One of Your Own Page 29
‘Just depends who I was with.’
Tyrrell asked, ‘Who else has taken a photograph of you on the moors?’
Myra stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Who else has taken a photograph of you on the moors other than Brady?’
‘What do you mean?’ she repeated.
‘It’s quite simple. Who else has taken a photograph of you on the moors?’
Myra said slowly, ‘You say these are on the moors, do you?’
‘Yes,’ Tyrrell said. ‘They were taken on Saddleworth Moor above Greenfield.’
‘Possible.’
Tyrrell repeated, ‘Who else took photographs of you on the moor?’
‘Well, Smith could have taken this. I can’t remember.’
Tyrrell placed a photograph taken by Ian near Lesley’s grave next to the one of Myra with Puppet on the moor. ‘The ground in the area of both photographs was dug up and immediately beneath where you are crouching the body of John Kilbride was found.’
Myra responded sarcastically, ‘So there could be bodies all over where I’ve stood then.’ Tyrrell continued the discussion about the photographs, despite Myra’s constant parrying. At one point he told her: ‘I suggest to you that the purpose of these photographs was to locate the graves again and satisfy yourselves that the ground hadn’t been disturbed.’
‘They have no significance for me,’ she said categorically.
‘Are you suggesting—’
Myra interrupted: ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I can’t remember when it was taken. We’ve taken photographs all over the place.’
At half past four, Tyrrell left and Myra was offered tea. Mattin wanted to discuss Maureen’s statement, in which she said Myra had been a different person before she had met Ian. Myra bristled: ‘I made all my own decisions. People go through several stages in their lives. After discussions, they change their minds. Ian never made me do anything I didn’t want to do. All that about killing is bloody rubbish.’ Then she asked, ‘What time did Smith say he left our house that night?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mattin said, ‘but it was very late.’
‘It was about 3 a.m. or just after,’ Myra told him. ‘And what time did he go to the police? They tell me it was sometime after he left our house. Well, obviously he was getting his story straight.’
‘If you say he’s responsible for these deaths, let’s be knowing just what it is that you know.’
‘I’m not saying any more, except that he brought her to the house with another man and Smith took her away with the other man,’ Myra said, repeating Ian’s story about Lesley Ann Downey. The interview continued until quarter past six. A plate of ham sandwiches and more tea were brought in for Myra.
Twenty minutes later, Mounsey began questioning Ian about John Kilbride again but could get nothing out of him and ended the interview at ten to seven, fuming at Ian’s silence.
At twenty past seven, Tyrrell resumed his questioning of Myra, asking her about visits to Ashton market and what she knew about John Kilbride.29 She interrupted him: ‘Ian didn’t kill Kilbride and I didn’t kill Kilbride. I never set eyes on Kilbride before.’
‘Since you and Brady have been together, has he, so far as you know, ever been out on his own?’
‘Never,’ Myra said. ‘Wherever he has gone, I have gone.’
And that was the end of the interview. Myra sat back and refused to answer any further questions. She was taken to a waiting room and left with two police guards while detectives converged to discuss what would happen next. At one point, Myra and Ian were brought into an interview room together, where other detectives were able to view them without being seen. A microphone was plugged into a wall socket with a wire leading back into the viewing room. But neither of them said anything incriminating and they were separated again before the final stage of the strategy was put into place.
Mike Massheder recalls, ‘The night before I’d been up till about two o’clock in the morning under Joe’s instructions. “Make up a book of photographs,” he said, “of all these moorland scenes, and in among them I want Lesley’s grave and the photographs of Lesley’s body being exhumed, I want John’s grave and the photos of John’s body being exhumed. Muddle them up, so we don’t know what’s coming when we turn the pages.” Now, I frightened myself to bits making this book up. It shook me, and there’s not a lot I haven’t seen. But the idea was to present them with one of their landscape photos and ask, “Do you recognise this scene?”, then on the next page present them with a grisly photograph of the victim in order to get Myra, especially, to break down. Even just a look of revulsion would have been something.’30
At ten to eight, Myra was taken into the interview room, where Massheder watched her covertly from behind a glass. Mounsey entered the room with Detective Inspector Leach and dropped the book of photographs on the desk. He began turning the pages – one, then another and another, presenting her with the terrible images of the dead children.
Myra jerked her head away and said, ‘I don’t want to see any more.’31 Mounsey turned another page and pushed the book further towards her.
Myra shouted, ‘Take them away! I’m not looking at them.’
Mounsey stepped back from the desk and began pacing up and down the room, chanting, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me . . .’
Myra bent her head, but she did not break down. She set her mouth in a firm line and said nothing. At ten past eight, Mounsey left the room, exhausted.
‘It didn’t work,’ Massheder admits. ‘They tried the same thing on Ian, but it was just a complete waste of time. I was in the viewing room, minding the tape recorder. It wasn’t really cricket to set up a stunt like that, but we were desperate. They were just blank, the pair of them. Not willing to answer anything, not willing to engage in any way. Blank. Was it self-protection or arrogance? Arrogance certainly with Brady. With Myra . . . I don’t know. She came across as very cold and heartless.’32
Myra had withstood the interrogation better than her lover. The police had the photograph of her stooping over John Kilbride’s grave but couldn’t prove that she knew the boy was buried there; they knew she had hired a car for the day of his abduction but couldn’t prove where she had driven it; the police had the tape recording, but that didn’t prove she was present at Lesley’s murder; and she was present when Edward Evans was killed but did not participate in his death.33 Ian, on the other hand, had told police that he’d taken the photograph of Myra on John Kilbride’s grave knowingly; he confessed to taking the photographs of Lesley and knowing where she was buried; he admitted hitting Edward with the axe; he conceded to having written the found disposal plan; and he agreed he had discussed burying bodies on the moor with David Smith. Despite his years of careful study and his obsession with eliminating all signs of ‘forensic’, Ian had failed. The police were able to draw more from him than from Myra.
Pat Clayton, who spent endless hours with Myra during the investigation, recalled: ‘Myra was a hard, arrogant woman. She had no compassion for children, she had nothing. She would not say anything . . . During the interview someone put on the table in the interview room a poster of John Kilbride. And her lunch was brought in, on a tray . . . That didn’t have any effect on Myra. She was just an emotionless female.’34 Pat’s husband, Tom McVittie, remembers: ‘Pat hated Hindley. The case really upset her, even though she was very experienced and one of the first detective policewomen in Lancashire county. When she came home at night after interviewing Hindley, she would cry with rage and frustration. She was full of anger, and pity for the families. She’d say, “That bitch. Sitting there and not saying a word. The bitch.” It affected Pat very deeply.’35
On 29 October, Nellie, Bert and Kath visited Myra at the police station. The two women wept and pleaded, while Bert urged her to make a clean breast of everything. Myra recalled that she almost broke down, but glimpsed Dave Smith being escorted from the station and her resolve was strengthened anew.
On 31 October, at twenty to ten in the morning, Myra was cautioned and charged with the murder of Lesley Ann Downey. She responded, ‘It’s not true.’36 Fifteen minutes later, Ian was charged with the same offence and replied, ‘Not guilty.’37 In a letter written many years later, Myra recalled, ‘When Brady and I were on remand in Risley, we had weekly visits from our solicitor, who always gave us around 15 minutes to speak together privately. He also did this when we appeared in Hyde court weekly to be remanded for another week. We had our solicitor’s visits in the police canteen and, again, he would sit as far away as possible from us, pretending to sift through some paperwork.’38 They wrote to each other regularly, in letters that displayed macabre humour. In one letter to Ian, Myra wrote, ‘Hope your cold’s disappeared – if it has, get out your spade, Benfield!’39
John Kilbride’s funeral was held on 1 November 1965. The service was conducted at St Christopher’s Church, where St Damian’s school choir sang from the gallery. Crowds lined the streets, as they had for Lesley’s funeral. Danny Kilbride remembers: ‘You couldn’t move in the streets for people. That was a comfort, to see that people wanted to pay their respects and show they were sorry for what had happened. But I remember having to stand outside the headmaster’s office for a week afterwards because I’d battered a lad who laughed at me and called me a sissy because he’d seen me crying at the funeral. So I went for him. I wouldn’t tell the headmaster why and this lad wouldn’t either. We were both stood outside the headmaster’s office for a week until they brought the priest to me. I told him and he explained the situation to the headmaster. My punishment stopped then.’40 John was buried at Hurst cemetery, where the inscription on his headstone reads simply: ‘Kilbride/In memory of John, eldest child of Shelia and Patrick. Missing: November 1963. Buried: November 1965. Aged 12 years. At rest with God.’
During the ongoing police investigation, Margaret Campion collected Puppet from where he was being kept at the RSPCA kennels and took him to vet James Gourley in order to confirm the dog’s age, thereby establishing when the photograph of Puppet with Myra on John’s grave was taken. At the trial, Campion admitted she hadn’t obtained permission from Myra but had acted on Benfield’s orders. Gourley administered the anaesthetic on Puppet and X-rayed the dog’s teeth, estimating him to be between eighteen months and three years old. When he tried to revive Puppet following the examination, however, the dog remained still. For 45 minutes, Gourley persisted in trying to rouse Puppet but without success; he later discovered that the dog suffered from a serious illness that had caused his heart to fail during the anaesthetic.
At the trial, Ian raised the subject of Mounsey allegedly taunting him that they would destroy Puppet to see how it felt for his owners to lose something they loved. Ian told the court: ‘And [Puppet] was destroyed one week later.’41 The Attorney General rebuked him sternly: ‘It is a wicked suggestion that the dog was deliberately put to death, Brady, and you know it.’ Ian replied mildly, ‘It’s a funny coincidence.’42 Myra was hysterical when she was given the news. She screamed out one word at the police who had accidentally killed Puppet: ‘Murderers!’
20
Dear Mam, as you know, the trial begins three weeks on Tuesday . . . Could you bring me a bottle of make-up, it’s Pond’s Angel Face, shade Golden Rose. If you can’t get Golden Rose, Tawny will do.
Myra Hindley, letter to her mother, 27 March 1966
When Myra and Ian appeared for their remand hearing in Hyde on 4 November 1965, competition for seats in the public gallery was fierce. Security barriers and extra police were drafted in to deal with an unprecedented outpouring of public condemnation. Those who had known Myra in Gorton were stunned by her crimes. Anne Murdoch remembers: ‘I never liked her sense of superiority or how, if she took a dislike to someone, they’d know it. But it was still a terrible shock when the news came out. To think I’d gone to school with her and played games with her . . . I only saw her with Ian once, and he was walking along behind while she marched ahead. I always thought, afterwards, that she must have dominated him, not the other way around. It was awful in Gorton – the press wouldn’t leave us alone. I used to dash home from the shops in case one of them accosted me.’1 Allan Grafton echoes Anne: ‘We just couldn’t believe it. She went from the girl who helped out at football to a sadist who buried kids on the moor. We’d all grown up together, so it was just an overwhelming shock.’2
In her first letter to Nellie after being arrested, Myra asked, ‘If you could send to the station a decent pair of high heels, I’d feel a lot better than I do in these mules. I feel like a tramp in your clothes (only because they don’t fit me properly).’3 Grieving for her dog – ‘I feel as though my heart’s been torn to pieces. I don’t think anything else could harm me more than this has. The only consolation is that some moron might have got hold of Puppet and hurt him’ – she asked for Puppet’s nametag to be kept for her, then added: ‘This letter will probably be censored. If you should write at all, do not mention anything regarding the cases.’4
During her meetings with Ian, they remarked on each other’s appearance; she thought he looked gorgeous, while he teased her about her prison clothes. They discussed the books they borrowed from the library; Myra complained about the prevalence of religious books to Risley’s governor, who explained that many prisoners found them a comfort. She plucked Spike Milligan’s Puckoon and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 from the shelves, instinctively knowing they would be suitable topics to include in her letters to Ian.
On Wednesday, 10 November, the moor was searched for the last time. Benfield made inquiries about excavating Hollin Brown Knoll but was told it would entail diverting the gas supply at a cost of £10 million. Ian Fairley recalls, ‘Why did it stop in 1966? Money. That’s what it came down to. I couldn’t come to terms with the search being stopped when we were sure there were other victims up there. I call it dereliction of duty. I blame Benfield and the Chief Constable, Henry Watson. The men who made the most meaningful contribution were Joe Mounsey, Alex Carr and Mike Massheder, but they received no recognition. Once the case came to trial, dates were fudged to make everything easier for the jury to understand, such as implying that the ticket stub was found before the suitcases. It disgusted me, and I know it disgusted Alex Carr, too.’5
Margaret Mounsey recalls: ‘Joe didn’t want the search to end. He felt sure that they would find the other missing children. He never forgot – he often went up to the moors, even many years later, just to stand at the roadside. I’ve been with him. We’d go and he’d say quietly, “This is it.” He knew – we all knew – that there were other victims up there. Unfound.’6
On Monday, 6 December 1965, committal proceedings against Myra Hindley and Ian Brady opened at Hyde Magistrate’s Court.7 For a fortnight, the entire country was gripped by the case. The world’s media converged on the town, packing out the hotels, cafes and bars. The Queen’s Hotel, close to the police station, became a hive of journalistic activity, with reporters downing pints and wolfing down the hotpots cooked by the proprietor, Nellie Bebbington, and her daughter, Derry. The magistrates – former Mayoress Mrs Dorothy Adamson, Harry Taylor and Sam Redfern – briefly became celebrities; Mrs Adamson’s fondness for quirky headwear was pored over in the press.
Myra’s hair was bleached and set, her make-up immaculate.
She wore a monochrome flecked suit and yellow blouse, and sat with Ian, jotting down observations in a ring-bound notepad or laughing quietly over their doodles of Mrs Adamson and her natty little hat. Travelling back to Risley on the first day, she and Ian sat together, talking about dogs. Their conversation was overheard by an accompanying policeman. ‘When you’re driving, you must always run over a dog to avoid running over an individual,’ Ian said, to which Myra responded, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’8
The prosecution presented their case the following day. On the journey back to Risley, Ian told Myra that he might kill himself. She recalled: ‘To Ian, [prison] symbolised a living death: something he told me he couldn’t endure. He had a jar of jam brought in with other things on a visit from his mother and he intended killing himself with the glass. I begged him not to, not to leave me, he was all I had lived for. He said I couldn’t be found guilty if I went on trial without him, that his influence would pall and I’d be able to rebuild my life. But he said he would wait and see what happened at the trial. I felt then that he needed me even more than I’d ever needed him . . .’9
On 8 December, David Smith took the stand, giving his evidence in a voice so low and halting that microphones were brought in. His evidence was crucial to the prosecution; although there were widespread rumblings of discontent that he had been granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation, his evidence was the linchpin. As he stepped down from the dock, Ian caught his eye and nodded and smiled at him.
Maureen took the stand, noticeably pregnant. She declined an offer to be seated and spoke with more assurance than her husband. Afterwards Myra wrote to her mother, who had disowned her younger daughter for ‘betraying’ the family: ‘Did you read the lies Maureen told in court, about me hating babies and children? She wouldn’t look at me in the dock, Mam. She couldn’t. She kept her face turned away.’10 In a reference to rumours circulating that David Smith had been offered cash by the press in return for his story, Myra wrote bitterly, ‘I noticed she was wearing a new coat and boots, and that Smith had a new watch on and a new overcoat and suit. I suppose he’s had an advance on his dirt money.’11