by Ian Brady
He exhibited an almost complete lack of emotional depth and self-insight and, on the whole, could be likened to a poorly baked layer cake, retaining surface attraction but lacking essential quality. Paradoxically, these deficiencies did not prevent him from holding an over-high estimation of himself and his potential capacities. He was, as it were, quite convinced greatness lay somewhere within him — it was just that he was encountering a little difficulty locating it.
Therefore Bianchi, because he was a natural subordinate, subconsciously compensated for this by deceiving himself into believing he at least latently possessed all the innovative and unorthodox qualities required of a cohesive leader. Eventually seduced by his own self-fulfilling prophecy, he unwisely decided to attempt the role. Even his speedy arrest, and the disastrous predicament to which his one significant attempt at independent action had guided him, still failed to disabuse him of this grand delusion, or persuade him to abandon the obsessive urge to pursue it to forlorn fruition. He should have taken the considered advice of W.C. Fields:
‘If at first you don’t succeed — give up, and stop making a darn fool of yourself!’
But that course of empirical inaction does not enter the mind of the obsessive-compulsive personality, destined to defy failure against all predictable odds, like a gambler who knows the dice are loaded against him, yet senselessly expects some deus ex machina to pluck victory from certain defeat, then glibly attributes his losses to ‘bad luck.’
This and other symptoms of affective dissociation suggest latent suicidal tendencies in Bianchi, probably rooted in emotional deprivation as a child.
Bianchi’s hypercritical antipathy towards all figures of authority indicates that he most likely ascribed this emotional neglect, either directly or indirectly, primarily to the influence of his father. It may also be the case that, incongruously as a result of this, Bianchi had subconsciously striven to emulate or better his father’s qualities of leadership and had fallen victim to the law of reversed effort.
In effect, Bianchi was a brooding resentful weakling in need of a more forceful, active mentor to bring his ambitions into being, and Buono proved to be the necessary catalyst.
Interactionally, each man took advantage of the other to achieve his own obsessive aims. Had the two men never met, shared their beliefs and sexual fantasies and forged a homicidal partnership, it is more than probable, in my estimation, that neither of them, separately, would ever have committed murder.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn’t amusing herself with me more than I am with her?
— Montaigne (1533–1592)
The time had come for Bianchi to overplay his part and be caught in the snares that his own rashly conceived ambition had set.
Prior to interviewing Bianchi or putting him under hypnosis, Dr Martin T. Orme made a close study of the previous videotaped sessions of Bianchi acting out the role of his alter ego, ‘Steve.’
The first potential flaw Dr Orme detected was that ‘Steve’s’ performances were becoming more rounded, expansive and accomplished with each progressive session. This suggested that rather than bursting forth from his bonds as a fully-fledged, dominant and separate personality in no need of prompting, ‘Steve’ was, in fact, being fleshed out in the course of each successive appearance on stage.
In the course of ostensibly casual preliminary interviews with Bianchi, Dr Orme obliquely implanted the suggestion in Bianchi’s conscious mind that, in the majority of instances of multiple personality, the patient normally has more than one alter ego and often several, each one independent of another. Consequently, after Dr Orme had apparently put Bianchi under hypnotic trance, Bianchi obligingly created for the first time an additional alter ego named ‘Billy,’ proof positive that Bianchi was in fact simply feigning a trance and consciously attempting to manipulate the situation to legal advantage. As predicted, he overplayed his hand and would now have to face the full consequence of having confessed to the Hillside Strangler murders to enhance the odds of his multiple-personality gambit paying off.
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.
— Hamlet, Shakespeare
Dr Orme and his associate for the prosecution, Dr Saul Faerstein, were now of the joint opinion that Bianchi should go to trial, and their medical opinion was accepted.
At the subsequent sanity hearing on 19th October ’79, Bianchi pleaded guilty to the two murders he committed in Bellingham and to five others committed in Los Angeles. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment without the legal need for a trial, according to the law of Washington state.
The Los Angeles Police Department still had five additional murder charges outstanding against Bianchi. In other circumstances the LAPD probably would have waived these further five charges as being superfluous in view of Bianchi’s sentence of life imprisonment, but they still needed Bianchi’s evidence to nail Buono for sure. Therefore the Los Angeles District Attorney broached a deal to Bianchi, namely that if Bianchi pleaded guilty to the five additional murder charges and agreed to testify against Angelo Buono, instead of being sentenced to death under California law, Bianchi would be given another sentence of life imprisonment but with the possibility of parole.
This deal was more than generous, the priority of the LAPD being the successful conviction of Buono. Bianchi wisely accepted the deal without hesitation, and simultaneously dropped his multiple-personality charade in his haste to supply the LAPD with a detailed account of the Hillside Strangler murders.
The Los Angeles police consequently arrested Buono on 22nd October ’79 and charged him with the Hillside Strangler killings. But the legal merry-go-round was just beginning.
The close proximity of Buono, now being held in the same county jailhouse as Bianchi, was bad psychology on the part of the police, especially considering the vacillating weakness of the chief witness for the prosecution. Bianchi almost immediately changed his mind and nullified the deal with the Los Angeles District Attorney, claiming that he had made it under duress, that the DA had threatened him with death to extort a confession. The DA had naïvely placed too much trust in Bianchi and, as part of the original deal, made the mistake of publicly proclaiming that, in view of Bianchi’s initial cooperation, he had agreed to drop the additional five murder charges against him. The DA obviously underestimated Bianchi’s tenacity and psychopathic survival skills.
Police forensic teams were now faced with having to work overtime in amassing as much concrete evidence as possible before the trial. As this went on, Buono’s lawyers, with incredible audacity and panache, sought to free their client on bail. The presiding judge, Ronald M. George, ruled against the motion.
The next legal tactic by Buono’s lawyers met with more success — namely, a motion to drop the lesser charges of rape, sodomy, kidnapping, etc., against Buono as a waste of public funds, in view of the fact that Buono was already facing ten cases of murder. The advantage to Buono’s defence, if this proposal was agreed to, was that the jury would then not be informed of his unsavoury past during the trial for murder.
Judge George granted this motion chiefly not to provide grounds for a possible appeal.
In tandem with these events, Kenneth Bianchi was working on less propitious criminal schemes of his own without consulting his lawyers. During his incarceration he received letters from a fascinated girl, Veronica Lynn Compton, who was engaged in writing a play about a female serial killer who injects sperm into her victims to convince police a man was committing the murders.
Bianchi conceived the grotesque stratagem of having Veronica Lynn Compton, who by now was madly in love with him, turn her fictional plot into reality. By reasoning that if another girl was strangled in Bellingham, his defence could argue that the police had charged the wrong man. This absurd wishful thinking totally ignored the fact that Bianchi had not only already confessed to the Bellingham murders but had also supplied the police with details
of their execution which only the killer would have known, and that he had also confessed to the Los Angeles Hillside Strangler murders, again relating details only the genuine killer was privy to. His Bellingham scheme, even in the unlikely event of success, would not improve his situation one jot.
Bianchi had fallen prone to the most common form of psychodynamic caused by imprisonment: escape into fantasy. Some inmates find it in religion, others in the secular world. In whichever field it manifests itself, the shared subconscious drive is self-survival, either by retention of the individual psyche, or at least some sense of self-determination in its altered formation.
Many prisoners actually end up half-believing the fictitious past, present and future they ingeniously invent to escape the tedium of sensory deprivation that all incarceration inflicts. In short-term prisoners, it is a temporary expedient to ward off spiritual destruction. In others, faced with decades of oppressive uniformity, the condition may graduate to permanency. There are those who will start playing an adopted role in response to the moral blackmail that constitutes the parole system and, after years of daily dissembling, may actually become the fiction they created.
In light of these observations, it is perhaps easier to comprehend why Bianchi was apparently reduced to pinning his hopes on the illogical and absurd murder scheme concocted with Veronica Lynn Compton. Yet again we have an example of folie à deux in action, this time with Bianchi as the dominating partner.
Veronica Lynn Compton, similarly blind to reality, infected by Bianchi’s delusive vision, took a room at the Shangri-La motel and went out to hunt for a victim. She found her in a bar, a girl by the name of Kim Breed, and after a couple of drinks inveigled her into riding back to the motel with her. Once in her room, she plied Kim Breed with more alcohol and convivial conversation before attempting to strangle her from behind with a length of rope. Veronica soon discovered she had underestimated her prospective victim, who promptly sent her flying over her shoulder into a corner of the room, and then ran out of the motel.
Kim Breed reported the matter to the police but Veronica had already skipped from the motel. The police eventually managed to track her down to the airport and took her into custody.
Veronica Lynn Compton gradually broke down and confessed to the wild plot with Bianchi. Rather harshly, considering the mitigating circumstances, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Bianchi was now worse off than before, if such were possible, while matters were progressing at a miraculous momentum in Buono’s favour.
Roger Kelly, the assistant District Attorney, had actually moved that, because of the increasingly unreliable nature of Bianchi’s evidence against Buono, discredited by the highly publicised murder plot hatched with Veronica Lynn Compton, the ten counts of murder against Buono should be dismissed entirely.
Kelly further moved that the lesser counts of rape and sodomy against Buono be reinstated and that he should be released on bail of $50,000. In effect, this would mean that Buono, if found guilty on the lesser charges, could end up serving as little as five to ten years in prison.
The police were flabbergasted by the turn of events. In court Buono was now openly swaggering with self-assurance and cocky contempt at this unexpected reversal of fortune. The judge wisely decided to postpone for a week his ruling on the startling motion by the prosecution.
On 21st July 1981, all parties assembled in court to hear Judge George scrupulously review the evidence the prosecution had formerly presented against Buono with such confidence. Gradually it became obvious that the judge retained the confidence and nerve that the prosecution lacked. He ruled that the forensic evidence, witness testimonies and circumstantial evidence against Buono were sufficiently substantial for the prosecution to continue. And he cautioned the DA that, should he not proceed with sufficient vigour in prosecuting Buono, he would officially bring the matter to the attention of the Attorney General.
The DA promptly escaped his embarrassing dilemma by withdrawing from the case. The Attorney General subsequently appointed two of his personal assistants, Michael Nash and Roger Boren, to proceed with the prosecution of Buono.
This dramatic reversal of fortune left Buono shaken and dispirited throughout the duration of the trial, which was to lumber on for another two years, becoming the longest murder trial in American jurisprudence.
Bianchi was eventually to stand in the witness box a total of five months, far less confident under Buono’s glaring, hate-filled eyes. Under cross-examination, not only by Buono’s lawyers but also by the prosecution and the judge, Bianchi became progressively more entangled in his own intricate web of deceit and was now not only trying to save himself but also attempting to squirm out of helping the prosecution convict Buono.
Faced with this backsliding, Judge George had to caution Bianchi that his prevarication and the ambiguity of his evidence against Buono was endangering the benefits he had received under his deal.
This word of warning caused Bianchi to be much clearer in his damning testimony against Buono, whose defence lawyers were employing every legal trick in the book to discredit and make the informant appear solely responsible for all the murders.
On 4th January 1984, the judge sentenced Kenneth Bianchi to serve his life sentence in Washington, as he had breached the terms of his plea bargaining. He then sentenced Angelo Buono to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
Asked afterwards whether the murders committed by the Hillside Stranglers did not, by definition, prove they were insane, the judge replied:
‘Why should we call someone insane simply because he or she chooses not to conform to our standards of civilised behaviour?’
My answer, already inferred, is that if a person truly does not believe in any given standards of ‘civilised behaviour,’ laws or morality — whether they be those of the USA or the Third Reich — he owes no innate responsibility to them and therefore his or her contrary acts cannot be considered sane within the context and terms of that society.
Society will exact its pound of flesh from the transgressor one way or another. So why quibble? Only society is concerned for its own sake about the dressing of it. It matters naught to the prisoner.
EPILOGUE
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)
All matters turn not on reality but on perception of reality. A virtue or an evil is only as significant as one believes it to be. There is no cosmic influence or categorical imperative involved, merely an assortment of particular, transient tribal laws, morals and customs set up expediently to protect and sustain a particular community and its leaders, whether they be considered by others for the general good or bad.
The weaker members in every society have the fewest rights and privileges, their magnitude decided solely by the extent to which they benefit the rulers.
The reason why acts of kindness and compassion bring a lump to the throat is their rarity, their taking one by surprise, as it were. By selective, atypical acts of generosity, the powerful seek to manipulate the good opinion of others to reinforce that of themselves.
Naturally if an individual believes he is superior to others, any hurt he inflicts upon a person he considers inferior concomitantly has lesser moral and psychic impact upon him. So what others may regard as monstrous acts in fact seem quite natural to him and of little account. Similarly, $20 given by a rich man to a poor man may seem generous to the receiver but be considered less than nothing to the giver. But if a poor man gives a beggar a few cents, both will have a genuine sense of generosity and human sympathy.
In this book I have offered a few modest methods which may assist in tracking down the serial killer. Some of you may regard that as generous coming from me, some may not. Both arguments hold water.
For I could write several more chapters, or even another book, on how to
foil police forensics and confound the methodology of psychological profilers.
In not doing so, am I displaying a sense of morality, exhibiting praiseworthy altruism? Or am I simply bowing to the fact that no publisher would dare print such subversive information?
Or do I care at all either way?
The rest is silence.
— Shakespeare
AFTERWORD
by Peter Sotos
It is a much uglier level than this.
In 1975, The Trial of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley was published in the UK by David and Charles. And inside one could find the complete transcription of the infamous tape recording made while Ian Brady and Myra Hindley — argued — with little ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey:
MAN:Just put it in now, love. Put it in now.
(Retching noise)
CHILD:(Muffled) What’s this in for?
MAN:Put it in.
CHILD:Can I just tell you summat? I must tell you summat.
Please take your hands off me a minute, please.
Please — mummy — please.
CHILD:I can’t tell you.
(Grunting)
CHILD:(In quick sequence) I can’t tell you. I can’t breathe. Oh.
CHILD:I can’t — dad — will you take your hands off me?
(Man whispering)
MAN:No. Tell me.
CHILD:Please god.
MAN:Tell me.
CHILD:I can’t while you’ve got your hands on me.
(Mumbling sound)
MAN:Why don’t you keep it in?
CHILD:Why? What are you going to do with me?
MAN:I want to take some photographs, that’s all.
MAN:Put it in.
CHILD:Don’t undress me, will you?
In October 1999, the BBC broadcast a three-part documentary on the crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. The first episode featured a shot of one of the seven photographs of little ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey taken by Ian and Myra shortly after that tape recording was made. And just before the little naked child was murdered. The photos themselves and the act of photographing her and the tape recording of her pleas and tiny protestations and confused child’s desperation can all be considered, in contemporary humanist terms, rape. And it is an ugly thing indeed to have to speculate on how or when the child was actually physically raped. Penetrated. Made.