ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Ann Lee is an acclaimed biographer and has written extensively on the Holocaust. Following her ground-breaking research on Anne Frank, the Dutch government reopened the investigation into the Frank family’s betrayal. She is also the author of two novels and three books for children. Her works have been published in 15 countries.
ONE OF YOUR OWN
The Life and Death of Myra Hindley
Carol Ann Lee
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Dedicated to the memory of
Joe Mounsey, Alex Carr and Dennis Barrow
and for
Ian Fairley, Mike Massheder and Bob Spiers
‘Here there is no why’
Concentration camp guard, quoted in Primo Levi,
Survival in Auschwitz
‘I had my hair done on Saturday. It looks so nice that I’m sorry I’m all dressed up and nowhere to go (joke)’
Myra Hindley, letter to her mother, 17 April 1966, two days before the ‘Moors trial’ opened at Chester Assizes
CONTENTS
Preface
I Pariah: 20 November 2002
II Gorton Girl: 23 July 1942 – 21 December 1960
III This Cemetery of Your Making: 21 December 1960 – 6 October 1965
IV The Shadow of the Rope: 6 October 1965 – 6 May 1966
V God Has Forgiven Me: 7 May 1966 – 15 November 2002
Appendix: He Kept Them Close
Notes
Bibliography
PREFACE
‘There’s never been a single book on this case that’s got the facts right,’ former Detective Chief Superintendent Ian Fairley told me. As Hyde police station’s newest member of the CID, Fairley was one of three policemen to enter 16 Wardle Brook Avenue on the morning of 7 October 1965, bringing the Moors Murders to an end. His statement underlines one of my primary reasons for writing this book: the facts have never been properly told.
I can’t remember when I first heard about the crimes committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. They occurred before I was born but have seeped into the national consciousness over the years, becoming something we absorb as part of our collective history. Although there have been other similarly horrific crimes in the decades that have passed since then, the Moors Murders case remains unparalleled in terms of the strength of emotion it provokes and the sense of utter incomprehension that a woman could abduct children with her lover, then collude in their rape, murder and burial on the moor. Repulsion at Hindley’s part in the crimes, above all, gives the case its notoriety.
Myra Hindley died in prison in November 2002 but remains as omnipresent in death as she was in life. There have been acres of newsprint written about her since the 1960s, several books about the case, as well as documentaries and drama series. Those who attempt to say anything in her defence are met with a storm of protest while those who feel that she was evil are accused of being too emotional and unwilling to believe in redemption. The truth, as always, is more complex. It is an unbearable fact that Myra Hindley was capable of love and kindness towards her family and friends, adoring of her niece and the children of those who visited her in prison, yet had been responsible for the sadistic murder of other children. The dichotomy is difficult to process – it calls to mind how the perpetrators of the Holocaust were able to inflict torture and murder on a vast scale, then return home to their families quite clear of conscience. Contrary to what some sections of the media would have us believe, people who commit monstrous acts look no different to the rest of humanity and have likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses too. What sets them apart are their choices – acts of appalling cruelty and violence – but otherwise they exist among us as nursery nurses, doctors, office workers, shopkeepers . . . In some cases, they are even children themselves – Mary Bell, Constance Kent, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the Doncaster boys who cannot be named . . .
What lay behind Hindley’s choices and whether she was genuinely remorseful or not remain points of contention. She and her supporters claim that she acted under duress and had redeemed herself, while her victims’ families and a large section of the public believe her crimes were committed out of sheer wickedness and her remorse was simply a facade to win her freedom. This book explores her motivation and what followed it as dispassionately as possible in order to leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.
A biography of Myra Hindley understandably draws accusations of sensationalism and unnecessarily raking over painful memories; I hope to have steered clear of the former, while the latter may also be true of almost any study of contemporary history. I’ve also tried to give a voice to the people who are rarely heard in books of this kind: the victims’ families. Myra Hindley’s supporters and friends present their views, but it seems to me that a book about someone who has committed murder should reflect – if they wish it – the impact on the people closest to the victims. The book also draws on the memories of the policemen involved with the original investigation, none of whom have ever spoken in-depth publicly about the case. Their recollections result in the overturning of a number of persistent misconceptions. Myra Hindley’s recently released prison files give new insights into the woman, her crimes and the institutions that contained her. They include personal papers, prison reports, documents and correspondence, many of which are published here for the first time.
Several books have been written on the Moors Murders case since the trial in 1966, focusing on the crimes and their detection. To date, there has only been one biography ‘proper’, published in 1988: Myra Hindley: Inside the Mind of a Murderess, by Jean Ritchie. Well researched, it was nonetheless written over 20 years ago, before such a vast archive of new documentation was made public, and focused on her life in prison. Duncan Staff’s The Lost Boy (2007) is the most recent publication on the Moors Murders; he met and corresponded with Hindley and was permitted access to some of her personal papers. Des
pite its subtitle, ‘The definitive story of the Moors Murders and the search for the final victim’, there are a few inaccuracies throughout the book – for instance, the date when Keith Bennett went missing is given as 18 June 1964 when it was in fact 16 June, and the photograph purporting to be of Lesley Ann Downey’s funeral is actually the funeral of John Kilbride. There are others, some of which are flagged in the text as endnotes.
Myra Hindley remains a gauge of female iniquity; One of Your Own is both a study of the woman and her crimes, and an attempt to redress various factual errors that have accumulated over the years.
I am grateful to the many people who have assisted me during the course of writing this book. It is difficult to single out anyone most deserving of thanks, but I must first of all thank Danny Kilbride, who shared at length childhood memories of his brother John and explained quietly and rationally, but no less heartfelt for that, the effect of his loss on his family over the years.
For interviews and source material (and hospitality), I would like to thank Bernard Black and his wife Margaret, Joe Chapman, Allan Grafton, Yvonne Roberts, Duncan Staff (who kindly provided tapes of his documentaries on the case), Father Michael Teader, the Revd Peter Timms and his wife Veronica, and Sara Trevelyan. I am especially grateful to Andrew McCooey for his interview and for extending permission to quote from Myra Hindley’s own words. I must also offer a heartfelt thank you to Mrs Bridget Astor, who generously allowed me access to her husband’s papers, and to Geoffrey Todd and his secretary, Paula Corbett, for making them available to me. Anne Maguire shared painful memories of the wrongful imprisonment inflicted on her and her husband and two sons, and I am grateful to her for talking to me. I’d also like to thank Angela Handley for putting me in touch with Mo Statham and Anne Murdoch. I owe a special debt of thanks to Peter Stanford, who was particularly helpful and kind in giving me access to his letters from Myra Hindley and a (then) unpublished interview with Lady Anne Tree, as well as for putting me in touch with Bridget Astor, Anne Maguire and the Revd Peter Timms, and for providing a lively interview and ideas for further research. Clive Entwistle, the first reporter to speak to Myra Hindley and the most knowledgeable, gave me a terrifically helpful interview; his documentary, The Moors Murders (1999), is exceptional in its detail and accuracy. I must also thank Michael Attwell for his documentary, Myra: The Making of a Monster (2003), and Katie Kinnard for sending me a copy of Martina Cole’s documentary, Lady Killers: Myra Hindley (2008). Thanks, too, to Norman Luck for allowing me to draw on his interview with Dorothy Wing.
I spent a wonderful day with Margaret Mounsey and want to thank her for that and our contact since, and for sharing with me memories of her husband, the redoubtable Joe Mounsey. To Mike Massheder, I offer my thanks for his insights and friendship, and extend the same to Ian Fairley, Tom McVittie and Bob Spiers, all of whom are exceptional men. I’d also like to thank Maureen Spiers for the lunch she provided when I interviewed her husband.
Anthony Ainsworth talked to me about the geography of the moor and provided the introduction to Norie Miles, Winnie Johnson’s close friend; sadly, he died a few months after this book was published. Norie Miles has studied the photographs taken by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and also facilitated an interview with Winnie Johnson. I thank them both, and Elizabeth Bond who looks after Winnie.
Although David Smith did not wish to be interviewed for a book about Myra Hindley, I am very grateful to him for agreeing to an informal chat, and for his and his wife Mary’s hospitality. Thank you, too, to their son David and his wife Diane, for providing initial contact.
Together with my son River, I spent two wonderful days at the splendid National Library of Wales, where the papers of Emlyn Williams are kept. The staff there – Manon Foster, Anwen Pierce, Glyn Parry, Caronwen Samuel and others – were unfailingly kind and helpful, and I’d like to thank them not only for their assistance with the Williams’ archive, but also for making my son so welcome. I only wish the staff of every archive were as thoughtful and knowledgeable. Thanks, too, to the staff of the National Archive in Kew for their assistance with Myra Hindley’s prison files, and National Image Library Manager Paul Johnson especially for his kindness and patience in dealing with the photographs. I’d also like to thank the staff at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull for providing copies of Myra Hindley’s letters held there.
Many literary sources have informed this book, and I am grateful to the authors and publishers for allowing me permission to quote from their works.
Closer to home, I must thank my agent, Jan Michael, and her agent, Jane Judd, for supporting the project from the start. Jan’s suggestions on the text were incisive and made a difference to the manuscript generally, and Jane and her husband Brian very kindly let me stay with them while I worked in London. At Mainstream, I offer sincere thanks to Bill Campbell, Peter MacKenzie, Deborah Warner, Ailsa Morrison, Graeme Blaikie, Karyn Millar and all the staff for their hard work and faith in the book.
And literally closest to home, I have to thank my friend Tricia Room especially, for ferrying me around various places and discussing ideas. I’m also grateful to my family and other friends for putting up with me while I wrote the book, and to my mother, for listening as I talked about it every day and for looking after River when I needed more time to write. And to River, who knew only the most basic facts of the book, I offer the deepest thanks, for keeping me grounded and bringing joy into my life while I worked on a complex and distressing subject.
I corresponded, briefly, with Ian Brady, and would like to echo Danny Kilbride’s words: ‘Tell us where Keith is. Stop being a coward. There’s a little boy out there on the moor who should be brought home to his family. It can’t end like this.’
Finally, there is one other person I would like to acknowledge, whom I did not meet whilst working on this book, but who contacted me after publication. That person is now my partner, Keith’s brother Alan Bennett. His support, courage and love mean everything to me and I want to thank him for it all from my heart, with love.
I
* * *
Pariah: 20 November 2002
1
A radio station that ran a £500 sweepstake asking listeners to predict the time of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley’s death has been branded irresponsible and insensitive by the radio watchdog. The Manchester station Key 103 asked listeners to ring in with the time Hindley would ‘meet her maker’ . . . The item followed an afternoon news bulletin announcing Hindley had received the last rites.
The Guardian, 17 January 2003
Her funeral was held at night.
Rain slanted in from the Fens, as it had all day, beating with a thin, hollow sound on the roof of the small 1930s-built chapel. The gardens of remembrance were pitch-black, but the gravel courtyard burned with light and the white draughts of breath issuing from the multitude of journalists who represented every broadsheet, tabloid and TV news company in the country. Closer to the chapel, and guarding the gates, were the legions of police drafted in to search the grounds for intruders, the luminous bands on their uniforms a glare of brilliant yellow among the black trees.
But no one uninvited came. The warning to the public to stay away proved unnecessary, for in a curiously medieval display of suspicion the woman was shunned in death. There were none of the incendiary scenes of rage and hatred predicted by jittery government officials. In life, all that she said and did met with widespread revilement; the ferocity of feeling she evoked gave rise to seething statements by those who could not reach her and physical violence by fellow women prisoners. The few who sought to defend her found themselves attacked. But in death, it was as if her power to terrify and repulse was multiplied – as if mere nearness to her corpse would contaminate the bystander.
Against that backdrop, the burning of her body was not simply a funeral rite. It was an act of ancient justice. The woman herself had sensed that no resting place on earth could contain her bones peacefully; she left instructions in
her will that her remains be cremated and her ashes scattered in secrecy.
‘I know people would have liked for me to be chucked into a pond three times to discover if I sank or swam,’ she wrote, five years before her death.1 It was a shrewd observation. The nature of her crimes and their unfathomable source tapped into old, unspoken fears.
Whilst she was free and still young, she and her lover visited the Perthshire village of Dunning, where they climbed through a gap in a wall to reach the cross-capped stone cairn that marks the execution place of an obscure witch. A grainy black-and-white photograph captures the woman perched on the monument, grimacing, staring at nothing. The stones behind her are daubed in white paint: ‘Maggie Wall, burnt here 1657 as a witch’.
A few weeks later, detectives searching the house the woman shared with her lover dug deep into the garden, uprooting plants and destroying the little rockery where a boulder stolen from Maggie Wall’s grave sat, squat as a toad.
No one wanted to drive the hearse carrying Myra Hindley. Discreet enquiries had been made by the Prison Service more than a year before, when her health was already in steep decline. The authorities had anticipated a problem, but the volume of refusals took them by surprise; in Suffolk, within whose boundaries Highpoint Prison lies, every firm of funeral directors declined to handle the body. Their response was echoed by larger companies nationwide. Finally, after months of negotiations, a firm was found in a town 200 miles away who reluctantly agreed, its identity protected by the Prison Service and Home Office officials, who would divulge no more than that the firm was located somewhere in the North. Police then approached West Suffolk crematorium, with a view to holding the funeral service there, but were turned down. An internal prison memo noted: ‘Ipswich crematorium also refused to cremate Myra . . . I will make further enquiries regarding costs and funding and try to find out how the funeral of Fred West was managed, as this is the closest parallel I can think of.’2 Eventually, Cambridge City crematorium consented to the service, providing strict conditions were met.
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