The author who created the Killing Eve assassin Villanelle based her on a real-life psychopath who was a hitwoman for Basque separatists.
Luke Jennings has told how the character played by Jodie Comer in the hit TV series was inspired by Idoia López Riaño, dubbed La Tigresa in the Spanish press.
Jennings, 67, said he read newspaper stories about Riaño, who was jailed in the 1990s for a string of murders for the terrorist group Eta.
He said: “She killed 23 people, and she was clearly a psychopath and completely without empathy.”
He said an Eta member had told of a stakeout they were on, with a view to killing a police officer, when Riaño missed her chance because she was too busy admiring her own reflection.
As well as being sickeningly imaginative in her killing, Villanelle is also famously vain and stylish.
Riaño was also said to have upset comrades with her sex exploits, seducing police officers before killing their colleagues.
Killing Eve, based on the Codename Villanelle books, is in its third series on BBC, and centres on the relationship between Villanelle and Eve Polastri, a British intelligence agent, played by Sandra Oh, 48.
Riaño was released from jail in 2017 having served 23 years, a year for each person she had murdered. She was originally sentenced to 2,000 years, even though the maximum term in Spain is 30.
A Spanish source said Riaño, 56, may now be living with her sister in Andorra, an independent principality between France and Spain.
In letters written before her release Riaño had expressed remorse.
Describing her recruitment by Eta at the age of 15, she wrote: “I committed an immense, terrible and awful error to believe that I should be a member of Eta.”
Riaño renounced violence, which led to her being thrown out of the Basque Political Prisoners Group.
