‘I was lambasted too, of course, as her solicitor; they said she was manipulating me and so forth. I certainly don’t think she manipulated me and I saw her more often than anyone. She was an extremely quietly spoken woman and very genuine in her desire to help the victims’ families achieve resolution. She did her absolute utmost to aid the police during the 1980s search of the moor and her remorse was deep-seated and true. I certainly had far worse clients than her. She believed that God had forgiven her and she drew comfort from that, but men wouldn’t extend her the same compassion. Despite all the hassle, working with Myra brought me many rewards in the way of wonderful friendships and learning a great deal. I never worried about the controversy; you have to be true to what you think is the right thing or else live your life looking over your shoulder the entire time.’96
If Myra was upset that Athill had withdrawn from her literary project, she didn’t allow it to discourage her from writing, confiding in Peter Stanford that she was thoroughly absorbed by the process, and admitted to the Revd Peter Timms: ‘I’m glad I’m not publishing this year, with the Krays’ book coming out, and the film about the Great Train Robbers – I don’t want to be part of a bunch of ’60s East End villains!’97 On 4 November 1988 she reported her progress to David Astor, buoyed by a recent visit from a friend and one of her many godchildren: ‘I’ve written 640-odd pages, and have just reached the third crime [Keith Bennett], but when I get to the actual crime itself, as opposed to how it came about, I’ll do as I did with the first two and say that reference to this offence is to be made later.’98 Later that month, another book occupied her thoughts; she was outraged by the publication of Jean Ritchie’s ‘diabolical’ biography, Inside the Mind of a Murderess.99 Ritchie, an ex-Sun journalist, had approached Myra to ask her whether she would be willing to cooperate with the book. Myra forwarded Ritchie’s letter to David Astor, with a few comments of her own; she was sure Ritchie meant well, and appreciated being informed about the book, but had no wish to be interviewed, and hoped the same was true of her family and friends.
Inside the Mind of a Murderess was serialised in The Sun, with television adverts featuring the arrest photograph and the tagline ‘Sex Romps with an Ex-Nun on E Wing’. If Myra could take comfort from Ritchie’s blanket assertion that had she not met Ian, ‘Myra might have done anything with her life . . . she would not have killed children,’ there was little else to hearten her; Ritchie’s incisive research was lost under the volume of stories about Myra’s prison lesbianism.100 ‘I want to sue both The Sun and especially Jean Ritchie,’ Myra raged in a long letter on the subject to David Astor. ‘She has no integrity, no scruples and, in the case of the book, no moral conscience. David, I must do something about all this.’101 In another letter, she described her battle with The Sun as ‘like a Sherman tank bristling with modern weapons confronting a civilian with a plastic water pistol!’102 Her anger deepened when she discovered that Ritchie had ghostwritten another book – Peter Topping’s autobiography, which revolved almost entirely around his interviews with Myra and Ian. He had retired before starting work on the book, but was issued with a writ by Greater Manchester Police for breach of confidentiality. David Astor financed Myra’s legal action against Topping, which she abandoned upon learning that GMP had begun theirs. Her supporters were appalled by the book and Keith Bennett’s family were deeply distressed by details that hadn’t been revealed to them beforehand by Topping or his team.
There was more upset for Myra in December. She had joined the lay Franciscans in May, but seven months later her membership was revoked. Peter Stanford recalls: ‘Myra was distraught. She had been the ultimate outcast and that feeling of acceptance meant the world to her. They rescinded on the grounds that a lay Franciscan should be a person in good standing with the community – I think that’s the exact wording they used.’103 He and Longford spoke to the head of the Franciscan Order in London, but without success; Stanford then approached Cardinal Hume: ‘He agreed with me and said he would write to the head of the Franciscan Order himself. I thought, “That’s sorted then, they’ll have to give in if the Cardinal tells them,” but they ignored him as well.’104 Myra attempted to console herself, writing to Stanford: ‘I believe this is God’s way of saying that my salvation – which I’m convinced is secured – lies in other directions to fulfilment . . . I feel very close to God – heaven is within us all.’105 She hoped writing would distract her but found it difficult to continue: ‘The sequence I was writing about reopened wounds and made me even more painfully aware that there are some memories which will never heal and I don’t mean just my own. Those of the people I was partly responsible for cause me just as much pain. I’ve decided to go on to a totally different subject . . . the first 500 pages just flowed and felt fulfilled and productive; it was excellent therapy, and I know that when I finally manage to confront the traumatic subjects, however painful it will be at the time, it will, in the end, be a tremendous catharsis.’106 She wrote in similar vein to David Astor about the sections that dealt with her relationship with Ian: ‘Not one memory had healed at all. I knew they never would, but the scabs on the wounds were more fragile than I thought they were . . .’107 She declared that she hated herself for having ‘encouraged [Ian], motivated him even’.108
In April 1989, Myra wrote to David Astor about Keith Bennett’s brother Alan, with whom she had been corresponding since the end of the official moor search; he had written to ask her if she could help his family in their own explorations of the area where Keith was said to be buried. Realising that he had no intention of publishing her letters in the media and was acting purely out of desperation to find his brother, she invited him to meet her. He accepted, finding the courage and strength to quell his own emotions in order to discuss the maps and photographs of the moor with her. He then contacted Professor John Hunter, founder of the Forensic Search Advisory Group, who agreed to assist free of charge. Myra informed Astor that she had received a letter from another member of the Bennett family’s team, asking her if she would look at other maps. She remained in contact with Detective Inspector Geoff Knupfer, who was present both during her confession and the exhumation of Pauline Reade, and Myra claimed he advised her not to reply to the letter, ‘saying it would be unwise of me to do so myself, and adding that these amateur searchers are only going over ground that the police have already searched’.109 She told Astor that Knupfer had promised to ‘have a word’ with Alan about ending the search.110 Despite having informed the authorities that she did not wish to be considered for parole, she confided in Astor that Knupfer had agreed to write positively to the prison governor about her conduct, honouring a promise made during her interviews with him and Topping. ‘This can only help in the future,’ she wrote. ‘It will be the first time there’ll be anything favourable on my record from the police. So really, there’s no justification at all for them to refuse parole now.’111
Astor was troubled by her conviction that she had written a saleable book. Having read the manuscript, he realised that it was nothing short of a calamity, and wrote to Peter Timms that she had failed to confront the ‘serious troubles in her life’; those sections were ‘wholly inadequate’, while the reams of pages about her childhood and teenage years made for ‘very wearisome and wordy reading’. He had no doubt that the manuscript gave ‘the impression of evasion . . . if it was offered as a book, it would be a disaster’.112 Among Astor’s papers is an undated, unsigned report on Myra’s first draft that criticises her childhood recollections as overly nostalgic and not dramatic enough; they should be ‘balanced by a franker treatment of whatever were the chief strains of her childhood. For instance, her father’s violence.’113 The report also warned Myra against making psychological interpretations about Lesley Ann Downey’s mother and the general public.
Unaware that her manuscript had received a critical mauling, Myra contacted journalist Yvonne Roberts via Chris Tchaikovsky, a former inmate of Holloway who, together with criminologist Pat
Carlen, had established the organisation Women in Prison. Roberts had written several incisive articles on miscarriages of justice, helped by Tchaikovsky, with whom she was good friends. Roberts recalls: ‘Myra had invited me to meet her before. I worked in television and did a lot on the Cleveland affair and, of course, knew Chris very well. She was extremely ambivalent about Myra. She retained contact with her mainly because she felt sorry for Myra’s mother, whom she used to drive down to prison for visits. Chris was very good at spotting someone who was vulnerable from someone who wasn’t – there are lots of very vulnerable women in British prisons – and she was wary of Myra. Chris had counselling during the time she visited Myra because she knew Myra was highly manipulative and Chris didn’t want to get drawn in. She left it up to me to decide whether to visit Myra or not.’
The meeting didn’t go as Myra had planned. ‘It was like a game of chess,’ Roberts remembers. ‘She looked nothing like any of the images I had seen of her. She wore a smart lilac trouser suit, pink nail varnish and pink lipstick. She had brown hair and her eyebrows were heavily plucked. She was friendly at first, much cooler later in the visit. She shook my hand, sat down, and made small talk. Then she said, “I really feel that I’ve done my time.” She asked me what I’d like to know. I told her that I had a few questions, having read about the case. I asked her how she could take a ten year old off the streets. And she said, “She shouldn’t have been out so late at night.” I said – and she got quite cross – “It doesn’t matter if it was three o’clock in the morning.” She became less convivial after that, and I think she knew that both Chris and I thought that was a response that had revealed more about Myra than she would wish to reveal. I continued to question her – not about the case, but about why she had waited so long to divulge the second lot of murders. Her replies didn’t add up to much. I just wanted to leave.
‘I think she was a psychopath. She was a narcissist, too, and had very grandiose ideas about herself. I wrote to her and said I didn’t think I could help her. I didn’t want to help her because I felt instinctively that she had played a much stronger role in the murders, she had not fallen under Ian Brady’s spell and there was more she could have done in terms of setting the record straight for the victims’ families. I also suspect that she would rather have gone down in history as “Myra Hindley, Child Murderer” than not go down at all. As for the idea of remorse – first of all, you need to acknowledge the depth of your crimes, and the remorse that comes from that gives you a certain sincerity. Without it, you have to simulate sincerity and end up acting inappropriately, which is what Myra did. She was like a switchboard with the wires linked up all wrong.’115
At the end of September, David Astor’s instincts about Myra’s manuscript were confirmed when André Deutsch decided not to publish. Undeterred, Myra began work on another draft, using the guidelines in the reader’s report: amplifying the troubles in her childhood was easy, writing honestly about the murders far less so.
She was still in touch with Alan Bennett, but uncertain of how much she wanted to become involved in the search for Keith. In letters to Astor and Timms, she vowed to do ‘anything remotely possible . . . I’m not deliberately concealing anything, it’s just locked somewhere in my memory,’ then vacillated: ‘I really have done all I can and have nothing to add to what Ian Brady has told him, except that he was more likely to remember where the grave is or was, since I wasn’t present when he killed and buried his brother. So I hope I don’t receive any more letters now and will be glad when you’re able to see Mrs Johnson.’116
The 1980s ended on a disastrous note for Myra. Having been presented with her Open University degree in a special prison ceremony, she was dismayed by the uproar that greeted the publication of a photograph of her wearing the black graduation gown. ‘That was my idea,’ Timms admits ruefully. ‘Those photos were supposed to be for Myra and her family. But I went to the Camera Press in the hope that it would be seen for what it was. The OU were furious with me too, because they didn’t want to be “besmirched”. I said to them, “Let me understand what you’re saying: that it’s OK for her to study with you, as long as the public don’t find out?” And that was it. Myra was proud of herself and rightly so. I thought the photograph would demonstrate how far she had come. Myra knew the photograph was going to be published, but it backfired, horribly. That’s the power of the tabloid press in a nutshell.’117
By now, Tricia Cairns was again part of Myra’s life. Although she never really left it, gradually the two of them drew closer again, and Tricia became a regular visitor to Myra’s mother, helping her with practicalities such as shopping, and installing a telephone at her new home. In a letter to Timms, Myra admitted: ‘Jean Ritchie got at least one thing right when she referred to Tricia as the love of my life.’118 But her thoughts were focused on the loss of her sister, who had been dead for ten years: ‘Tricia is taking [Mam] to the crematorium to “visit” Maureen; her ashes are scattered near a cherry tree, from which Tricia sent me a leaf to put in my Bible . . .’119 As she sank into a miasma of depression, Ian Brady emerged again with a new and compelling threat to the parole she was certain would be hers in the near future.
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To confront and contemplate one’s naked self, warts and all, through the eye of truth, unlimbered by deliberate self-deception, and to scrutinise the mind, the memory, purged of selective amnesia and moral cowardice, is the work of a lifetime.
Myra Hindley, ‘My Life, My Guilt, My Weakness’, The Guardian, 18 December 1995
Myra was deeply unnerved when Ian sent an open letter to the press in January 1990 warning her supporters that they were labouring under a severe misapprehension and that he could prove she had revelled in the murders: ‘I have the written words of Myra Hindley herself, in the shape of six and a half years of her letters written to me after our imprisonment. In these she writes nostalgically and lyrically of the murders, which she regarded as a substitute marriage ritual but which I saw as products of an existentialist philosophy in tandem with the spiritualism of Death itself. I have only given you a brief glimpse of what occurred twenty-five years ago . . .’1
The letters had never been alluded to publicly before, and Myra knew she could do nothing but hope that his threat to publish them remained no more than that. Her fears subsided temporarily with the news that a group of warders had barged into Ian’s cell to investigate claims that he was suicidal, strip-searched him, then removed him to a psychotic ward. In protest, Ian began an extensive hunger strike, which resulted in force-feeding and heavy supervision.
As her depression lifted, Myra focused on trying to win over journalists and broadcasters to her campaign for parole, which had failed again, although she wasn’t informed then that the Home Secretary had recommended she serve a whole life tariff. On 12 June 1991, Andrew McCooey informed David Astor that Myra had mooted the idea of being interviewed in some capacity by Sue Lawley, who refused, thinking it ‘unwise’. McCooey did say, however, that at the right time she would be pleased to visit Myra.2 Her former campaign leader, Lord Longford, yearned to speak out on her behalf, but there came a period when Myra asked him to refrain from visiting her, dreading that the press would find out.3
Myra’s relationship with Tricia strengthened considerably, aided by the Astors’ support. Tricia resigned from her job in Manchester, hoping to be pensioned off due to illness, and moved to London, where she was given a room at the Astor home on Cavendish Avenue. She bought a liver and white spaniel, which she named Jake, ostensibly sharing ownership of the dog with Myra, and visited her regularly, planning their future. Myra’s prison therapist recalls: ‘Tricia thought David Astor might be able to do something to help Myra’s chances of parole. She would turn up at the prison with furniture catalogues and wallpaper samples, pictures of carpets, building up this idea that she and Myra would have this cosy little life. I don’t think Tricia really believed it would happen, but she got carried along with the fantasy.’4 Bridget Astor conf
irms: ‘Tricia came to us because she and Myra hoped to have a home together when she came out of prison. That was the idea.’5 Myra thanked the Astors repeatedly for their hospitality, adding in one letter: ‘[Tricia] said how different our lives would have been, or rather, what different people we would be if we had had someone like you, David, as a father.’6
The Astors fought the most effective campaign for Myra and provided her with the staunchest practical assistance. In April 1993, The Sun picked up on David Astor’s footing of Myra’s legal bills and giving occasional financial assistance to her mother, denouncing his support as ‘an insult to the children who wept and begged for mercy before they were butchered’.7 The article coincided with another in The Independent, in which Geraldine Bedell wrote that ‘higher standards are expected of women when it comes to the care of children: Myra betrayed her sex and exploited her sex so that children could be sexually assaulted, tortured and killed. Her sex may also explain why she has become such an object of concern to ageing aristocrats . . .’8
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