Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  The lover

  Ian’s father is unknown - his unmarried mother said that he was a Glasgow journalist who died when she was six months pregnant. Ian would later see his illegitimacy as a source of shame, for it was considered a stigma in those unenlightened days.

  For the first three months of his life he lived with his mother Maggie (who would later change her name to Peggy) in a slum tenement in the Glasgow Gorbals, being left with whoever she could find whilst she waitressed nights in a tearoom. It was an exhausting life, and when she could no longer cope she placed an advert describing herself as a working widow who needed someone to adopt her child.

  A Mrs Sloan took three-month-old Ian on and took him back to the house she shared with her husband, two sons and two daughters. She was a nice woman who suffered from slight deafness - a deafness that would increase over the years and make her relationship with Ian increasingly difficult. Even as a young baby he was much less outgoing than her other children had been.

  As a child Ian was intelligent and dominant and - like many working class schoolchildren before him - very bored. He took to burglary whilst still at primary school, presumably as a means to obtain funds (the Sloans were kind and respectable but poor), to feel stimulated and to have status. At sixteen he was put on probation and ordered to rejoin his natural mother Peggy who had remarried and now lived in Manchester.

  This was the first time he’d been told that Peggy was his mother - throughout his childhood he’d been told that she was a close family friend. Due to her move from Glasgow to Manchester he had had only sporadic contact with her for the previous four years.

  In Manchester the locals laughed at his Scottish accent and his stepfather threatened to hit him if he got into any more trouble. The man also found him a labouring job in a market. Once again, he felt like an outsider and spent much of his spare time reading in his room. After loading some stolen lead onto a lorry he was charged again and given the harsh sentence of two years in Borstal. By now he was filled with resentment at society and wanted to make others suffer as he had done.

  Myra studied the sullenly handsome youth as he gave her dictation in the office they shared together and was exalted every time he took a sly look at her.

  The solitary Brady remained alternatively embarrassed and aloof for month after month but eventually kissed her after an office night out then asked her on a date to see a film. One source states that they went to see Trial At Nuremberg. Another suggests it was a movie about the life of Jesus but this seems unlikely as the free-thinking Ian had been an atheist from the age of twelve. A third source says that the film was El Cid. Whatever his preferred choice, one thing is certain - Myra wildly enthused about it. She had been infatuated with Brady for almost a year and this was her chance to win his love.

  Myra had been looking for something to fill her largely pointless life - and now she had found it. She soaked up Ian’s philosophy (which was often racist, violent and simplistic) as if she were a sponge. She read every book he gave her, including the true murder story Compulsion and other texts about the strong overcoming the weak.

  At one stage he literally overcame her by drugging her drink. Semi-conscious, she could remember intense pain and flashing lights. When she came to he admitted that he had put some of her grandmother’s sleeping pills in her wine to see how long she’d be sedated. He added that he was thinking of disposing of his sick dog in this way.

  Shocked and frightened, Myra went to her friend May Hill and told her some of the details. She was too embarrassed to talk openly about the entire incident so wrote it down for her friend, adding that if something bad happened to her then May was to take the letter to the police. She added that Ian had threatened harm to three other people she knew - probably her mother, her gran, and Ronnie Sinclair, the boy to whom she had previously been engaged.

  Deciding that she had to get away, Myra applied to the NAAFI for a clerical job in Germany. She took the train to London for the interview - and when she came back Ian was waiting for her. He accompanied her home where she told her mother and gran that she’d got the job, but they weren’t impressed at the prospects that this offered her. Instead they were very upset at the thought of her moving abroad and she loved them so much she decided to stay. She continued to date Ian, riding pillion on his motorbike. He took her away from the cramped streets of Manchester’s Gorton to enjoy picnics and wine on the moors.

  Soon she told May to destroy the letter - though May would testify to its content at the trial. By now Myra had clearly decided to comply with whatever this fascinating but very dangerous lover wanted her to do. This included dyeing her hair blonde and parading about in leather boots in the manner of the female Nazi Concentration Camp guard, Irma Grese.

  Forging our own identity is part of growing up, and the rage-filled philosophy Ian Brady fed Myra was a million miles away from the ‘meet a nice boy and have kids’ option spouted by those around her. But his handsome features, soft Scottish voice and autodidactism made him far more attractive than her unambitious family, so Myra started to remould herself as her lover wished.

  She had given him her virginity on their second date (she was nineteen) and soon agreed to have anal sex with him, despite the fact that it hurt her. Serial killers and power rapists often prefer forced sodomy and oral sex to vaginal sex as it demeans the victim more.

  On other occasions Brady told her to insert a candle into his anus and then to masturbate him. It may be that he was abused as a child - he certainly spent lots of time alone out of doors as a child feeling different and slighted, a demeanour which would have made him vulnerable to paedophile seduction. The candle incident with Myra might have been his way of trying to take control of such homo-erotic actions forced on him as a child or during his Borstal years. He was clearly concerned only with his own internal script, but couldn’t fail to note that she didn’t seem to mind.

  Before long Ian moved into Myra’s gran’s house permanently, though they told the neighbours that he slept on the settee and was there to confront any burglars. (There had been many burglaries in the area.) In reality they slept together though Ian quickly tired of conventional sex.

  Myra would later describe him as ‘a powerful personality’ and write that she was ‘unworldly… a dreamer, a romantic.’ Whatever her true motive, she was letting herself be turned into a woman who would do whatever her lover wanted.

  Even at this stage she could have been saved. Many youths feel understandably alienated from the families they’re born into. Many want something different and temporarily seek it in the occult, in religion, in the music of alienation or in arcane philosophies. Later they move on to find fulfilment in a career, sport or other interest instead.

  Given her childhood experiences, we can perhaps understand why the teenage Myra agreed with Brady’s talk of killing for thrills - because the existentialism of it all made her feel superior to her peers who thought only of boyfriends and bingo. Her talking about murder also pleased Ian, something that she was desperate to do. She even allowed him to carry her about on the moors as practice for when he had a dead body to dispose of - and she took shooting lessons when he fantasized about them robbing a bank. But then she took the step that would cut her off from most human understanding: she helped him realise his murderous plans.

  The first victim

  The pair had talked for months about abducting someone for Ian to rape, with his insistence that rape was just a state of mind rather than a criminal act. He looked down on most of the uneducated people who surrounded him and wanted to crush them like ants.

  In July 1963 Ian asked twenty-one-year-old Myra to get him a child because a child would happily go off with a woman. Myra obligingly parked her van and waited for a likely victim to walk past. Soon she saw sixteen-year-old Pauline Reade, who lived just two doors away from Myra’s brother-in-law, David. The teenage David had recently married Myra’s little sister Maureen and they would soon produce their first child. Pauline was on her
way to a dance a mere half mile away from the home she shared with her mum and dad.

  Myra called to Pauline and asked if she’d accompany her on a drive to the moors to look for an expensive lost glove. She promised Pauline some gramophone records as a reward for helping in the search, saying that she had them in the boot of the car. It was a lovely summer night - and Pauline wasn’t sure that her friends would be at the dance - so she said she was in no hurry and happily agreed to the change of plan. Myra drove the unsuspecting girl to Saddleworth Moor and Ian followed a discreet distance behind on his motorbike.

  We will never know exactly what was said and done to the frightened teenager when the threesome met up - but by the end of the evening she had been raped by Ian Brady and had her throat cut by him. She struggled so hard that he found her difficult to control and would request that Myra procure him a younger and smaller victim next time.

  Now he fetched Myra and a spade from the van and led her back to the body. (Her variously reported reactions to this are detailed later in this chapter.) They buried the still warm corpse in a shallow grave. Myra then drove them home and Ian burned his clothes and shoes to destroy any forensic evidence.

  Like many criminals, Myra was fascinated by police work - and would now apply to join the force. She went for an interview, which she passed, and was given forms to fill in. Ian joked that it would be useful to have inside information and it was then, she said, that she decided not to take her application further. But she would later date a policeman who came to buy her van, seeing him on nights when Ian was otherwise engaged. Ian went to see his birth mother Peggy every week, but wouldn’t let Myra meet her. Even if she drove him to Peggy’s house, she had to wait outside in the car. It was yet another subtle form of his sadism, making it clear to her that she wasn’t special enough to be introduced as his girlfriend.

  The second victim

  Four months later Ian decided it was time to kill again. Myra bought the knife. The pair then offered twelve-year-old John Kilbride a lift home from the cinema. He knew not to accept lifts from strangers but thought he was safe because Myra was driving. He, too, was taken to a desolate part of the moor and raped by Ian Brady, who also admitted slapping the boy’s buttocks before strangling him. Myra stayed, acting as look-out, in the van.

  Brady later told her that he’d wanted to cut the child’s throat but that the knife wasn’t sharp enough so he strangled him with a thin piece of string. The boy’s remains were found in October 1965, two years after his death.

  The third victim

  Seven months passed before the third death, that of another twelve-year-old, Keith Bennett. He’d gone to spend the night with his grandmother, a regular occurrence. Myra and Ian encountered him before he reached his gran’s house, offered him a lift and drove him to the moors. He too was raped by Brady before being strangled. Despite extensive police searches with tracker dogs and specialist equipment, his body has never been found.

  The fourth victim

  Ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey died six months later, on Boxing Day 1964. In Beyond Belief, his book on the subject, author Emlyn Williams suggests that the day before, Ian had suggested he wanted to commit another murder but that Myra had refused to take part in it. He then packed his suitcase, suggesting the relationship was over, and she relented as she couldn’t live without him. He had become her life.

  In truth, it’s more likely that this incident took place some time after the first murder, that of Pauline Reade. At the time Emlyn Williams wrote his book in 1967 he didn’t know for sure that Ian was responsible for the disappearance of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett so - though he mentions both children in the Appendix - his account begins with the murder of John Kilbride.

  Given the evidence that was to follow, there was no doubt that they were responsible for Lesley’s demise. The ten-year-old had been at the fun fair when she accepted a lift home from the friendly-seeming couple. They took her back to the house (Myra’s gran was visiting relatives) and told her to take off her clothes apart from her socks and shoes.

  Then they set up a tripod and began to take pornographic photographs of her. They ordered her to stand and sit in various sexually explicit poses, tied her hands together and gagged her with a man’s scarf. Ian hoped to sell the photographs on the black market - he had taken previous shots of himself and Myra wearing hoods in similar states of undress.

  Ian switched his taperecorder on and this seventeen minute tape would later be played back in court to a shocked jury. Serial killers often make audio or video recording of their victims during their ordeal, using the tapes afterwards as a masturbatory aid.

  The tape starts with a scream, unclear voices then another scream. Then Lesley says ‘Don’t… Please God, help me.’ Brady is heard telling her to do as she’s told. The little girl says that she has to go home as her mum is expecting her and Myra snaps ‘Don’t dally.’ Lesley says to Myra ‘Help me, will you?’ When the child refuses to be gagged Myra says ‘Shut up or I’ll forget myself and hit you one,’ then ‘Will you stop it? Stop it!’ She orders the girl to put the handkerchief back into her mouth.

  The child is heard to be retching because the handkerchief is being pushed down her throat. The jurors would later be handed photograph albums of the crime scene to study. Some of the snapshots showed Lesley with a scarf tied tightly around her mouth and with what appears to be the corner of handkerchief sticking out from under it. An observer at the trial suggested that at another stage Ian or Myra had filled the little girl’s mouth with cotton wool and gagged her with tape.

  Myra says that she was out of the room when Lesley’s murder occurred - but Ian was earlier heard on the tape in Myra’s presence, threatening to slit the child’s throat, so she must have known that the child’s death was imminent. He apparently then told Myra to run a bath as he wanted to wash the child clean of any forensic evidence. When she returned to the bedroom the child was dead and had blood on her thighs, indicating that she’d been raped.

  Emlyn Williams, who has seen the photographs, said that the child looks subdued. He believes that the abuse heard on the tape took place first and that only then were the photographs taken. He adds that the poses are like ballet poses, only pornographic to the corrupt eye. The child had been told to stretch out her arms in one photograph - he believes that’s where the erroneous rumours about her crucifixion started. When the body was found the innards had been gnawed at by rats and this led to false suggestions that she’d been disembowelled whilst still alive. This misinformation has persisted over the years so that these murders are almost invariably described as torture murders. But Detective Peter Topping said in his autobiography that there’s no proof that torture was involved - though, as he rightly adds, gagging and raping a child involves causing tortuous fear and suffering.

  With a captive child in the house, Myra couldn’t let her gran return at 9pm. It was after eleven before she turned up at her uncle’s house to find the old woman asleep in her chair. Myra appeared flushed and out of breath to her relatives. She told them that she couldn’t drive her gran home as the weather was too bad. They disagreed as there had only been a flurry of snow but Myra was insistent that they put the old lady up on the bed settee and she’d return for her tomorrow if the roads were clear.

  The next day Ian and Myra took Lesley’s body to the moor and buried it alongside her clothes and the string of white plastic beads that her brother had given her for Christmas. Ten months later, in October 1965, the body was found by the police who saw an arm sticking eerily through the soil.

  The last victim

  Edward Evans was Myra and Ian’s last victim simply because Ian became arrogant and decided to involve a third party. Like most serial killers he had increased in confidence as his killing spree progressed and may have started to feel above the law, invincible. The unwilling voyeur was Myra’s brother-in-law, seventeen-year-old David Smith.

  David was enamoured of Ian’s talk about robbing banks - and loved
to drink and smoke all night with him. He too had been starved of love and education so was hugely interested in the daytrips to the moors offered by his new friend and by the books by the Marquis de Sade that Ian lent him. The two men became close and Ian clearly thought that David could become another Myra, helping him lure more victims to their deaths.

  Myra was totally against bringing David Smith in. She didn’t like him and didn’t particularly trust him. And she hadn’t wanted her little sister Maureen to marry him.

  Maureen, for her part, was noticing that her adoring older sister Myra had changed. Outwardly she’d grown harder, agreeing with Ian that marriage was meaningless and that motherhood was for fools. But Myra had also become nervous and insisted on sleeping with the lights on when it got too late to go home and she had to share her sister’s bed. She also anxiously told a neighbour not to talk about pregnancy in front of Ian as he’d become enraged.

  Ian’s rage was about to intensify for the very last time. He and Myra went out looking for a victim and eventually met seventeen-year-old Edward Evans outside a bar. The couple asked him back to their house, saying that they were brother and sister. Back home, they found that Myra’s gran was in bed so Ian began to ply the boy with drink. Edward was a slim young man who was all dressed up for the evening, an apprentice engineer who was shy with girls.

  It’s apparent that the three of them had sex - for David Smith had seen Myra dressed up earlier that day, yet when he saw her that night she had on very old clothes so she must have changed sometime after luring Edward back to her gran’s house. It would never be known if she was the sexual bait that lured the youth to the house or if Ian was. The bar that Edward had been to was a homosexual haunt and most newspapers automatically assumed that he was homosexual. But when his body was found there was an old letter from a girl in his trouser pocket that clearly meant a great deal to him.