Green Is The New Black: Inside Australia’s hardest women’s jails

REBECCA Butterfield is Australia’s most dangerous prisoner — a self-mutilator infamous for slicing guards, inmates and herself. We can now reveal full details that saw her file marked ‘too dangerous to be released’.

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The following is an edited extract from James Phelps’ new book Green Is The New Black.

REBECCA Butterfield, incarcerated in Emu Plains Correctional Centre, jumped from the sofa, dumping her knitting on the floor. Finally. She’s home.

Butterfield had spent all morning looping and stitching, a study of concentration as one row of wool turned into two, before becoming three, four and then more.

But the knitting was a mere distraction, just a way to pass time.

I don’t really need another scarf. And who else would wear a red one?

What she needed was now in the jail hut next door. The girl, HER girl, was finally home.

Butterfield stomped on her scarf-in-the-making as she charged to the kitchen. She no longer cared about her three hours of careful craft now that she heard the voices coming from next door.

Rebecca Butterfield is the first inmate to be kept locked up indefinitely.

She pulled a knife from the wooden block — schwing! Not just any average knife, but the biggest, sharpest one she could find. The one she used last night to slice through a thick, tough rib eye. She looked down at the sparkling blade. And then she smiled, ear to ear.

Butterfield burst through the door and stormed past two fellow inmates, knife in her hand, hate in her heart. They said nothing. They did nothing. Bluce Lim-Ward was standing in the lounge room.

She had just returned from working the morning shift. Lim-Ward didn’t even see Butterfield coming. Her back was turned, completely oblivious to the beast with the blade closing in fast.

Whack! The first blow sliced straight through skin and rib, and then cracked bone. Whack! Whack! Whack!

The blows rained down — short, sharp and powerful. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!

Butterfield stabbed Bluce Lim-Ward 33 times, all up, just months ­before the businesswoman from the Philippines was set to be released for her fraud-related finance crimes.

In broad daylight, at a minimum-security facility, in front of at least four witnesses, the ticking time bomb murdered in cold blood.

You would think Ivan Milat would be one of the most feared in prison but he wasn’t — compared with Butterfield.

Gunman Martin Bryant, only days before Port Arthur shooting massacre.

When the gruesome deed was done, she went back to her room, picked up her yarn, her needles and finished knitting her scarf.

Ivan Milat, the notorious “Backpacker Killer”, is not the most feared person in prison.

Nor is it Martin Bryant — the man who went on a killing spree in Port Arthur.

No, the one who needs chains, leather straps and a full-time posse of guards is not even a man.

The most dangerous inmate in Australia is Rebecca Butterfield — a self- mutilating murderer infamous for slicing guards, inmates and herself.

And for the very first time, we can ­reveal the full details of the jailhouse slaughter that saw her become the first inmate to be kept locked up indefinitely, her file marked “too dangerous to be released”.

Jill pretended she didn’t know who the new fish was.

“Hi,” she said, outstretched hand ready to shake. “What’s your name? I’m Jill.”

The 28-year-old newcomer, already a veteran of the NSW corrections system, smiled.

There was nothing sinister about the grin, nor her sparkling blue eyes, but her face was scarred — fleshy zippers sliced deep into her skin.

“Rebecca,” the other woman said as she shook her hand. “Rebecca Butterfield.”

Jill nodded. She already knew. Word went out about this self-harmer long before she arrived at Emu Plains.

They all knew about the time this Butterfield set herself alight. That she smuggled in a match and torched her cell, and herself. Jill hoped there was more fiction to the stories than fact.

Unfortunately, each and every tale about Butterfield was true.

Butterfield is currently serving life in Emu Plains Correctional Centre. Picture: Carmela Roche

Butterfield said nothing. Instead, she simply sat and silently stared. The woman who had caught her eye was Bluce Lim-Ward.

Bluce was considered a model ­inmate and had not so much as had an argument since being sent to the softest slammer in Sydney.

“She’s cute,” Butterfield said, finally breaking her silence. The big girl licked her lips.

“I don’t know what Rebecca’s intentions were to this day. I don’t know why she formed this thing for Lou. Maybe she wanted to have a relationship with her? Something sexual? She could have been that type. But it was definitely a fatal attraction. Shit got ­really weird, really quick.”

It started with singlets, shorts and hairstyles.

“She began doing her hair the same as Lou,” Jill said. “If Lou wore it up, then Rebecca did also.

“It wasn’t much at first, but we noticed. She started parting her hair to the same side as Lou, cut it to the same length.”

And then came the clothes.

“We don’t have too many dress ­options in jail. But if Lou came out wearing a white singlet and Rebecca had on green, Rebecca would rush in and get changed into a white one too.”

Lim-Ward was oblivious to the threat this woman posed. She ­embraced Rebecca, thinking that she had a kind, new friend. An admirer?

“Lou didn’t have a bad bone in her body,” Jill said. “I remember having a big talk to her about her future, and she was going to go back to the Philippines to spend time with her family and start her life over.”

But she would never get the chance.

This extract is from James Phelps’ Green Is the New Black.

This is an edited extract from Green Is The New Black by James Phelps.

Published by Penguin Random House Australia © Penguin Random House 2017

Available now in bookstores and online. RRP $34.99