. ‘And I was like “I don’t want to know”. But then I thought, “I don’t want to befriend a nonce”.
‘I had to take my feelings aside of what you would want to say, what you’d want to do to somebody, and just be a better person. When I learned my next door neighbour was that woman Mairead you just start thinking, “wow, I am in with some crazy, evil, nasty people”.
‘Philpott never spoke to me about her crime, but to be honest I never asked. She had one or two friends with her and kept herself to herself.’
Philpott’s good behaviour paid off. After serving half her sentence, she was released in 2020 aged 44 and given a new identity.
Another long-term resident of the prison, which opened in Ashford, Surrey, in 2004, is Sharon Carr – whose crime saw her dubbed The Devil’s Daughter. Aged just 12 she became Britain’s youngest female murderer when she butchered teenager Katie Rackliff in a random attack in Camberley, Surrey, in 1992.
‘You wouldn’t have known what she was in for,’ says Fattore. ‘But mentally you can tell she has been incarcerated for a long time. She has been institutionalised.’
In 2020 Carr, now 45, lost a legal fight to have prison restrictions on her eased.
Her case was derailed after it was discovered she had fantasised about murdering an inmate. An attempt to secure parole in 2023 also failed. Equally notorious within the jail was Joanne Dennehy – once described as Britain’s most dangerous female prisoner. She murdered three men ‘for fun’ in what came to be known as the Peterborough Ditch Murders, stabbing her victims to death.
The men, whose bodies were found in ditches, were killed over the course of ten days in March 2013 – she also stabbed two other men who survived their injuries and Dennehy is one of just four women to have ever been handed whole-life sentences.
‘I spent my first Christmas in Bronzefield eating my Christmas dinner on a table opposite Dennehy,’ recalls Fattore, who now runs UkExFemalePrisoner to support reformed female criminals.
‘She didn’t stay on Block Four for long. She didn’t want to be on there. She didn’t take kindly to kiddie-killers and nonces so it was in everyone’s interest to get her off the wing.
‘She didn’t need to do anything to prove herself, her status scared people and that was enough.’
Dennehy was reportedly subsequently moved to HMP Low Newton, near Durham, after falling for a male prison officer at Bronzefield. Against this background, it’s clear to see why the risk of attack by another prisoner on someone like Letby is considerable.
At equally high risk as the former nurse, but for very different reasons, is Linda de Sousa Abreu.
Last year the 30-year-old prison officer was jailed after being filmed having sex with an inmate in his cell at HMP Wandsworth. She pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office and was sentenced to 15 months.
It emerged that the burglar she had sex with had a heavily pregnant partner at the time.
‘I think the problem the girls will have is not that she is an officer, but that she was sleeping with someone who had a pregnant missus outside,’ says Fattore. ‘She will also get attention because she is a pretty girl.’
Other more recent arrivals to the jail include Bulgarian nationals Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Katrin Ivanova, 33, who earlier this month were found guilty of spying for Russia.
About a quarter of the jail’s inmates are foreign nationals.
Gaberova, a glamorous beautician known as the ‘Queen Of The Lashes’, was deployed in a ‘honeytrap’ mission by her handlers. Ivanova was said to have helped out in the prison laundry while they were awaiting trial.
A second former inmate – who was at Bronzefield on remand in 2023 – described to the Mail the surreal situation of rubbing shoulders with high-profile prisoners.
‘I helped a Nigerian organ trafficker with her English homework and took a yoga class next to a terrorist who had plotted to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral,’ she said.
Another prisoner to cross the ex-inmate’s path was Shauna Hoare, jailed for her part in the killing of 16-year-old Becky Watts. Hoare’s boyfriend, Nathan Matthews, was convicted of murdering Becky, his step-sister, in a sexually motivated kidnap plot.
‘This woman had helped me to get my husband’s phone number added to my approved caller list, yet she had been involved in killing a young girl,’ the woman told the Mail. ‘It became hard to rationalise the woman I met with the woman in the news articles.’
While in Bronzefield, Hoare is said to have completed a hairdressing and beauty course – doing manicures, pedicures, eyebrows, and waxing in the prison’s very own Shades of Beauty salon. She was released on licence 18 months ago. Bronzefield is also the national hub for women held under the Terrorism Act – among them Muslim convert Safiyya Shaikh, born Michelle Ramsden.
She was jailed for 14 years in 2020 for an IS-inspired plot to launch a suicide bomb attack on St Paul’s.
According to the inmate who spoke to the Mail, the 41-year-old is nicknamed Shakey and has made the most of the in-house ‘Jailbirds Arts and Crafts’ facility.
‘She was obsessed with crochet and had a really nicely decorated cell,’ said the woman. ‘She did yoga regularly and had a good rapport with the staff.’
The jail is also home to Roshonara Choudhry who was jailed for life in 2010 for trying to murder Labour MP Stephen Timms because he voted for the Iraq War.
She attacked Mr Timms with a three-inch kitchen knife at a constituency surgery in Newham, east London, to ‘get revenge for the people of Iraq’.
Described as a ‘quiet’ and ‘placid’ prisoner who also worked in the salon, her attempts to move to an open prison were blocked in 2023. Despite her behaviour being described as ‘exemplary’ the then justice secretary Dominic Raab stepped in to reject the Parole Board recommendation on the grounds of public safety.
Earlier this year Choudhry passed her 15-year minimum term and has reportedly made a second application for parole.
A spokesman for Sodexo, the private firm that runs HMP Bronzefield, said: ‘HMP Bronzefield operates in line with similar female prisons across the UK, and in accordance with HMPPS guidance and regulations.
‘To support prisoners throughout their rehabilitative journey, we have developed a range of learning and skills activities that will help their learning, development and wellbeing required to secure employment upon release.’