Jean Lee died in an Aussie prison. Legend says she still haunts the cells.

Jean Lee deteriorated as she waited to die. She threw food, staged hunger strikes and screamed at guards. 

The single mother had been condemned to hang at the gallows in D Division at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, and as the date drew closer, she grew more and more unpredictable. 

She was found guilty of murdering 73-year-old bookmaker William 'Pop' Kent alongside two co-accused; her lover and his friend.

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Kent was found bound to a chair, beaten, stabbed and strangled inside his apartment in November 1949. 

Lee was witnessed escorting him home from the pub at about 6:15pm after buying him drinks. Police believed it was Jean's lover, Robert 'Bobby' Clayton, and Norman Andrews who actually did the attacking in a robbery-turned-murder. The coroner said the cause of death was strangulation by hand and insisted that only a man would have had the strength. 

But during police questioning that continued long into the early hours of the morning, Lee confessed to the murder. 

In his new book Australia's Most Infamous Prison, author James Phelps outlined the incredible circumstances that led to her confession. 

After refusing to tell the detectives anything for hours, Lee was presented with a signed statement from Clayton incriminating both her and Andrews. Her lover was then pulled into her interview room where, sobbing, he admitted to writing it. 

"And they call women the weaker sex," she is said to have scoffed at him through tears. 

As he was dragged away she yelled, "Bobby... I still love you. But if that's the way you want it, then you can have it," before telling the detectives, "I did it. I did it all. Everything that he said is true. It's all on me."

Speaking to Mamamia's True Crime Conversations, Phelps said, "It's thought that her thinking was that she wouldn't be hung because she was a woman. It was very rare for the state to execute women, and she thought that if she confessed she'd save her lover from the noose."

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But a jury found all three guilty for murder and sentenced the trio to death by hanging. During her trial, Lee had changed her story and was adamant she was innocent. She'd had some momentum with petitions and some politicians calling for reprieve on mercy grounds "because she is a woman," as was reported by The Newcastle Sun in 1950. But polls at the time suggested 67 per cent of Australians favoured the death penalty for the brutal murder.

As one reader wrote in the feedback column of The Daily News at the time, "Why all this fuss over the intended hanging of murderess Jean Lee? A person who breaks the law must be prepared to take the consequences... Let's not be squeamish, she must take her punishment."

As Phelps explained, "There's no doubt all three were involved... but many people think she didn't actually have a role in the killing itself."

On her last evening, February 19, 1951, guards gave Lee a sedative to help her sleep as she spent her final night sleeping in a 'condemned' cell metres from the wooden beam where she would be executed. 

D Division at Pentridge Prison is now a wine cellar. Image: AAP.

On that very evening, Clayton wrote and signed a statement confessing to the crime in full in the hope of sparing her from execution. But it was too late, and Lee never found out about her lover's attempt to save her.

Aged just 31 at the time, Lee was led to the gallows the next morning wearing a pale yellow skirt, a white blouse and a white hood over her head and shoulders. She was barely conscious, and had to be shackled sitting down in a chair so the execution could go ahead.

She died at 8:05am, with her death going down in history as the last woman judicially executed in Australia and the only woman in this country to be executed in the 20th Century. 

She was survived by a daughter, who she had with her first husband. Her mum gained full custody of the little girl many years before Lee's death.

Clayton and Andrews died side-by-side two hours later. 

A journalist for Melbourne paper Truth – one of an eight-person strong media pack who witnessed the deaths – wrote at the time, "The hangings were carried out in an atmosphere of quiet efficiency".

He added, "Many of the men present at the hangings were visibly affected by the execution of Lee, who is the first woman to be hanged in Victoria for 56 years. A first-aid officer was present in case anyone collapsed, but his services were not needed."

Jean Lee, and a photo taken on a Pentridge ghost tour of a 'ghostly female figure.' Image: TripAdvisor/Belinda_Brown/Vic Police.

Pentridge Prison closed in 1997, and has since been refurbished into apartments, shops, restaurants and a hotel. It does however remain a tourist hot-spot with many of the original structures still standing.

D Division, where Jean Lee died, is now a wine cellar. But it still looks like the cell block it once was.

Now, Lee is often referred to as 'The Lady in White,' and is said to haunt D Divison. Her story is re-told in every ghost tour within the complex, with many visitors insisting they've seen ghostly female shapes in photographs they've taken within the block. 

Speaking to True Crime Conversations, Phelps said many of the former inmates and guards think the 'female ghost' often spotted at Pentridge could actually be one of the nurses (some claim to see a hat in her silhouette).

But in his book, Phelps interviewed one guard who insisted he didn't just see Lee, he heard her.

"Bobby... Bobby... I still love you Bobby." 

Feature Image: VIC Police/AAP/TripAdvisor.