Before becoming an author she was principally known for committing armed robberies and serving a life sentence for the murder of her lover Ronnie Cook.

[6] She went on to make £1 million in robberies, saying in 2002: "I loved the buzz of picking up a shotgun, confronting men in armoured vans and forcing them to hand over vast sums of money.

As part of a criminal gang she had helped in a series of post office robberies, in which staff and customers were sprayed with dangerous ammonia.

[8]Calvey's brother Anthony Welford had allowed his house to be used as a base by the gang and was himself jailed for nine years for conspiracy to rob the post offices.

[4] Calvey was introduced to Daniel Reece by a friend of Cook, Brian Thorogood, who thought he could use the support after his son had been killed in a traffic accident while he was in prison.

[5] In late 1990, around 18 months after being paroled from her armed robbery sentence, Calvey paid criminal associate Daniel Reece £10,000 to kill Ronnie Cook.

However, he lost his nerve at the last minute and Calvey picked up the gun herself, shooting the victim at point blank range, whilst he knelt in front of her.

At Calvey's trial, the prosecuting attorney said Cook's motive was to "simplify the rather dangerous and complex” state of her personal affairs — referring to her romance with both Reece and Thorogood.

[4][5] Cook was due for full release from prison at the time and so would soon have discovered how Calvey, on whom he had lavished gifts and money, had cheated on him and become the lover of Reece and Thorogood.

First she attempted to blame a stranger hitman, saying she ran from the house screaming as she saw this mystery assassin shoot Cook in the kitchen.

[2] In 2002 Calvey repeated this claim while represented legally by controversial fake lawyer and criminal Giovanni Di Stefano, who infamously defended Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević and who is now banned from working in law in the UK.

She also claimed that police had conducted gunshot residue tests on both her face and hands and eliminated her as a suspect, but returned a few days later, interviewed, and arrested her.

[25][26] Reece's best man at the wedding was Mike Martin, the lover of Suzanne Capper torturer and murderer Bernadette McNeilly.

[27] Around this time she published a book about her life with the support of her family, one of whom – brother Anthony – had himself been imprisoned with her for housing Calvey's robbery gang.

Her first husband, Mickey Calvey, was an armed robber who died after being shot by police during a botched robbery on 9 December 1978.