Couples Who Kill

by Carol Anne Davis

  Mocked and underestimated by the world, he found reassurance in books which were about gaining power – books about the occult, about extreme sexual sadism, about Hitler. He even eventually taught himself German in order to read Mein Kampf.

  When he helped to dispose of some stolen lead and was caught, he was given the harsh sentence of two years in Borstal, a type of detention unit for criminal and usually violent young men. There, he may well have been sexually assaulted. He was definitely badly treated and his resentment against society grew.

  By the time he took a clerical job at a Manchester chemical firm called Millwalls, he was a lonely young man who hated conventional society.

  The lovers

  Initially, Ian saw Millwall’s typist Myra as being part of this mindless society. After all, she was a desperately conventional girl who wanted marriage and babies, who went to church and lived for weekend dances. But after a year of ignoring her, he realised that she would make an excellent disciple and began to try out his philosophy that it was the natural order for the strong to overcome the weak.

  Myra bought into this from the start – she’d probably have agreed to anything to please the man she was in love with. Though originally against sex before marriage, she gave him her virginity on their second date. And she swiftly agreed to anal sex, despite the fact that she found it painful. She also let her new lover beat her with a whip and revealed the marks for his camera.

  The dynamics

  The violence and lack of positive parental attention in Myra Hindley’s childhood had left her with a histrionic personality, and people with this personality disorder are very susceptible to suggestion. Ian wanted a lover with an anti-social approach to life so the previously friendly and conventional Myra became determinedly anti-social. He wanted to be dominant so she became sexually submissive. She expressed her enjoyment of the murder books he lent her and pretended to enjoy the brutality of the war films which they saw.

  Not that Myra Hindley was completely without her own needs and desires – the treatment she’d received from her father had left her with unexpressed hostility and Ian brought this out.

  He began to talk of rape, suggesting that sexual fulfilment and the satisfaction of other bodily appetites were society’s only real values. Again, Myra wasn’t shocked (or pretended not to be shocked) as his fantasies edged increasingly closer to reality.

  Pauline’s murder

  On the evening of 12th July 1963 Ian asked twenty-one-year-old Myra to procure him a child to rape. Myra saw a girl she knew, sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade, en route to a dance and told her she’d lost an expensive glove on Saddleworth Moor. Pauline obligingly got into Myra’s car and was driven to the sunlit moorland. The friendly teenager had no idea that Ian Brady planned to follow them on his motorbike.

  Myra would later allege that she went back to the car after Ian appeared, leaving him with the terrified teenager. (But Ian would eventually say that Myra helped him sexually assault the girl.) Whatever the exact nature of events, a struggle ensued in which he raped Pauline and cut her throat. He showed Myra the still-gurgling body then they buried Pauline’s warm corpse in a hastily dug grave.

  The couple were shaken by the reality of this first murder. Brady had found it very difficult to overpower a struggling sixteen-year-old whilst Hindley had been horrified when she saw the dying girl. She’d later say that she considered leaving him but that he threatened to hurt her family. In truth, it’s more likely that she stayed because she remained in love with him – he’d literally become her life. Her father hated her, her mother was too busy working to spend much time with her and her grandmother, who she still lived with, was increasingly infirm. Myra had also sided with Brady at work so was regarded by her more balanced colleagues as increasingly secretive and aloof. And she’d given up on her friends because Brady proclaimed they were worthless. He’d also moved in with her and her gran, which meant that she lived with him and worked with him. They were together twenty-four hours a day.

  John’s murder

  So Myra stayed with Ian because she believed that she couldn’t face life without him. And four months later – on 23rd November 1963 – they targeted their next victim, twelve-year-old John Kilbride, by offering him a lift home. Myra knew what was going to happen this time as she’d bought the knife. The couple took the boy to the moor and Myra remained in the van as look out. Meanwhile Ian raped, spanked and strangled the unfortunate boy.

  The knife was too blunt to cut the child’s throat, so he strangled him with string and buried him on the desolate moors. Later, he took photographs of Myra posing on the child’s grave.

  Keith’s murder

  Another seven months elapsed then, on 16th June 1964, the couple offered twelve-year-old Keith Bennett a lift to his gran’s house. He too was driven to the moors where Brady raped and strangled him. Strangling is considered to be an especially sadistic crime, and Brady kept books about torture in a locker at the local railway station. Being in control meant everything to Brady, whose childhood themes had been those of humiliation and abandonment. Afterwards, Brady buried Keith Bennett’s body on the moorland. Despite frequent searches by the police and by members of the devastated Bennett family, his remains have never been found.

  Lesley’s murder

  Six months later – on Boxing Day 1964 – the couple lured ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey away from a funfair. They took her to Myra’s gran’s house (her gran was away visiting relatives) and ordered her to strip.

  They bound and gagged the increasingly distraught little girl and took lurid naked photographs which Ian Brady planned to sell. He also tape-recorded the child pleading ‘Please God, help me.’ Later she begged Myra to help her but Myra callously threatened to hit her and told her to put the handkerchief-gag back in her mouth. The tape, which lasted for seventeen minutes, also recorded Lesley crying for her mum.

  At some stage Ian raped the little girl. Myra said she was in the bathroom whilst this crime was taking place, and that when she returned the child was dead. Ian backed up this version of events for many years but, after the couple became estranged, he said that Myra had strangled Lesley with a silken cord. The following day they buried the little girl’s body on their beloved moors. It was ten months before her corpse was found.

  Greater stimulus

  By now Ian Brady had murdered a teenage girl, a prepubescent girl and two prepubescent boys. But he had the psychopath’s typical low boredom threshold and wanted to increase his excitement by bringing in a third party. He chose a youth he was already friendly with, Myra’s seventeen-year-old brother-in-law David Smith. The teenager was married to Myra’s younger sister, Maureen, and was unemployed, broke and bored.

  Myra was against involving David – she’d aged visibly since the murders and had frequent nightmares. She also begged her relatives and neighbours not to make conventional statements around her lover, as this always increased his wrath. The insecure young woman wanted to have Ian Brady’s full attention, and being his sole disciple in the murders was the ultimate way of maintaining this. But he’d already decided to bring the innocent David Smith in on their fifth kill…

  Edward’s murder

  On 6th October 1965, the couple went to a bar and Myra chatted up a seventeen-year-old boy, Edward Evans. She told him that Ian Brady was her brother. The threesome left the pub together and returned to Myra’s gran’s house where they probably all had sex whilst her gran slept upstairs. Afterwards, Ian ordered Myra to fetch David Smith – and David arrived at the house to find Ian battering a hatchet into the screaming Edward Evans’ head. The petrified youth continued to fight for his life, so Brady partially suffocated him with a cushion then strangled him to death.

  Afterwards Myra retched and David went home and was violently sick. He told Maureen what he’d witnessed and, at first light, the terrified teenagers went to a phone box and called the police.

  Meanwhile, the killer couple had gone to bed. Ian slept well, convinced
that David Smith would prove to be as obedient an acolyte as Myra Hindley. She, for her part, slept fitfully and arose early next morning, aware that Edward Evans’ body was still locked in a trunk in the spare room. The police came to the door and arrested Ian Brady for the murder and she denied knowing where the key to the trunk was. She tried to act tough to please Ian – but it’s telling that the first detective who spoke to her thought that she was at least twelve years older than her actual twenty-three.

  Arrest and trial

  Myra believed that Ian would get bail so she virtually camped at the police station. Eventually they had to tell her mother to take her home.

  Meanwhile the police found the key to the railway locker which held the photographs and tape-recording of the missing Lesley Ann Downey. Myra and Ian’s aggressive voices were on the tape, placing them both at the scene.

  When Myra was arrested she said that she had been where Ian had been, that she had done what he had done. But when they were tried for the murders of John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, both put forward a Not Guilty plea. It wasn’t yet known that they’d murdered Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, though police strongly suspected they had.

  The trial began at Chester Assizes on 27th April 1966 amid tight security, as the general public wanted to lynch the killers. The prosecution alleged that the couple were equally responsible for the three sex murders, and the defence countered that Ian Brady had been the leader and Myra Hindley the follower. (The latter viewpoint is true – but Ian would have had difficulty luring his victims to remote locations without Myra. The children had been told not to go off with strange men but they understandably believed that a woman posed no threat.) She remained enamoured of her lover and stared at him devotedly throughout the trial.

  The couple’s guilt was a foregone conclusion – the tape and photographs linked them to Lesley Ann Downey, though Ian Brady claimed they’d merely photographed her then let her leave the house with two male pornographers. John Kilbride’s death was also closely linked to the couple, as his body was located when the police found a photo of Myra posing on top of his makeshift grave. And David Smith had watched Brady murder Edward Evans whilst Myra urged him to help.

  On 6th May 1966, the fifteenth day of the trial, the jury returned their verdict. The couple were jointly found guilty of the murder of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey. Brady was also convicted of murdering John Kilbride, whilst Myra was convicted of being an accessory to the killing, (because she’d driven the boy to the moor then driven home without him, so clearly knew that something bad had happened). She looked close to collapse as she was jailed for life plus seven years for her part in John Kilbride’s abduction. Meanwhile her beloved Ian was given three life sentences.

  Judge Sparrow, who attended the case in his capacity as a journalist, recognised that she was redeemable and would later write that she ‘could be made the subject of successful psychotherapy.’ And two days later the judge who had sentenced her said that she could be salvaged, but that Brady could not.

  An enduring love

  Ian Brady was sent to Durham Prison and Myra Hindley to Holloway, where they remained devoted to each other for the next six years, writing frequently. He even went on hunger strike in an abortive attempt to be allowed visiting rights. But as she approached thirty, she at last began to form close relationships with other female prisoners and realised that he’d helped ruin, rather than positively define, her life. She told him to stop writing to her and she began to have lesbian relationships, though other prisoners have noted that these were more emotional than physical.

  Admitting the early murders

  Myra’s life remained relatively static for the next twenty years as she worked in the prison sewing room, had visits from her mother and crushes on various other female prisoners. Meanwhile Ian Brady’s mental health deteriorated and in 1985 he was diagnosed as a psychopath and moved to Ashworth Hospital, a psychiatric prison. His emotional wellbeing remained incredibly changeable, with some visitors finding him alert and normal whilst others noted that he was close to collapse. He suggested to various journalists and detectives that he’d committed other murders whilst acting alone, but they checked back and found that his stories were either mental confusion or outright lies.

  Myra, too, had lied to her fellow prisoners for almost twenty years, telling them that she had no part in the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Then – in 1985 and 1986 – she received counselling from the Reverend Peter Timms and decided to confess. (Peter Timms is interviewed in Women Who Kill.)

  Both killers were taken separately onto the moors to locate the graves and the information Myra gave helped the police to locate Pauline’s body. But Ian became much more confused so Keith Bennett’s skeleton remains undiscovered to this day.

  Nothing to live for

  The numerous boring days spent in prison – and the nights sleeping with the lights on to escape her demons – took their toll and in 1999 Myra Hindley collapsed during an angina attack and was rushed to hospital. The medics warned her that she had to stop smoking and start exercising, but she remained depressed and chose not to heed their advice. She had technically met all of the criteria for parole but had never been granted this, and was losing the will to live.

  The following year, five lawlords upheld the Home Secretary’s decision that Myra Hindley should die in prison. Meanwhile Ian Brady wanted to die as soon as possible in prison. He attempted to starve himself to death for the next three years, but the authorities force fed him through a tube.

  Ian Brady hadn’t changed much in prison – but Myra Hindley had, earning a degree in humanities and reverting to her previous working class conformity. She got religion again and made various influential religious friends. She was never going to attain Brady’s superior IQ or elevated vocabulary, but at the same time she was no longer a danger to anyone else.

  But as far as the tabloids were concerned, Myra Hindley wasn’t allowed to change. When she cuddled her friends’ babies in jail they suggested a sinister motive – but she had genuinely loved children before meeting Ian Brady and was a trusted babysitter. Similarly, they suggested that she acted fawningly around animals whereas she genuinely loved them too. Much was made of the fact that she had lesbian lovers in prison, but the reality was that these affairs were based on writing impassioned poetry and having someone to dream about.

  Diana Athill, an editor for Andre Deutsch, was given some of Myra Hindley’s prison writings and began to understand how a nineteen-year-old from an unambitious family could have become besotted with a well-read man whose philosophy was ‘above the petty considerations which governed most people’s despicable little lives.’

  Diana describes her impressions of Myra Hindley in her intriguing portrait of the publishing world, Stet. ‘She was intelligent, responsive, humorous, dignified.’ Diana came to the conclusion that Hindley only managed to live with her murderous actions by blurring the part that she’d played in her mind and by exaggerating her fear of Brady. The editor decided that making Myra confront the true gravity of her actions might result in a nervous breakdown so she decided not to commission the book.

  Many newspapers continued to give the impression that Myra Hindley was a cold, heartless prisoner but in truth she was a timid woman who was too frightened to go into the television lounge with the other prisoners for fear of censure – and when she was violently attacked and had her nose broken she refused to strike back.

  In contrast, Ian Brady, the mastermind and instigator of the murders, has remained wedded to violence. He wrote in his book The Gates of Janus, published in 2001, that serial killers (presumably including himself) have chosen to spend one day as a lion rather than decades as a sheep. Yet many of us choose not to live as sheep – and we still don’t resort to killing children. He also suggests that most serial killers choose victims who have had much nicer lives than they themselves. But – given that many serial killers select girls who have been in care a
nd then become prostitutes – this simply isn’t true. Brady himself was earning a reasonable salary as a clerk and had enough money for wine, cigarettes and a motorbike when he selected impoverished working class children to kill.

  He also says, rightfully, that latent homosexual men often turn their aggression towards the object of their desire – yet he has never dared examine his own victim choice. Only the first victim, sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade, had a developed female body – and Myra Hindley chose her for him. He demanded that she procure smaller victims in future. Three of the other victims were male and Lesley Ann Downey was only ten so she had a boyish frame.

  It’s clear that Ian Brady had some confusion in his head about his own sexuality. He liked to have a candle inserted into his anus during sex play and we know that he raped Keith Bennett and John Kilbride prior to their deaths. The bar where he met his final victim, Edward Evans, was frequented by gay men and he explained this to Myra Hindley by telling her that ‘he was going to rob a queer.’ He denied at the trial that he’d had sex with the youth – but someone had, for hairs from Myra’s dog were found around the boy’s anus. And Brady had sent Myra from the house, leaving him alone with the teenage boy.

  Whilst bringing the axe down on the terrified Edward Evans, Brady shouted again and again ‘you dirty bastard.’ It was the most violent of the five deaths and he said himself that it was ‘the messiest yet.’

  So what drove Myra’s normally quiet lover to such paroxysms of rage? Was he raped at Borstal by older inmates? Did he feel a need to both repeat such rape and also take murderous revenge? He was clearly ashamed when the prosecution said that he’d frequented gay bars and stammered that he liked to mock the homosexuals there.