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A SCOTS thug caged for a gay-bashing murder is getting married in prison – to a paedophile who strangled his male lover.

Marc Goodwin’s wedding to Mikhail Gallatinov, described at his trial as a psychopath, will be the first gay marriage in a British jail. It’s due to take next month at top-security Full Sutton prison in Yorkshire.

The Ministry of Justice refused to discuss individual cases but said prisoners were legally entitled to marry.

They insisted no taxpayers’ money was spent on such weddings, and added: “There is no possibility that they would share a cell.”

Same-sex marriage became legal in March last year.

Goodwin, 31, a father of three from Airdrie, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years in 2007 for beating Malcolm Benfold, 57, to death on Blackpool promenade.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

The Scot went with two other thugs to a known meeting point for gay men. The court heard they deliberately set out to attack homosexuals.

Malcolm was savagely kicked and punched and apparently assaulted with a bottle, and died of head injuries. Goodwin played the leading role in the assault.

Two men who were with Malcolm when the attack began gave evidence in court.

One said he was walking away when he heard someone shout: “Come out or come on you queers”. He was then attacked and robbed of £20.

Gallatinov was 23 when he was jailed for a minimum of 20 years in 1997 for strangling Adrian Kaminsky, 28.

Police had him under surveillance at the time amid fears he was a predatory paedophile.

He confessed to an undercover officer that he wanted to commit a murder and photograph the victim before and after the crime. He then did exactly that to Adrian.

Officers stopped him in his car and found Adrian’s almost-naked body in the boot. They also recovered photographs of the victim’s corpse.

The judge who jailed Gallatinov in Manchester called it “a completely cold-blooded killing, carried out without apparent motive and without apparent remorse”.

The court heard Gallatinov had already served a long prison sentence “for offences against children”.

Goodwin and Gallatinov will be married by a local registrar in a special room at the jail.

Their marriage notice was posted at a register office near Full Sutton. Both men described themselves as bar staff and said they would wed at “Sutton View, Moor Lane, Full Sutton”.

The prison was not mentioned. Both men said they had been at the same address for “more than a month”.

Goodwin claims to have turned his life around in jail – with the support of his victim’s sister.

Wendy Bridge visited the killer to try to make sense of the crime. She said afterwards: “It changed everything for me.

“He came into the room and was shaking, petrified.

“The last time I’d seen him was in the dock, where he came over as aggressive and defiant.

“We talked and the weight I didn’t realise I’d been carrying came off me. He couldn’t remember killing Malcolm as he’d been in a drunken blackout, but he told me what he could.

“Then he said he was really sorry, and he wished every day that there was still the death penalty as he’d be dead too.

“That made me cross because I didn’t want his life to be wasted too. I want him to turn his life around and I told him that.

“I asked him to take advantage of everything offered in prison and he said he’d been working on his anger and been to literacy and numeracy classes. He was also learning sign language.”

Gallatinov also claims to be a reformed character. He told a sentence review hearing that he had done courses in thinking skills and completed treatment programmes for sex offenders.

He said he got on with other prisoners and staff, took full responsibility for his crime and had worked hard to reduce the risk he posed.

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