A PRISON officer is facing court over allegations she had an improper relationship with an inmate.

Rebecca King, 32, is said to have began a six-year affair with convict David Turnbull, 42, while he was being held – and she was working – at a jail in Yorkshire.

The alleged relationship is said to have continued after Turnbull was released – and even after he was re-arrested and sent to a different prison on drugs charges.

He is serving a sentence of nearly nine years for his part in a large-scale drugs ring based on Teesside , which had links to Nottingham and London.

The shaven-headed hardman teamed up with lover Angelique Huggett to run the “commercial” empire after her husband was arrested in February last year.

Single mother Ms King, from Selby, North Yorkshire, faces a number of charges and appeared at Teesside Crown Court yesterday for a brief preliminary hearing.

She did not enter any pleas, and was given bail by Judge Simon Bourne-Arton to return to court for a plea and case management hearing on October 16.

The charges on the indictment are misconduct in a public office, concealing criminal property, converting criminal property and possessing criminal property.

It is alleged Ms King hid £9,490 belonging to Turnbull and had a further £10,190 knowing or suspecting it was the proceeds of her alleged lover’s crimes.

Prosecutors say her “intimate relationship”

with Turnbull started when he was an inmate at HMP Wealstun and Everthorpe and she was a senior prison officer.

She is accused of wilfully misconducting herself between August 2006 and January this year, by which time Turnbull was on remand at Holme House Prison, Stockton.

The allegations include continuing the relationship after his release, receiving and concealing substantial amounts of cash from him and maintaining telephone contact. It is also claimed that Ms King “neglected to report his use of a mobile phone” behind bars, which is in breach of prison regulations.