by Ian Brady
Miss Lieven asked Brady: “If you are transferred back to prison you will try to commit suicide, is that right?”
He replied: “I have been asked the question repeatedly. I have answered hypothetically from all angles. In prison you are a monkey in a cage being poked with a stick. How can you pretend to be omnipotent? You cannot make plans when you have no freedom of control, movement or anything. As I say, a monkey in a cage being poked by a stick.
“You cannot talk sensibly about anything with a question like that.”80
The Tribunal accepted the comment of Dr. Collins that it is a difficult exercise even for those who are monitoring him on a 24-hour basis. The Tribunal therefore did not accept that Mr. Brady’s present mental condition was simply due to his personality disorders. The Tribunal accepted that its nature is of a chronic psychotic illness namely schizophrenia. The restricted lifestyle explained by Mr. Sheppard is indicative of the profound effect which it has upon him and which makes it appropriate that he should receive treatment.
David Smith’s difficult sad story has been told before. Life as hated by various rushes to judgment and suspicion. The same story with more added responsibility when the pragmatic view of where the crimes stopped had been reshaped as culture reached tolerance levels set on empathetic. Myra’s biographies follow the same formula. More and more repeats, not facts, not confessions, but prison letters and confidant gossip rolling over each other collecting bits and pieces of tawdry personalities until the Ian Brady mosaics for the forever dumb, terminally uncurious who read every book as they come out, stops. The casual reader can always choose from the many offers of a perfectly nice history. Brady counts more than 30 books on him and Myra and Smith and Lesley. But definitive is impossible. The story has been written and is now repulsive, deeply perverse. Sick on itself. Scum added to the phenomenally overwhelming official news reports on the Web whereas before one only moved from newspaper to collected newspaper clipping.
The one book that is held up above all else is the Brady autobiography hidden away waiting for the fucker to die. And Brady is incapable of telling his story if his leaked letters are the tease. He’s seeing himself traveling to the U.S. and forming criminal enterprise gang networks. Probable that in Gates of Janus, not telling the story is the story. The exact story of someone who knows and remembers what he can’t tell, doesn’t see what he should have memorized correctly, can’t fucking tell you at least.
Leaves it up to Keightley, guilty from the start, asking the wrong questions.
Keith Bennett’s body will be described after the murder and rape within or without it. Where he dropped it. They dropped it. Not so you could all go looking to dig the sludge up.
Eddie wasn’t trade. Unless it includes access. Myra looked sympathetic to the boy who wanted her to be. Gays before they had anyone other than suffering sympathetic sisters. Girls, kind as mothers should be, who indulged sad tragedies like coming hurt and loneliness for their love-deserving bent brothers.
David Smith was trade. The bars run by gangland boys who were coming into their own. Watching the shit that came to the strip joints and faggot hole pubs and bought the crap they’d slip under the counter looking like you wanted to jerk off to the fat made-up cunts they had their slope-head kids with.
The music and art weren’t important. The gender confusion movies and kitchen-sink dramas. The culture was watching the hard boys in the same bus you were. Seeing how they didn’t care as much as you were taught. Has an effect. Excellent conditions for dreaming and drinking.
Mr. West wants the “monster” to remain in a maximum security hospital.
He told ITV’s Daybreak: “(Brady is) definitely mental.
“He should stay where he is because he’ll get all the punishment he deserves rather than all the freedom of a prison.
“He’s just a monster.”
Asked how it felt to hear him describe the child murders as ‘recreational,’ he said: “That was a sickening joke… only a madman would say that. It was sickening, it really upset me.
“Keep that tube up his nose, fill it with gasoline.”81
In her opinion, he is managed in a non-confrontational way that has helped to keep him reasonably cooperative and it has allowed him to feel he is in some way in control. This helps to keep him generally calm, cooperative and relatively content.
The definitive photograph is one of many, announcing only one was needed. The distributor is, following the rich history carelessly, her mother. Bitter, carefully. Fred Harrison started his 1987 book with an introduction about child murder as an epidemic and then, after he breaks the news that Brady has confessed to more murders than he had been charged and sentenced for, Harrison says that he owes his drive for the truth to Amos and Joan Reade. The first in line before Winnie and Alan. Alan contributed the following thought on his Fred Harrison portion of his brother’s forum:
This was more of Brady’s book of lies and accusations than Harrison’s book. The meeting between them did, however, lead to Brady’s hint about Keith and Pauline. Shame Brady closed all the doors afterwards to the people he should have spoken to, but not surprising. The doors were then flung open to every creep who attached themselves to Brady for their and his benefit. Let’s hope they follow him to his ultimate destination. Shame on the lot of them.82
After calling for a ban on Brady’s book in 2001, Danny Kilbride supported the 2005 TV drama on the Moors Murders. Brady did not and echoed Kilbride’s thoughts on enduring family impact.
2001, Danny Kilbride:
“It’s wrong. Anyone who has committed such crimes as he has committed should not be allowed to do this in the first place, not only Brady but anybody.
“They’re actually building up a small fortune for when they are released, if ever they are released, which is wrong in my view. They are in there as a punishment, not to amass a small fortune. In Brady’s case, there has been some publicity saying that his mother will receive the money. Well, I appeal to Brady’s mother not to accept this money because I certainly couldn’t. If it was one of my children I would be ashamed. She didn’t do it herself, and you can’t help what your children do as they get older. You bring them up to the best of your capabilities, but when they get to a certain age they will do as they please. But for someone in her position…I mean if I was destitute I couldn’t accept this money, I would have to pass it on to the NSPCC or even victims of the American tragedy.
“It’s degrading to the families of his victims that Brady should be allowed to get away with this. They are saying there is no legal challenge that can stop the book, but how far is it going to go?
“After the book about Mary Bell (a child who murdered two toddlers in 1968), the government said it wouldn’t happen again, prisoners making money by a book. But it’s happening now. And they are just opening the floodgates as far as I am concerned.”83
2005, “Brady Objects to TV Murders Drama”:
Moors murderer Ian Brady has protested over plans for a television drama about his crimes of four decades ago. The 67-year-old has written to the chairman of Granada Television, the company planning to film the story. He says publicity about his crimes is “now rivalling Coronation Street in longevity,” and questions the show’s impact on the families of his victims.
Brady has no legal powers to halt the programme, but is seeking support from government ministers. He says he has sent copies of his letter to the home secretary and attorney general.
“The true facts have never been divulged, only speculation in numerous books,” he says. “The only book written by me is a clinical study on criminal psychology.”
There have been previous attempts to produce films about the Moors Murders, but to date no major drama of the story has been produced. “In all four attempts, the companies involved judiciously took the legal precaution of offering me a release contract,” he tells the Granada chairman. “Your company has not.”
Granada has said that its programme, a factual drama, i
s the result of two years of intensive research with detectives who worked on the original murder investigation.
But Brady says he fears the programme will be based on the “uninformed evidence of peripheral individuals” and he challenges evidence given in court in 1966 about how the police actually solved the case.
Brady questions whether the planned drama is in the public interest, and claims it “ignores the effect on relatives of the victims.”84
Professor Gournay acknowledged that whether the care being provided by the hospital amounted to “appropriate treatment” was for him a very difficult topic. He repeated the comments which he had made in his reports that he considered that Mr. Brady is in an environment where there is plentiful available treatment but that it is not appropriate to him and that Mr. Brady is simply being detained. In his examination in chief, he was asked for his reason for concluding that he did not view the regime described by Mr. Sheppard as being “appropriate treatment.” He explained that care can be provided to manage behaviour in different settings and that there has been a considerable rapid evolution in psychiatric nursing not only in hospitals but also in other settings which include but is not exclusively in the prisons. This led him to express his opinion in these terms: “I am unable to see how the management interventions are really impacting on the disorder itself. They provide a framework of management, but I can’t see how they constitute appropriate treatment.” It appears to the Tribunal that it is the fact that the care does not impact on the disorders which caused Professor Gournay to reject the suggestion that it was “appropriate treatment.”
Brady in Harrison’s book tells the author that he can’t talk about the details. The blocks will come down. The book Harrison released was finished during the years that Brady now says he was malingering. This was the time, repeated in the transcripts of the tribunal hearings, as sacrosanct. This is the period when Brady’s madness had got the better of him and is the time that Ashworth uses against him to suggest he isn’t in control of his health. That his insanity was clear then and may or may not be creeping somewhere lower without his or his doctor’s ability to recognize that which definitely did happen then, might occur again. Whether or not Brady is lying now is a matter for language experts, not doctors, since the proof is labeled clearly by the law that decided to move him from prison to hospital. He wants to return to prison but his choice, or his insanity, smears any further options as unreadable. Try as he might to say he was lying then, he only looks like a liar that no one has to trust or forgive. What he was playing with was, yet fucking again, too big to weigh future consequences against current want. Not spoiled. Not even demanding. Just confused. Officially.
He then looked briefly at each of the possible disorders in turn and concluded that he did not think one could treat the level of narcissism that Mr. Brady exhibited. He considered that so far as antisocial personality disorder was concerned the regime was such as he managed those who manage him. As for a paranoid personality disorder he concluded the same applied. When asked about mental illness he expressed the view that “the hospital’s case comes down to the care provided by the staff allows Mr. Brady to control or manage his own mental illness.” He went on to add, “If he was remitted to prison, then he would be likely to relapse very quickly.” But he then expressed this view: “I don’t think his mental illness is being managed by Ashworth. I think there are occasions when he may be experiencing hallucinations but I don’t think they are being managed in any way which you could call ‘appropriate treatment’.”
This hope that has gone on since Brady lied. Admitting as if you could trust an admission. This concept that Myra wasn’t involved in the murders. As if she stood by the car while the victims were marched away. Quietly even. A hope that kind and foolish children would not have been frightened. Or a wish from a twisted invert that they must have cried and fought and worried, worried sexually. That noises weren’t producing responses. Responses of, if not curiosity, then physical excitement. That, like obscenity, demanded some lessening confusion in separating want from need and sense from duty. Like an animal. Like a pair of animals, one discovering herself even. The concept that will play like blame and revenge ever since it stopped sounding romantic: that Brady was exonerating Myra from personal guilt and further charges. Which he admitted in letters and then repeated to Harrison.
How, darling, did you make him know you were in, all in?
You don’t need proof for trade.
It follows that the Tribunal reject the contention that the way in which Ashworth Hospital is providing for Mr. Brady amounts to no more than containment.
If Ann West is to be believed, that she wanted to show how bad what happened to Lesley really could be if you went beyond the pull-backs and disgusting sensitivity in your vicarious fearful pain for the children and sickening fandom of the mysterious monsters. If she were to be taken seriously. If it’s possible to view a child being raped and not think differently about the words. Differently sounds like this: The first time I ever saw child pornography, I knew that it wasn’t sex. Knew it wasn’t for cash even. Knew that pain was being caused. And murder was less than that. Not more. And certainly a killer would understand that. And he could tell you. What was petty. What was existential. They had mouths and talking was the last thing you’d want from that. Literally. Proved. Ann West knew the effects and was done fucking telling you. You won’t walk away from it. And, really, you can’t imagine it. You shouldn’t have to imagine a thing when there is proof. After I was arrested for child pornography, the only possession charges that could legally stand against me were if a clear crime had been committed as discerned directly within the photographs. A naked girl in a car wasn’t clear because there was no adult in the picture. Close-ups weren’t allowed as evidence if age couldn’t be seen against size.
In October of 2005, The Telegraph published a letter “obtained” from Brady.
“Contrary to popular perception, the so-called Moors Murders were merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964. The exercise originated from frustration with ‘reliables’ who were continually being arrested for embroilments in trivial crimes and causing delay in our mercenary objectives.
“So the final ten months of our freedom in 1965 were entirely preoccupied with return to mercenary priorities, re-organising logistics and eradicating liabilities.”
“All these facts testify that the Moors Murders ended in December 1964, and that throughout 1965 we were hurrying to make up for wasted time, cutting reliance on others down to the bone, with Myra doubling as driver and sole reliable armed backup.
“All we required was a ‘mule’ to pick up and carry during robberies.”85
In December of 2005, The Telegraph reported on newly released files of evidence from the 1966 trial. Originally ordered sealed to 2067, four files were released after journalists issued a “freedom of information request.” Some of the witness statements had been excluded, as well as some of the original photographs placed in evidence, deemed too graphic by “civil servants at the Lord Chancellor’s Department.” An additional file that included photographs of the bodies of Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride was not released and will be unsealed as originally intended, one hundred years after the trial.
Included in the files were the transcripts of the original police statements from Pat Hodges. Pat told the police that she had never been assaulted or “interfered with” by Ian and Myra and visited them often. She did not know she was being tape-recorded as she read the newspaper accounts of the missing children to Ian and Myra. The 11-year-old said the couple let her drink alcohol (“whiskey, gin and wine”) and had been to the Moors with Ian and Myra on the night before Lesley Ann was murdered.
“I had some of the wine, it was given to me sometimes by Myra and sometimes by Brady, I had it from the bottle.
“I used to go to the house very regularly after I got to know them, I have had wine there, when I had it there I had i
t in a glass, I just used to have my glass filled up. I would have about four glasses of wine on a visit to the house.”
And:
Lesley Ann’s stepfather, Alan West, 67, said: “Little Pat Hodges was amazingly lucky. Why Brady didn’t kill her, only he knows. It could have been because she could be linked to him and the fact she lived so close, but Hindley also knew Pauline Reade and that didn’t stop him from killing her. Pat truly is one of the luckiest women alive.”86
Brady’s use of existential as a term for the murders shouldn’t be confused with him also finding a godless world unworkable. He shouldn’t be misread by those insisting that he was a pedophile finding release in rape rather than riddance. Those creating his drive as sexual, as madness, as indifferent and base and morally subversive or bitter rage display all the worst aspects of what they want and missrather than him. They, not him, have been humping and heaping and digging for nothing worth anything more than the filth in their own filth.
Miss Lieven Q.C. questioned Mr. Brady about three topics: his reasons for wanting to leave Ashworth Hospital, his reasons for wishing to go to prison and what he knew about current facilities in prison. His answers were not clear. Dealing with the first, he said that when he was transferred into Ashworth Hospital it was a progressive hospital under the Home Office. When it became a Trust, it became a prison where security was the priority. That was not official policy he said, but was covert and the Prison Officers Association took over and turned it into a penal warehouse. Miss Lieven Q.C. refined her question and asked what it was about the regime on the ward which he finds so difficult but again his response really did not attempt to answer the question. She changed to ask the second question; his reasons for wishing to go to prison. He referred to the circumstances in which he had been transferred from Jade Ward on 30th September 1999 before she put the question again. This time he responded that he was under no illusions: “I’ll never see the conditions that I experienced at Durham special security wing with such characters the Krays and the train robbers and such. I willnever see those excellent conditions again. I won’t even see again the good conditions I experienced personally at Wormwood Scrubs.” She tried again by drawing his attention to Professor Gournay about improvements and deteriorations within prisons and asked if he did not think conditions would be as good as they had been in Durham in the 1960s, why did he want to go? He replied, “I don’t know. There may be pockets that I don’t know about.” No clearer answer was given. Miss Lieven Q.C. tried a different tack by inviting his attention to specific aspects of prison life. Firstly, she asked him about being in a cell for many hours and the possibility of segregation. He said he had previously dealt with it and had to keep his vocal cords in order by reciting. He then wandered from the topic before being brought back again and he responded by saying that one adapts to the reality. He was asked about leaving some of the staff with whom he got on. He accepted that it was a possibility that a consequent feeling of distress could affect his mental condition but he would have to plan ahead. It was pointed out that prison staff may be less tolerant to his abusive and difficult behaviour and what is likely to be a more rigid disciplined system in prison. He said he had always dealt with it. If he encountered someone who tried to provoke him, he would deal with them “by writing immediately to the right people.”