by Ian Brady
Just the photo of Winnie that would say everything I could think of itemizing didactically. Decided, no, I’d have to add to it like a slob. Perverts want to know if this is so good, then why do I need more. Perverts don’t want to know. Only. Or unless. They indulge. Sink. There would have to be two photos at the end of the afterword. First, Winnie. Second, Ann West. Stand-ins for the differences between two mothers. Their unique personal attempts to see the same thing through to the end.
Edith Evans testified that her son, Edward Evans, left home between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. on 6 October 1965; he said that he was going to a football match at Old Trafford, Manchester. The following day, she identified the body of her son at Hyde public mortuary.
George Smith, licensee of Auntie’s Bar, Oxford Road, Manchester, gave evidence of seeing Edward Evans in the bar at about seven o’clock in the evening of 6 October 1965. “I had known him about three or four months. It was very unusual for him to come in on his own. When I last saw him, he was alone.”15
Brady starts off his book by “broadly” defining his use of the word “murder.” Decides the word is a term that begs the personal slant only a murderer owns unless he sits down to explain it to the inexperienced but rapt. Announces his prejudices so that you’ll understand, trust, his murder word, rather than his murder proof, as part of the conditions necessary to separate the intelligent, brave, personal from the conditioned, hesitant, political, fearful. He, not unaware when transparent, even more broadly then, defines his audience. As excited but guilty. Jealous. He, instead, as jaded. And sadly, as bored. Sets up the gawkers while playing—not acting—to be the dirty line between irritated professor and cheery huckster. Seems to enjoy being called a criminal by those who aren’t. Explains that he is going to tell everyone that bought his book about murder, and what happens within murder, from the rarefied existence of real violence. Inviting life rather than the usual timid review of the subject lost to wide-eyed moralist hypocrisy. Official sanctions masked as communities training that contradict man’s, your, baser interest. Desires. Murder broadly becomes the act of ending someone else’s life, murder broadly becomes an act that challenges heaven when heaven doesn’t exist, murder broadly becomes an act that stays broadly murder as long as you only broadly define your terms. Otherwise it’s masturbating. Practically, instead of broadly, it’s cleaning up afterward. The student is never unaware that his teacher hasn’t explained murder. Because he’d have to talk about something else than, simply, broadly, vaguely, murder. It’s only murder when it’s a word idiots can fall back on, like talking about sex as if it’s something everyone wants so any act with exposure or a shoe means the same. Comparing Bush and Blair to those who stick their fingers and cocks in instead of signing Arendt papers. No one listening thinks forward that way; only the one safely performing the monologue, the one hoping you’re not already used to looking for more.
Crime is conclusive. When prosecutors need to apply definitive charges to less than definitive clues. There are other complaints, suspicions and theories that come first. That can’t be proven as emotionally certain. Murder is the dead body that shows up that gets shoved in court and isn’t asked of the jury: what happened here? It’s the corpse that stops the conjecture and states, not asks: This is what happened.
“Aye, but he may not have known that, she might have been supposed to be visitin’ her mam in Gorton and something had mucked up the visit an’ there she was, spoilin’ the picnic. Then Brady gets her out o’ the house to go an’ give a message to her sister, then he—shut the door, in case o’ Mrs. Campion—then he makes ‘is overtures, which explains the lad’s shoes being off, fly undone and the medical evidence of the dog hairs found on the back of his legs where he’d sat on the bed presumably with his jeans an’ his shorts around his feet.”16
The Witness: All the blood which was found in the living room was of the same blood group as that of Edward Evans. I examined two fibres taken from the anus of Edward Evans. I would say they were animal hairs. The stick belonging to David Smith was very heavily bloodstained for almost the whole of its length; there were also head hairs similar to those of Edward Evans generally distributed over the surface together with animal hairs. On the three carpets from the living room I found numerous animal hairs but no bloodstaining.17
In 2013, during a public hearing on Brady’s continuing treatment and incarceration at a hospital rather than a prison, Brady answered that the murders he had been convicted of were an “existential experience.” This was Brady repeating what he wrote in Gates of Janus. Unkindly, it was Brady repeating what he learned from writing it. As existential, murder exists as the act of killing that spurs—not settles—the forever broad terms that one can gaze through and reflect backward as long as a transgressive moment is suggested instead of digested. The spiritual answers to the unanswered will always be an exercise, always be appreciating nature as real while hoping to challenge it as fake. Sadly, masturbating is as good as you’re going to get. Whether you use your fist and close your eyes or keep them wide as fuck while you use a ten-year-old’s tighter than usual, perhaps, slit. Because, empirically if not essentially, you will be better at describing what you saw rather than what you felt. And when you feel outside of your body and your brain, there are others listening to you that will point to the pictures you took. And tell you how definitively similar you looked to the other inarticulate hunchbacks who still believe in God and innocence and the momentary joy of having a cum that requires something more than the last one. And, then, trust me, I do see you dreaming, sweetie. I can see it. Explain more, will you? I’ll see if I can see what you’re pointing to. You go ahead and tell me how you were brought up. The good times you remember, the good times that were better than mine, back when things weren’t complicated. Not complicated now either, right. I know. There’s what you wanted. And that’s how you mistook all the ways to get what you thought you deserved. Yes, certainly, I can hear the regret over the proof. For the days continuing, where you match up the problems for fellow sufferers and searchers.
Brady, Gates of Janus:
The soft-porn tabloids and other sensational media require no remit other than financial gain to daily devote whole front pages to sex crimes—doing so in loving, salacious detail, exploiting man’s lowest instincts and sexual imperatives. Sex crime is reduced to the status of a spectator sport, publicly stimulating for profit the very same feral instincts supposedly possessed by the perpetrator.
Such coverage subliminally incites the spectator to gloat over the physical charms of the victim in every respect, imaginatively projecting into the victim’s eyes whatever changing reflections of horror or pleasure most excites their recondite inclinations.
At breakfast tables all over the country the sexual appetites of millions of ‘decent citizens’ are sharpened by such press reports, their readers luxuriating in vivid visions of debauchery, rape, murder and sado-masochistic perversion, sometimes as perpetrator, sometimes as victim. Death being perhaps the greatest aphrodisiac, feel-good factor and appetizer there is, readers wolf down the bacon and eggs with additional relish; a secular parody of the communion wafer, celebrating life in the midst of random murder.
Whenever prurient reporting acts as a catalyst to some latent killers and rapists, as surely it must, the mass media, with or without the least connecting evidence, conveniently places all the blame on mythical ‘video nasties’ or hard-core pornography, simultaneously utilising the opportunity to print or televise many titillating samples of that which they sanctimoniously condemn.18
Hindley, “My Story”:
It is too easy for the media to use labels like “fiend,” “evil monster,” “manipulative” 30 years on, and to transform my role in the offenses from a willing accomplice to the instigator and perpetrator of all that took place. But this of course sells newspapers and pays scant, if any, regard for the truth.
For example, because I haven’t had the “decency to go mad” I must therefore be so bad th
at, as a short article in the Observer Magazine of December 10 stated, I tortured, sexually abused and killed five young people with Ian Brady. And even worse, added that I strangled Lesley Ann Downey.
It is lamentable that a quality newspaper emulates the tabloids by reversing the roles. I have said that I believe it is a fact of human nature to apply labels to help us make sense of something, anything incomprehensible, and it reinforces my belief that “broader society” should take care in defining the word psychopath. It can lead to so many misunderstandings and misrepresentations—as in my own case by David Jessel and Anne Moir—when detailed psychiatric reports from several sources have firmly ruled out any forms of psychopathy.19
In kind, let me explain his audience. In kind, let me explain his critics and customers. In kind, let me explain what I bought instead of what he sold. Let me tell you about the purchase-only experience. Let me tell you why broadly doesn’t fucking work, shyster. Easy fucking clearly faggot hack. Let me tell you how easy it is to listen and think elsewhere, see what you are. How you fucking hide like kids do. How one blowhard recognizes another. Back when we were kids. How one learns to be quiet and fails at small ugly chances. The mistakes that are in the past and hardly remembered unless someone shoots his defensive all-knowing mouth off. Faggots recognizing each other in a bar. Spotting. Not even cruising. That part where you keep being impenetrable, the part where you lean down to explain the parts where we’ll see each other as the start. Your lies, then. The part you explain that you can’t be anything other than honest that sounds politely like convincing. The idea that the priest that asks you whether or not you trust him rings back to “I did, before you asked me if I do.” How boring it is to hear the jokes you like. The ones you remember.
I’m saying “let me” because I already have. The first afterword is included with this edition as originally published. It’s about pornography. Which contains Brady.
Alan Bennett, 2014:
I spent yesterday roaming around the old haunts of my childhood, a time when I had a big brother and I was dreaming about being a footballer. I was thinking about all we had and all we could have been. I was also thinking about what we did not have and how we kids had to look out for each other when the people we had total love and trust for were not around. Times were hard, as they were for many other people, but looking at others in my street I knew we were struggling more than most. Then again, we had a bigger family than anyone else in the street.
We were just over a fortnight away from the day that would see the disappearance and murder of my big brother and the day that would change the rest of us forever.
As I was walking around I thought of the good times as well as the bad times. The memories of the bad times could not be stopped from dominating my thoughts, that has always been a losing battle for me. The good times were far too short; the bad times are still with us and will remain with us until some small peace of mind can be found by Keith’s return home.
I walked the same route Keith had taken with my mother up till the crossing at Stockport Road. The road he would have taken after that is long gone but I could still see it in my mind’s eye. Just as I could see the street Ian Brady lived on a little further down the road. I could also see the little side street Keith would have passed, the street Myra Hindley would park in whilst waiting for Brady to join her. The little side street that joined Brady’s street to the one Keith was walking along. It was the same route I had often walked with Keith before on the way to gran’s house.
Nearly fifty years on now and for nearly thirty of those years the search for Keith has continued in one form or another. I like to think I have done all I can when I can. I know there have been times when I could have done more, times when I have put too much faith in others, times when I have wanted to do more but have not been able to do so, times when I have messed up and times when I have done more than many thought possible. I like to think it all balances out in some way but Keith has still not been found.
I can only thank the people that have supported and helped me, especially the people that continue to do so to the present day. The ones I know but cannot name, the ones I know of but will probably never meet, the ones I will never know anything of but have played some part in the search for Keith.
I have met and spoken to Myra Hindley, I have spoken to David Smith, Brady still prefers to hide behind his doctors and supporters. Today I will write to him again asking for a meeting with him.20
The conversation about anything other than Keith has proven more successful than Alan may realize or admit. The forum he curates has individual sections on recent news reports and book discussions and while the community there often discuss details that aren’t directly related to the search of the moors and what Brady is tantalizingly keeping from the world, Mr. Bennett’s comments consistently bring the focus back to his singular purpose. Anything might be able to help and the public must be corralled there, knowingly or unknowingly. The index for the forum is split into three sections: Keith Bennett (subsections: Announcements, Keith Bennett’s story, Independent Searches, Police and Government Investigation, Tributes to Winnie, Anniversaries and Remembrance (“an area to remember Pauline, John, Keith, Lesley, Edward and their family members no longer with us”), Brady and Hindley, FAQ’s and Facts. In the Media (subsections: Books, Media Coverage and Documentaries, Open Letter (“To anybody in the media that may be interested”). Helping bring Keith Home (subsections: What can I do to Help? Writing to MPs and the Police). There is also a Timeline of Key Events (Comprehensive) that doesn’t allow posts from the public wherein “Carol has compiled a detailed Timeline of key events in the case and in the search for Keith as a resource for members looking to learn more.”
“Carol” is the author Carol Ann Lee. She is currently a moderator on the site along with Alan and regularly performs the task of final word on facts as well as policy. A January 2014 post from Carol in “Myra Hindley’s Arrest/Police photograph (1965)”:
I’ve deleted the photographs; we have a policy on no photographs of Brady and Hindley on this website.
I was told by the police themselves that it was a uniformed policeman who took the photograph of Hindley, and also the one of Brady. I was given his name too. But I don’t see that it matters who it was who took the photographs, to be honest. They are standard mugshots and the only thing that interested me about how they were taken was the spin Hindley put on the circumstances; she talked of being pushed down roughly in a chair, which simply never happened. But she claimed this was why she glared so defiantly at the camera—because she thought she was going to be beaten up. Nonsense, clearly.
People undoubtedly have a stronger reaction to Hindley’s mugshot than to Brady’s. It’s obviously simply because she was a woman, which I understand was how people felt in the 1960s, but it remains the case today which is more surprising. I find that very depressing—are we saying our expectations of men are so low when it comes to crime and children? That we find it relatively easy to accept men will commit such horrific crimes against children but we still can’t bring ourselves to believe it of women?21
Carol, like Alan, usually leaves the public to talk about the case among themselves, absenting themselves from most discussions where punters detail opinions, theories and obsessions. They moderate to the cause—in Carol’s case, more to the research she has expertly and tirelessly completed—and delete or caution any interest in serial killer fandom.
A forum discussion of Gates of Janus started here:
Has anyone read Ian Brady’s book, “The Gates of Janus”?
I haven’t read it. The idea of reading a book written by a serial killer about serial killers is a bit too frightening for me. But I thought his book might be useful for law enforcement officers, psychiatrists, doctors and researchers who want to understand how a psychopath’s mind operates.
On Amazon, I saw reviews harassing people who were interested in buying Brady’s book. They were calling them names and accusing
them of helping Brady make money off his crimes.
Although I’m not interested in reading Brady’s book, I disagreed with the harassers. You see, I’m an American. In the US, we have laws that prohibit criminals from making money from their crimes by writing books, etc. If a criminal writes a book and sells it to a publisher, the money is supposed to go to the victims or the victims’ families.
“The Gates of Janus” is a good reason for the UK to pass a law prohibiting criminals from profiting from their crimes too.22
And largely, sadly, stayed there. Mostly about Brady’s pay for the book and what could be gleaned from Brady to the task always at hand. Devolved into the possibility that Brady’s “memoirs” would have pertinent information for those uninterested in knowing Brady’s ramblings:
Lady V (Consultant Admin): Unfortunately with Brady, (as Ab (Alan Bennett) has mentioned in a list of things above), he comes across as being a pathological liar. He exaggerates just how awful his life really is when in fact it’s unlikely that even half of it is true.
I know that he was translating books into Braille (for the blind) but wasn’t able to do this anymore. I read somewhere that this was because of Ashworth taking away his resources but I think it’s probable that his failing eyesight made it rather impossible for him to continue with this.
I agree that this form of translation is exceptional, however once again it doesn’t make the man a genius in my eyes.