One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Aware that her failure to go to the police about the murder plot was one of many insurmountable hurdles she faced in changing public opinion, Myra attempted one explanation in an open letter to The Guardian: ‘I knew by the time he began talking about the perfect murder that I was going to help him, that I had very little choice. Again, even if I went to the police there was no proof, only my word against his. And then he would know what I’d done if the police had told him I’d made these allegations against him, and although I knew he wasn’t stupid enough to do anything to draw attention to himself, I also knew that he would bide his time while he thought of what to do and how to do it without raising suspicion. I would have had to leave my job, which wasn’t a problem; I could go away and lose myself somewhere, but how could I possibly tell my family all that had happened and been said by him without terrifying them? They couldn’t move; a family just can’t uproot itself and move somewhere and find places to live, jobs, etc. and still live in fear, looking over their shoulders all the time. I knew I was trapped and would have to do what he wanted of me.’18

  She gave an alternative, more prosaic answer in an interview with detectives in the 1980s: ‘It was out of fear in the beginning and after that just to remain safe, and hoping that between murders he would display affection and never fancied anybody else.’19 More frankly, she told a close friend, ‘I simply could not envisage life without him any more . . . It was, at best, a tenuous, unsettled relationship, but I cannot deny that I didn’t prefer it to an existence from which he was absent.’20

  Ian offered his own explanation in a letter to Jack Straw, then Home Secretary: ‘Myra Hindley and I once loved each other. We were a unified force, not two conflicting entities. The relationship was not based on the delusional concept of folie à deux, but on a conscious/subconscious emotional and psychological affinity. She regarded periodic homicides as rituals . . . marriage ceremonies theoretically binding us ever closer. As the records show, before we met my criminal activities had been primarily mercenary. Afterwards, a duality of motivation developed. Existential philosophy melded with the spirituality of death and became predominant.’21 He confided more forthrightly in journalist Fred Harrison, stating that what happened between himself and Myra was ‘a meshing into one . . . We didn’t need to speak. Just a gesture – something had got to be done, something would happen. I’d just look, or just make a gesture with my hand and the thing would happen. It was so close, we knew exactly what was in each other’s minds. We were one mind.’22 And despite her efforts to distance herself from Ian, unwittingly, Myra echoed his words in prison therapy sessions: ‘We were of one mind, not troubled by our consciences.’23

  1963 was the summer of the Beatles. Their first single, ‘Love Me Do’ – which prompted one music executive to enquire upon initial hearing, ‘Is it Spike Milligan in disguise?’ – reached number seventeen in the hit parade of October 1962.24 Five months later, they topped the charts with ‘Please Please Me’ and that summer Britain was caught between twin obsessions: Secretary of State for War John Profumo’s affair with Christine Keeler, and Beatlemania.

  Seventeen-year-old Maureen Hindley was fanatical about the Beatles; she would let out an ear-piercing shriek at any mention of the band. After leaving school, she worked in a bewildering succession of low-paid jobs until Myra secured her a position at Millwards as a filing clerk, swearing her to secrecy over the obvious relationship with Ian. Despite working with her sister’s boyfriend and seeing him almost every night at Bannock Street, talkative Maureen barely managed to elicit more than a curt nod from Ian. But she had noticed a change in Myra: ‘She stopped going to church. She said she didn’t believe in it. She didn’t believe in marriage. She said she hated babies and children and hated people. She never used to keep things under lock and key, but she started after she met Brady. She kept books, her tape recorder, all her tape recordings and all her clothing locked up in the wardrobe.’25 Gran seemed resigned to the changes in her household; increasingly frail, there was little she could do about anything that concerned her granddaughter. The neighbours complained angrily about Ravel’s Boléro thumping through the walls – Ian and Myra played it incessantly – but Gran could only offer an apology on her tenants’ behalf and left it to Maureen to question their taste in music.

  Among Maureen’s wide circle of friends was 16-year-old Pauline Reade. In Gorton’s tightly packed network of streets, invisible threads bound Pauline loosely to her murderers. She attended primary and secondary school with Maureen and had briefly dated Maureen’s boyfriend, David Smith, who lived with his father at 13 Wiles Street, next door but one to the Reade home at 9 Wiles Street, a ‘dog-leg’ from the Hindleys on Eaton Street. Pauline worshipped at St Francis’ Monastery and knew Myra, who used to walk to work with Pauline’s mother, Joan. Amos Reade, Pauline’s father, was a regular customer in the Steelie, where he sometimes drank with Bob Hindley.

  Pauline was a trainee baker at Sharples on Gorton’s shopping thoroughfare, Cross Lane. She worked alongside her father, rising with him at the crack of dawn, and was delighted when her photograph appeared in a Christmas 1962 issue of the Gorton Reporter; using her baking skills, she was one of three winners in a Christmas cake competition. Exceptionally pretty and slim, with dark hair and an effervescent light in her blue eyes, Pauline was beginning to come out of her shell a little. She enjoyed a holiday at Butlins Filey in 1961, loved dancing – proudly accompanying her dad to a works dinner dance in Tottenham in early July – and composed poems and songs. Beneath the budgie’s cage in the Reades’ front room was a piano; Amos could play and Pauline had lessons from a neighbour. She got along well with her shy brother Paul (her senior by one year) and her friends were the girls she had known all her life, including Barbara Jepson, sister of Myra’s friend Pat. She was closest to Pat Cummings of Benster Street, and the two girls often conferred on their outfits before attending dances, keen to ensure they dressed alike. Pat remembers Pauline as ‘very quiet. When she came to our house, she would ask me to walk her home if it was dusk. She was very frightened. She was not the sort to get into a car with a stranger.’26

  On Friday, 12 July 1963, Ian and Myra decided to commit their perfect murder.

  The sun had shone all day and the early evening air was warm. When Pauline finished work at the bakery, she was alone; her father had already gone home for a quick nap before heading to the Steelie for a pint. She called on her friend Linda Bradshaw in Bannock Street to ask if she’d like to go with her to the dance that night at the British Railways Social Club in Cornwall Street. Although the club was only half a mile from home, Linda’s mother refused to allow her to go because alcohol was available there. Pauline tried Pat Garvey next; the two of them had gone to a dance the previous week wearing identical white skirts from C&A. But Pat wasn’t allowed either, for the same reason. Pauline trailed home and asked her mother if she could persuade one of her other friends’ mothers to agree, otherwise she would have to go alone.

  In Bannock Street, Ian and Myra arrived home from Millwards on the Tiger Cub and ran through their meticulously thought-out plans for the evening.27 Myra still hadn’t qualified as a driver, although Harold Rainger, a local driving instructor, gave her lessons and she drove about regularly in Ben Boyce’s black Ford Prefect van since he’d bought himself a new vehicle; she had arranged to help Ben pick up his broken Dormobile later that night. Myra would drive Ben’s old van around the streets of Gorton until she found a potential victim, with Ian following behind on the Tiger Cub. If Ian agreed with her choice, he would indicate by flashing the headlamps on his motorbike and they would then drive up to the moor on the pretext of needing to find a lost glove, offering the victim a set of records as a reward.28 Everything was premeditated, nothing left to chance. ‘He’d told me what to wear and had counted the buttons on my coat,’ Myra wrote later. ‘He’d counted the buttons on his coat and jacket and shirt and made a list of everything . . . He was so methodical and precise, he thought of everything
, every possibility, absolutely everything.’29

  While Myra and Ian ate dinner, in her bedroom on nearby Wiles Street Pauline dressed carefully for the dance. With her wages from her apprenticeship at the bakery, she had recently bought a ‘Twist’ frock – a pink shift dress with a square neck and a hemline that finished just above the knee. She added new white court shoes whose gold lettering gleamed on the insoles as she slipped them on, white gloves bought from Gorton market and only worn once before, and then a light-fitting powder-blue ‘duster’ coat. After adding 10s to her pocket, she went downstairs. Her mother lent her a locket, fastening the clasp at the base of Pauline’s neck, beneath her dark hair. At half-past seven, Pauline left home. Amos had just arrived from the pub, and Joan served him fish and chips before dashing out to catch up with her daughter; their son, Paul, had gone to the cinema with friends for the evening.

  Pauline and her mother called first on Barbara Jepson on Taylor Street, but Mrs Jepson still wouldn’t let Barbara go to the dance. They tried Linda Bradshaw next, on Bannock Street, where, just a few doors away, Ian and Myra were preparing themselves for the night ahead. Pauline made a fuss of the Bradshaw twins in their pram while her mother tried valiantly to convince Linda’s mother to relent, but Mrs Bradshaw couldn’t be swayed. As they left Bannock Street, Pauline insisted that she was bound to know people at the dance once she got there, and although Joan Reade hated the idea of allowing her daughter to go alone, she trusted her to be sensible and come home on time. A quick peck on her mother’s cheek and Pauline was gone, a quick, fragile figure in her pastel-coloured clothes, disappearing in the slanting copper light of evening.

  A few minutes later, Myra climbed into the van parked on Bannock Street and switched on the ignition, as Ian started up the Tiger Cub. They drove slowly down Taylor Street and turned right into Gorton Lane. The Plaza cinema, where Myra had glimpsed the ghost of Michael Higgins, shrank in her wing mirrors as the van trundled past Casson Street rec. Myra’s old primary school loomed on the right, and she saw a small girl walking alone towards them on the pavement. She slowed the van and squinted at the child. She recognised her: eight-year-old Marie Ruck lived with her parents and brother Kevin next door but one to Myra’s mum on Eaton Street. Myra put her foot down on the accelerator; the risk was too great. She told Ian the same thing when he indicated sharply for her to stop and explain why she hadn’t picked up the little girl. He accepted it and told her to drive down Froxmer Street towards the railway line and Ashton Old Road.30

  Pauline passed the Hindley home on Eaton Street, crossed the road and took a shortcut through the backyard of the Shakespeare, where the warm smell of beer and Woodbines wafted from the air vents, and turned down Gorton Lane.

  Pat Cummings couldn’t believe that her best friend Pauline, always so reserved until she knew someone well, would dare go to the Railways Social Club dance alone. She called for another friend, Dorothy Slater, and the two girls set off to spy on Pauline, intending to catch up with her near the club. They hid on the croft behind Benster Street to watch for her and were amazed when she walked by, her pale-blue duster coat swinging around her. It was a little after eight o’clock. They trailed her along Gorton Lane, the black dust motes of the foundry opposite swirling in the sunlit draught of a vanished car. Pauline turned down Froxmer Street, heading for the long stretch of Cornwall Street. The girls waited until she was almost at the end of Froxmer Street, then dashed across the croft to where it opened onto Railway Street, expecting to meet up with Pauline there.

  Myra turned the van into Froxmer Street. Pauline was a short distance ahead, a little over halfway to the club, where the dance had already begun. Myra spotted her immediately, recording in her autobiography: ‘I saw a young girl walking down the street on her own with nobody else in sight. [Ian] flashed his light and I slowly drew up just behind the girl, opened the passenger door and called to her to ask if she could spare a minute. She turned round and to my horror it was Pauline Reade.’31

  To detective Peter Topping, Myra insisted that there was no truth in an earlier claim that Pauline was deliberately chosen as a victim. Ten years later, however, she told her prison therapist that there was one fact concerning the abduction she wanted to reveal ‘to put the records straight’, which, if she had admitted to it earlier, ‘could have sealed my fate forever’.32 Having previously said that Ian had decided Pauline was ‘suitable’, she then admitted, ‘That wasn’t the case at all. I chose to pick Pauline up because it was an easy option, less chance of failure and someone who was known to me. If I could do this without conscience, I could do anything . . .’33 Pauline was known to Myra, but her disappearance was less likely to cause a fuss than that of an eight-year-old girl who was a near neighbour of Myra’s parents. In an open letter to The Guardian, Myra wrote: ‘I knew I had a choice: I could either just wave at Pauline and drive past her, in which case she would have lived and I would have had to endure the consequences of Brady’s rage. This all happened in split seconds; I looked at Pauline and saw my sister there and my gran and my mum. I made the choice of having to sacrifice Pauline so that my own family would be safe. I felt sick with fear and self-loathing as I asked her if she wanted a lift. She readily accepted and I opened the passenger door to the car for her to get in.’34

  On Railway Street, Pat Cummings and Dorothy Slater waited impatiently for Pauline to appear. Eventually, they gave up and walked home, puzzled by their friend’s disappearance and assuming she had turned back. In Wiles Street, too, Joan Reade was fretting, wishing she had never allowed Pauline to go to the dance alone.

  Myra drove past Ian, parked on his motorbike outside the Vulcan pub, which was known locally as ‘the Monkey’ and was where the young apprentices from Gorton Tank drank. She asked Pauline if she fancied taking a detour to the outskirts of the city to look for a glove that had strong sentimental value. Although they were yards from the Railways Social Club and could have been there in a couple of minutes, Pauline agreed, accepting Myra’s offer of several records as a reward for helping.

  It was still light as they drove along the A635 through Stalybridge and Mossley towards the moor. Myra recalled afterwards how Pauline’s fragrance suffused the air inside the van; the scent of summer flowers, fern and moss reminded Myra of her own perfume, Saville’s June. Pauline asked after Ian; Myra was aware of him tailing them in the mirror, but she said he had gone out and hoped to join her later to look for the glove. The road twisted and dipped through the blackened stone of Greenfield’s mill cottages, and Pauline asked Myra if she was all right – as they turned up onto the moor road, she was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white, and she had hardly spoken. Myra murmured that she was nervous about the van. The light was failing and gradients of shadow rippled across the steeply sloping land. The rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll protruded like black molars against the sky as Myra pulled into the lay-by on the opposite side of the road. She turned off the engine and climbed out of the vehicle.

  Myra and Ian each gave different accounts of what happened that night on the moor. According to Myra, Ian’s Tiger Cub had passed them somewhere and was already concealed behind a cluster of rocks.35 Myra feigned surprise to see him, and agreed when he suggested that she should park the van in a safer spot, just beyond the sharp bend, while he and Pauline began hunting for the glove.

  In her writings, Myra claimed that she returned to the van. As she pulled away, she saw Ian leading Pauline over the rocks to where the black peat and plum-hued heather gave way to silken cotton grass, the soft white heads of the flowers vivid as stars on the dark ground. Pauline stumbled in her court shoes, and Myra averted her eyes, concentrating on parking the van. She turned off the engine again and stared out across the undulating landscape, down to the valley where lights flickered on in the small cottages. Beyond Greenfield lay the city and Gorton, where Joan Reade had opened her front door to let in the still, warm air, worrying about her daughter and expecting Paul home from the pictures so
on. As Joan glanced up the street, she spotted something lying on the cobbles. She went across to investigate and realised it was one of Pauline’s white gloves. The unease fluttered in her chest; she hadn’t noticed the glove earlier, when she came back from saying goodbye to Pauline. She picked it up and returned to the house, placing the glove in the drawer of the kitchen sideboard, then went up to bed, a knot of anxiety settling on her chest.36

  In Ian’s account, both he and Myra climbed onto Hollin Brown Knoll with Pauline on the pretext of searching for a lost glove belonging to Myra. He claims that Myra not only witnessed Pauline’s rape and murder, but, as he told writer Colin Wilson, also ‘took a very active part in the sexual assault of Pauline Reade’.37 He makes the same assertion in a 1990 letter, alleging that Myra carried out ‘some form of lesbian assault’ and caused injuries to Pauline’s nose and forehead.38 He also claims to have struck Myra during the course of the murder, when he sensed that although he had dropped to the depths of depravity, Myra had ‘dropped even further’ by taking the locket Pauline wore around her neck and taunting her with the words, ‘You won’t need that where you’re going.’39 In The Gates of Janus, Brady declares: ‘It is human nature that, if caught, the pupil will blame the master for his criminal conduct. But should the criminal enterprises succeed, I can assure you, from wide personal experience, the pupil’s zeal and devotion to criminal activities can outdo that of the master like that of a convert.’40