by David Smith
About the Authors
David Smith now lives in rural Ireland with his wife. He has four children and several grandchildren.
Carol Ann Lee is an acclaimed biographer and has written extensively on the Holocaust. Her most recent publication, One of Your Own, focused on the life and death of Myra Hindley.
EVIL RELATIONS
The Man Who Bore Witness Against the Moors Murderers
David Smith with Carol Ann Lee
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Epub ISBN: 9781780574806
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This edition, 2012
Copyright © David Smith with Carol Ann Lee, 2011
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First published in Great Britain in 2011 as Witness by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY
(EDINBURGH) LTD
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh EH1 3UG
ISBN 9781780575391
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Contents
Foreword by Alan Bennett
Preface
Prologue
I Ghost Riders in the Sky: 1948–61
II When It’s Dark the Music Stops: 1961–65
III Blacken Smith at All Stages: 1965–66
IV Coming Down Fast: 1966–71
V Rising: 1971–75
VI Stand By Me: 1975–2011
Afterword
Foreword
I have lived with the Moors Murders since I was ten years old. Although I was almost nine when my brother Keith disappeared on 16 June 1964, it was not until October 1965 that the people responsible for his death were arrested and the Moors Murders first hit the headlines around the world.
I was an average kid but could read and write from an early age, and liked to believe I could think for myself, and always asked questions if I wanted answers. Those questions would usually be put to the two people in whom I had complete faith and trust, and whom I loved dearly: my grandmother and Aunt Jean.
It wasn’t long after Brady and Hindley had been charged with murder that I became aware that the adults in the family, and the police, strongly suspected that these two knew what had happened to my brother. Why? was my first question. It turned out that Brady’s home on Westmoreland Street was not far from where we lived when Keith disappeared. I also learned that the body of a teenage boy had been found in the house Brady had more recently shared with Hindley and that the bodies of two children had been found in a place called Saddleworth Moor. Another question: how did the police know that Brady and Hindley had definitely murdered those children? Because, I was told, someone had gone to the police after witnessing the murder of the teenage boy, which then led to the other children being found. Who went to the police? I asked.
A man called David Smith.
But even before I’d asked these questions, I’d ‘seen’ Brady and Hindley when the police called at Gran’s home. I was sitting on a chair arm next to the door that led into the ‘back room’ when the knock came. Two men walked in – plainclothes detectives, I realised later – and as the second man entered, I noticed he was carrying a clipboard that protruded above his forearm and rested against his side. As he passed me, the clipboard came level with my eyes and I saw, in extreme close-up, the now infamous mugshots of Brady and Hindley. Their faces seemed to leap out at me and I dropped heavily back into the chair. This was no fall or slip; I actually felt as if I had been physically pushed away from the stark images, even though there was no one near me, apart from the detective holding the clipboard. I’d felt an invisible shove on the right side of my body, which had sent me backwards into the chair. I glanced at Gran, who wore a look of genuine surprise, and then I heard one of the detectives asking, ‘Are you all right, son?’ I let my gaze travel to the two men, who were watching me, mystified, then looked towards the door, expecting to see who it was that had pushed me. Nobody was there.
I felt an intensely strange feeling and was gripped by a fear that I didn’t understand; I had to leave the room and get away from the two men and the photographs they carried.
From then on, Brady and Hindley haunted my childhood, and whenever I thought of them or saw or heard anything about them, I felt deeply frightened. Some time after the detectives visited Gran, I came to believe that it was Keith who had been responsible for pushing me away that day; he was trying to protect me in some way from the people whose faces were on the clipboard. Later, this belief grew stronger. It wasn’t something I invented – it was how it was and has been with me ever since.
As the months wore on, ‘David Smith’ became an increasingly familiar name too, but by then there were other words attached whenever someone mentioned him: he was ‘a bad ’un’ who ‘knows more than he’s saying’, who had acted ‘to save his own neck’ and was ‘as bad as those two’. Young as I was, I remember wondering how the man who had informed the police about a murder was spoken of as if he, too, was a murderer. If that was the case, then why had he not been sent to jail with the other two? I tried to work it out, asking more questions and reading everything I could find about him. After much thinking, I could only come up with another question: Who’s right? Were the police wrong for letting him get away with murder or were the people who believed he was guilty at fault?
I knew enough to try and make some sense of it all, but I found it hard to talk to anyone. Gone was the chattering, carefree, playful child; in his place was a young boy with only questions, endless questions, and so much confusion and sadness. But eventually I came to the conclusion that the people in the wrong were those whom I had no choice but to listen to, day after day. I believed that David Smith had put a stop to the murders and prevented others from taking place. Even at such a young age the things I saw and heard about David Smith made no sense to me.
By then, countless people had been to our house, asking probing questions of their own. They seemed to waft in from the street and out again in a jumbled mass of notebooks, cameras, lights, cables, fancy cars, large vans, motorbikes, bicycles, walkers, polite people, rude people, quiet people, loud people, foreign people and some very strange people. A curious thing happened: the more questions our visitors asked, the more the answers began to fit in with whatever they wanted to hear. Things changed suddenly and unmistakeably from the pain and distress that needed to be overcome somehow in order to answer the questions to the standard answers and furious outbursts that made for good headlines.
I began to stand back, watching with as much distance as I could, and that’s where I stayed and remain to this day. I was never alone, but the person standing by me couldn’t be seen, although he was there, always there. I talked
to him at night when I was alone in the room we used to share, and he came back to life for me, both then and whenever I talked to Gran and Aunt Jean. He was unseen but ever-present.
The years passed. Argument followed argument about who did what, who was to blame, and what could and should be done. I refused to have any part in what was happening all around me. I saw rage and frustration becoming the norm, but I found my voice and formed my own opinions based on fact, rather than headlines and what people wanted to believe or use as a vent for useless anger – and even more useless ‘exclusive’ publicity.
I’ve spent many years searching Saddleworth Moor in the hope of bringing Keith home. I’ve met and spoken to countless people whom I hoped might be able to help me and have written hundreds of letters for the same reason.
The one person whom I have never tried to contact is David Smith. I thought about it often. I’ve even written to him, but the letters remained unposted. Whenever I gave the matter serious consideration, as I often did, I was stilled by recalling the stories of violence and abuse he and his family had suffered ever since he did the right thing and reported the murder of Edward Evans to the police. He sparked off the Moors Murders investigation, brought the horror of it all to an end, and very probably saved the lives of other children who might have gone on to become victims of Brady and Hindley. I knew that he had been to the moor with the two killers, had spent many hours in their company and was married to Hindley’s sister, Maureen. Surely, he might know of something that could be of use to me, so why not contact him? But I still couldn’t get the belief that he’d suffered enough out of my head. The beatings he had taken over the years, and which were of great amusement to others around me, were undeserved in my eyes, as was the constant hounding I knew he and his wife endured. I was also aware that he’d spent weeks being questioned by police, who had taken him to the moor to see if he could recall any landmarks that might have aided their search for the bodies Brady had boasted to him about burying there. Admittedly, I was troubled by the knowledge that he’d ‘sold out’ to a newspaper during the trial, and had had a financial interest in the end result, but I’d seen so many others doing deals of one kind or another with the press that it began to bother me less and less. And the people who used that particular stick with which to beat him had sticks of their own stored safely and quietly in the offices of certain newspapers.
It seemed obvious to me that the lies Brady and Hindley told about him, and which people were so quick to believe, were designed to cast doubt on him in revenge for his ‘betraying’ them to the police. It worked very well; they spent many years in the happy knowledge that their whistleblower was never free from public hatred. Other thoughts disturbed me and prevented me from posting my letters to him; foremost of these was that I could never begin to imagine the horror brought before his eyes when Brady and Hindley finally decided to show him what they truly were. A lad of his own age, brutally axed to death before him, the terrible sights and sounds that accompanied the killing, were all part of a ‘test’ to find out if he was capable of the same monstrosities. Thankfully, he was not. He did go to the police to ‘save his own neck’ but not in the manner that so many came to believe; he feared for his own life, and in doing the right thing he brought horrors he knew nothing about to a disbelieving and sickened world.
So, as the years went by, the possibility of having any form of contact with David Smith grew smaller and smaller. Then, whilst working on her book One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley, Carol Ann Lee wrote to ask if I would be willing to speak to her, mainly about my role in the search for Keith. She assured me that she’d done extensive research and that it was of the utmost importance to her to get the facts about the Moors Murders correct at last. At that time, I was trying to overcome my disillusionment about a previous publication on the case, whose author I had spoken to only on the understanding that his book would be mainly about the search for Keith. I had been deeply disappointed by the outcome and cast aside Carol Ann’s request as coming from just another author whose work would turn out in the same way as all the rest – feelings I now know I shared with David Smith when she approached him.
Nonetheless, I read One of Your Own when it was published and to my utter surprise discovered that it was completely different from anything else I had read about the case, or about Brady and Hindley individually. Although it was then too late to be part of something that had greatly impressed me, I contacted Carol Ann to congratulate her on the book. She invited me to her home to discuss what she had learned during her research and to look at the notes she had made, which she believed – correctly – might be of interest to me.
I was even more impressed after our initial meeting and now looked on her as a major authority on the case. We became very close friends and I found myself talking to her openly, even searching deep within myself and dragging out thoughts and feelings I thought would remain locked away for ever. I had never expected to share those memories and emotions with anyone again after the deaths of Gran and Aunt Jean, not outside the family. After Carol Ann and I got to know each other better, she told me that she had spoken at great length to David Smith and his wife Mary. Then she mentioned the possibility of writing a book with David about his life. She saw it as a story that needed to be told but was acutely aware of how David Smith was regarded by certain members of the victims’ families.
She asked me what I thought. I had no such reservations and advised her to go ahead because it was time – in fact, long overdue – that David Smith had his say. We talked about the reactions such a book might provoke. I felt that it would, hopefully, enlighten many people and even help erase certain long-held fears for many others. It would be wrong to let such an invaluable opportunity slip away.
Carol Ann told David Smith what I thought. I was deeply moved by his response, especially that he wanted to thank me for my positive reaction to his wish to tell his story . . . me, a member of one of the victims’ families. Was I supposed to detest the man who brought the murders to an end? Or bury my head in the sand and have no opinion about the events that have been an abiding dark cloud in my life? I could only give my support and encouragement to Carol Ann and, through her, to David Smith and his wife.
I am glad this book has been written, for several reasons. Foremost for me personally is that through David Smith’s dogged recall of painful memories certain areas and landmarks of potential interest in the search for Keith have come to light. I have to add, with great sorrow in my heart, that this information was never allowed to come to the fore at the time of the original investigation in the 1960s, and the subsequent search in the 1980s, because of the hard-headedness and mishandling of David Smith by some senior detectives. Of course, there were exceptions, Joe Mounsey in particular, but the damage was done and the man who was the chief prosecution witness in ‘the Trial of the Century’ was reduced to a suspect too many times, and a bruised and battered man for decades.
My hope now is that this book and the truths within it will enable the public to understand that Brady and Hindley’s lies brought intense pain and distress not only to the victims and their families, but also to many others. Years into her imprisonment, Hindley admitted that she had lied about David Smith and that she was sorry for it. She repeated the same thing to me personally when I visited her in Durham and then Highpoint prison to talk about the search for Keith and what she might do to help. Brady, however, will never admit the truth. Indeed, he invents new lies to replace the old ones when they lose their ‘exclusive’ media status.
A number of officers from the original investigation admitted they could and should have listened more closely to David Smith and treated him as a witness rather than a suspect. I suppose the errors can be explained to some extent by old-style policing methods, but it still doesn’t alter the fact that chances were lost, that the chief witness was never able to tell the truth without fear and duress, and that he was forced to withdraw into himself in the belief that no one w
as listening.
We can only hope that those people whose lack of thought and darkness of soul caused David Smith and his family such suffering over the years never have to endure the same in order to make them finally realise the damage they can do.
With this new edition of David’s story, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank DCI Tony Brett and his team, who worked on the case during the early 2000s; I am forever grateful to them for their determination, advice and respect for Keith, and their help in so many ways.
Alan Bennett
Preface
‘What is your opinion about David Smith?’
The question comes from a quiet-looking man in his mid-20s, sitting in the back row. Immediately, there is a frisson in the room, as the audience turn first to peer at the enquirer, then at the woman seated directly to my right, who made a small noise of disgust in her throat at the mention of the name, and finally at me.
I hesitate before replying, aware that I need to choose my words carefully. This is the first talk I’ve given about my book, One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley, and it’s being held in a room on the upper floor of the Deansgate branch of Waterstone’s in Manchester. For the past 45 minutes, people have expressed their views with an intensity that few other murder cases can provoke. Whether it’s Hindley’s avowed remorse or how to persuade Ian Brady to reveal the location of Keith Bennett’s grave, those who speak are resolute in their judgements. Feelings run feverishly high; someone suggests slowly stabbing Brady with knives until he confesses and the idea is met with clamorous approval and applause by three-quarters of the crowd. ‘They should have let us deal with the murdering bastards before they put them away,’ someone else calls above the noise, and the clapping breaks out afresh.
David Smith has already been mentioned, and a murmur of deep-rooted disgust passed then among the audience. Now they wait for my response to the question raised by the young man on the back row. The woman seated to my right is Keith Bennett’s mother, Winnie Johnson, and I’m aware from my previous meetings with her that she regards David Smith with much the same loathing as she does her son’s killers.