A former prison governor who has been in the company of some of Britain’s most notorious serial killers says only one inmate ever left her fearful.

And that person was serial killer Colin Ireland – who Vanessa Frake says “emanated evil”.

Vanessa, 59, described accidentally knocking into the monster who brutally took the lives of five gay men in 1993.

He did so after making a New Year’s resolution to become a serial killer.

Now, almost 10 years after his death, Vanessa told the Daily Star: “I was visiting Wakefield Prison doing a tour and his whole persona felt evil to me.

“I don’t know what it was about him, he just emanated evil. I turned around and he was behind me and I literally bumped into him.

“I just thought gosh. I have met a lot of different prisoners in one form or another but he was… maybe it was his physical size because he was a giant of a bloke compared to me.

“I remember his eyes. They were almost pink and they were just these piercing eyes.”

Vanessa, who has dealt with Myra Hindley and Rose West, added: “He said absolutely nothing as if I wasn’t there, as if I was a fly that had just brushed past him. No other prisoner has ever made me feel like that – just him.

“He kind of looked like the pictures you see in the papers. He was just a giant of a man who clearly had no kind of emotion.

“Maybe that was what was so startling about him. He had no emotion at all, there was just nothing there.”

Ireland died aged 57 of natural causes in Wakefield jail in February of 2012 but his grisly legacy lives on.

His early life was turbulent and his father walked out before he was even born.

Ireland’s mother gave birth to him at just 17 and the pair spent years in poverty.

Then, aged 16, Ireland fled to London and began visiting an amusement arcade believed to have been frequented by paedophiles.

He was often in trouble for minor offences but went on to be a bouncer at a gay club, although it is not known if Ireland himself was gay.

Ireland was also a former soldier and had two failed marriages to women before he made a sick pledge to become a killer.

He was eventually labelled the ‘gay slayer’ after he stalked gay clubs in London where he’d find his targets.

In 1993 he reportedly posed as a homosexual to pick up victims at The Coleherene pub in Fulham, London, before murdering them in their homes after S&M games.

The beast was caught after leaving a single fingerprint on the window ledge at the home of one his victims, Andrew Collier, 33.

In total he murdered five men in three months including four in just 15 days.

He was convicted of the murders later that year and was given a whole life tariff after admitting his crimes.

During his police confession he said: “I am probably 60-70 per cent quite a reasonable human being most of the time.

“But there is a side of my character that is very negative, it's quite cold and calculating.”

This week ex-governor Vanessa Frake also told the Daily star the bubble and squeak killer Penelope Jackson was unlucky to receive such a hefty sentence for murdering her husband.

Jackson stabbed her fourth husband, David, 78, to death earlier this year using a kitchen knife after a row about dinner.

The 66-year-old has now been convicted of murder and must serve a life sentence with a minmum of 18 years.

But Vanessa said: “From my personal perspective an 18-year minimum sentence was harsh. I think it was harsh because she was a woman.

“I saw the body cam footage and you have to question whether she was in her right mind.

“Most people say ‘no comment no comment’ but she looked like she’d reached breaking point where she wanted him dead above all else.

“Did she just literally snap because we all reach breaking point at some point or another.”

• Vanessa reveals the highs and lows of working in Britain's toughest jails over a 27-year period in her new book, The Governor: My Life Inside Britain's Most Notorious Prisons

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