One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Myra was equally adamant that she remained in the van throughout and that Ian collected her after he had killed Pauline, banging on the window to indicate that she should accompany him to see the body. She followed him over the rocks, where the ground was heavily disturbed; that summer, trenches had been dug across the moor for a new trans-Pennine methane gas pipeline. The ditches remained unguarded at night, and Ian led Myra around the deep gullies in the waning light to where Pauline lay on her back on the cotton grass.41 Myra stared down: Pauline’s clothes were dishevelled and her throat had been cut so fiercely that she was almost decapitated. Blood seeped thickly from the wound. Pauline wasn’t dead, but dying; a gurgling noise came from her as the last vestiges of life slipped away. ‘Did you rape her?’ Myra asked. ‘Of course I did,’ Ian replied.42 He told Myra to wait with the body while he fetched the spade he had hidden earlier in one of the pipeline trenches. Myra recalled being surprised by the throat wound because Ian had said that he intended to strangle the victim.

  During Ian’s absence, Myra kept her eyes averted from Pauline. She realised she could hear nothing but the soughing of the wind across the moor; the gurgling had stopped. ‘I moved as far away from her as possible,’ she wrote in her autobiography. ‘I stood and looked at the dark outline of the rocks against the horizon of the dark sky and three people died that night: Pauline, my soul and God.’43

  Ian returned, complaining that he hadn’t been able to find the spade at first, which they’d bought from a hardware shop in Gorton for the sole purpose of burying the body. He told her to go back to the van and watch the road; his clothes were saturated with blood. Myra stumbled over the uneven ground to where she’d parked the van and saw that Ian had removed the keys to the vehicle, which she’d left unlocked. She slid into the driver’s seat and waited for him. Eventually, he appeared from behind the rocks carrying the dirty spade and the knife he’d used to cut Pauline’s throat. He placed the spade in a plastic bag in the back of the van and wrapped the knife, wiped almost clean on the cotton grass, in a piece of newspaper which he lay on the dashboard. He mentioned that for a while when he was killing Pauline she’d struggled so much that he’d thought he might need Myra’s help.

  He told her to drive to the other lay-by, where the Tiger Cub was parked, and swore as she botched the three-point turn. They reached the lay-by and dragged two long planks of wood from the back of the van, using them as a makeshift ramp to get the motorbike inside the vehicle as they’d practised. After securing the back doors, they returned to their seats. Myra turned the ignition and asked Ian the time. He told her it was ten-thirty.44

  She could feel the dull weight of the Tiger Cub as she steered the van down the A635 from the moor. Later she claimed that as they came to the outskirts of the city, Ian was the first to speak; he told her that if she’d shown any indication of wanting to back out, she would have ended up in the grave he’d dug for Pauline. She replied quietly that she knew that. As they weaved through the city suburbs, she contemplated her involvement in Pauline’s murder: ‘I felt doubly doomed; first by the crime itself and also because I believed it was impossible to envisage or hope for any other kind of existence.’45

  The van trundled quietly through Gorton’s dark streets. Heading slowly down Gorton Lane, Myra saw two figures walking towards them from the direction of Cornwall Street: Joan and Paul Reade, searching for Pauline. ‘That’s her mother and brother,’ Myra told Ian as she turned the van onto the croft near Bannock Street and let the engine die.46 They dragged the Tiger Cub out and walked round to Bannock Street, where the glowing fire hissed and spat quietly in the otherwise silent house. Ian brought the knife and spade in through the back door and locked them in a cupboard. Myra had forgotten her promise to Ben Boyce about recovering his broken Dormobile; she swore when Ian reminded her with a small push towards the front door. He fastened the buttons on his overcoat to hide the blood seeping deeper into the fabric of his shirt. At Ben’s house, Myra apologised for being so late, telling him that she’d had problems with the Ford Prefect. The three of them drove out to nearby Abbey Hey. Ian kept up a steady stream of conversation and helped Ben attach the tow rope to the Dormobile. Myra climbed into the van to steer it, while Ben drove the vehicle in front. She claimed later that on the journey home she was so preoccupied with the events of the evening that she kept running over the tow rope and bumping into the other van.

  After saying goodnight to Ben, Myra and Ian returned to Bannock Street. Ian was determined they wouldn’t make the same mistakes as Leopold and Loeb; every trace of what he called ‘forensic’ had to be eradicated. He’d compiled a list of everything they needed to account for, beginning with the van. Myra handed him a bucket of boiling, foamy water and shone a torch while he sponged the vehicle clean, inside and out, including the tyres. When he was satisfied that it was clean, they shut themselves in the house and laid out a plastic sheet on the sitting-room floor. Ian crouched on the sheet to cut up his clothes into small pieces that would burn more easily on the fire; he burnt his footwear as well. Myra’s clothes weren’t as soiled as his had been and she could wipe off any traces of moorland soil from her shoes. He attempted to break the handle from the knife, but it wouldn’t snap, so he threw it on the fire whole. Myra scrubbed the cupboard with hot, soapy water to remove any smatterings of blood and soil from where the murder weapon and spade had lain.47

  Later she claimed that after cleaning up, Ian produced a bottle of Drambuie, which he’d bought to toast the crime: ‘He sat down next to me on the settee, sipping his drink and saying that after all the years of dreaming of it he’d actually done it: he’d committed the perfect murder. He asked me how I felt about it. I told him I’d never in my wildest dreams imagined that something like this could have happened and began to cry . . . He put his arm round my shoulder and kissed me clumsily on the cheek, telling me it was all over now; I’d learn to live with it and he’d try to control his temper and not hit or hurt me. I was so relieved I clung to him, still crying, and promised I’d do everything I could to cope with what had happened and do my best not to antagonise him, although I rarely did and he still hit and hurt me. He stroked my hair – I thought the merest touch would repel me, but in spite of what had happened this new tenderness touched the core of my heart and flooded it with all the love and emotions I’d felt for him for so long.’48

  In his own book, Ian writes that the serial killer feels, in the aftermath of the first murder: ‘I am no longer of your world – if, as you might suggest, I ever was.’49 Years earlier, Myra had used precisely the same words in a conversation with her prison therapist: ‘After Pauline’s death, Ian and I were no longer of this world. I was frightened but equally felt safe in the knowledge that I was a worthy apprentice.’50

  9

  Curiosity about murder and how it feels, this exists in everybody at some level. I could never kill anybody but witnessing a killing, although difficult at first, becomes bearable. I couldn’t believe how exciting it would feel to do something really bad, how free you can feel when all is lost . . .

  Myra Hindley, conversation with prison therapist

  Myra claimed that her self-professed childhood ability to control her emotions was fundamental in the psychological exercise she and Ian employed before the murder and afterwards: ‘I had learned and continued to learn to hide my real feelings when necessary and only show them when it was safe to do so . . . [This] enabled me to lead an apparently normal existence whilst being involved in the offences.’1 They feared being caught but ‘had to combat these feelings in order to repeat the experience’.2

  In his writings, Ian argues that the serial killer’s motive stems from ‘power and the will to power’, which is synonymous with sex in his mind.3 Having gone ‘unchallenged’ by either God or more secular authorities, the serial killer begins to regard ‘the rest of humanity as subnormal and weak . . . He has created a microcosmic state of his own in which he alone governs.’4

  Myra confirmed that
Ian’s murderous delusions of power were ‘an aphrodisiac’ to him, and in therapy sessions she admitted that their best performances sexually were in the periods immediately after the murders: ‘We celebrated our bonding with drink and sex. I would lay myself open to Ian in a physical demonstration of our unity . . . Ian and I became further bonded by the blood of our victims.’5 She again denied experiencing any ‘sexual gratification’ from the murders, instead gaining ‘a sense of security due to the fact that one could not be safe without the other . . . There were times when we would be paranoid about each other, but loyalty was a duty we both respected. There was no room for weakness or treachery.’6 The secret they shared ‘bound us together more closely than any ties of affection possibly could’.7

  Privately, Ian had moments when he was aware that something had disintegrated horrifically inside him, but he guarded those moments alone: ‘I would sometimes wake in the morning and my higher self would not be there, the compelling self had vanished and it would just be me, and I would be like everyone else, and I would think that I was a madman, and I would get up and look at myself in the mirror and my eyes would look like someone else’s, and it would return, like being possessed by evil spirits, but it is not; it is too much of yourself inside you . . .’8

  While Ian and Myra drifted into a drunken slumber before the dwindling fire, Pauline Reade’s parents and brother scoured the streets frantically, then called the police. When the first strands of daylight filtered across the city, instead of waking to Saturday’s routine of an early breakfast and walk to the bakery with his daughter for the morning shift, Amos found himself going over the events of the previous evening in minute detail with the police.

  Throughout much of the day, Joan walked about the streets in a state of utter shock, searching for her daughter, Paul at her side. She encountered Pauline’s friend Linda at a bus stop and her pent-up nerves erupted: if Linda had gone to the dance as Pauline had asked, her daughter wouldn’t be missing. Linda ran home, crying bitterly until her own mother explained that Mrs Reade was lashing out in her terror about Pauline. When Pat Cummings heard that her best friend hadn’t gone to the dance or returned home that night, she went straight to the Reades’ home and helped Joan cook a dinner that no one had the appetite to eat. Pat couldn’t hold back her tears; she had nightmares for months afterward about the split second when Pauline turned down Froxmer Street in her new blue coat and vanished into thin air.

  In Bannock Street, Myra woke at quarter to seven that morning. The fire had gone out long ago. She nudged Ian and he awoke with a curse about the bloodstains on the collar of his black coat draped across a chair. He took the coat to the sink and ran the tap, dabbing at the stains with a damp cloth. The water whirled in the plughole, faintly pink. Myra brewed tea while he retrieved the blackened knife from the fire; he wrapped the contents of the grate in a newspaper and deposited them in the dustbin, but kept the knife in a sheet of the Manchester Evening News to dispose of later.

  After breakfast they drove into town on the Tiger Cub; Ian waited while Myra took his coat into a dry-cleaner’s, booking it in under the surname of the American president, Kennedy. When she returned, they drove south-east from the city centre along Stockport Road until Ian stopped for cigarettes. He came back with the fags and a Crunchie bar, confiding that he’d bought them with four half-crowns he’d taken from Pauline’s coat pocket. Myra was appalled; fearing any remaining coins might be traced to them, she told him to replace them near the grave. Ian bristled at the idea but grudgingly relented that she might be right. They drove on towards Macclesfield and turned up a lane. A group of children were playing nearby; Ian gunned the bike to a quieter spot where he unrolled the knife from the newspaper and threw it into a babbling river, followed by a few heavy stones to keep it submerged. He used his lighter to burn the newspaper before they headed home.

  The following morning they drove up to the moor on the Tiger Cub to scatter the coins on Pauline’s grave, then visited the Odeon cinema in Oldham. A double bill was playing: The Day of the Triffids, based on the bestseller by John Wyndham, and The Legion’s Last Patrol, starring Stewart Granger. That month, Ken Thorne and His Orchestra had a number four hit with the trumpet-led ‘Theme from The Legion’s Last Patrol’. Ian bought the record for Myra, to ‘commemorate’ their perfect crime, and claims that if either of them hummed the tune afterwards, it was a private reference to Pauline’s murder.9

  When they returned to Bannock Street, Nellie, Maureen and Glenys were there, discussing Pauline’s disappearance with Gran. Fear and confusion ran through Gorton in response to one of their own going missing. Allan Grafton recalls, ‘We all knew each other and that’s partly why Pauline’s disappearance made people so nervous. Everyone tried to keep an open mind about it because people didn’t just vanish in those days – if they did, it was with good reason. But with Pauline no one knew what to think. It threw everything off kilter. Her family were absolutely positive she hadn’t run away, and we believed them. But if she hadn’t run away, what had happened to her? There was no explanation, no clue.’10 The police investigation had drawn a blank and, in the absence of fact, rumours were rife that Pauline had eloped with a fairground worker or run away to Australia. On 19 July, the Gorton & Openshaw Reporter ran a column about Pauline under the headline ‘Gorton Girl Went to Dance: Missing’, describing her as ‘an attractive, dark-haired Gorton girl’.11 Joan Reade was quoted: ‘This is a complete mystery. Pauline has no boyfriends and there has not been a row at home. We would rather know that she was safe and have her back home, no matter what she may have done.’12 Mention was made of the money Pauline had on her person at the time of her disappearance and Myra felt vindicated that she had insisted on replacing the coins Ian had stolen.

  On 23 July 1963, less than two weeks after Pauline’s murder, Myra celebrated her 21st birthday. Ian bought her a gold-plated Ingersoll watch that she kept until the end of her life. Ben Boyce told her she could have the van as a gift from him, although it needed an MOT, tax and insurance. Myra placed a tax disc borrowed from Ben on the windscreen and drove the van around until she was reported to the police and received a summons. Since it was still registered in Ben’s name, he pleaded guilty to permitting the offence. One weekend, Myra and Ian painted the van’s interior white to remove any last traces of ‘forensic’. They drove to the moor regularly; in her autobiography, Myra writes that being near Pauline’s grave calmed Ian and gave him a renewed sense of his perceived dominion.

  They were both fully aware of the local press interest in Pauline’s disappearance. In a letter, Myra related an anecdote about how she had been sitting in Gran’s chair, alone, when she found a notice in the personal column of the newspaper: ‘It said: “Pauline, please come home. We’re heartbroken for you.” I began to cry, rocking myself back and forth with the paper clutched to my chest. I didn’t hear his bike, nor knew that he’d come into the house. [Ian] asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t answer; I couldn’t stop shaking and crying, for I was devastated about what had happened to Pauline, and for her mum and dad. I really liked Mrs Reade and used to feel sorry for her because she had problems with her nerves and always looked as though she was on the edge of a breakdown. He grabbed the paper off me and soon saw what I’d seen. He put the bolt on the front door in case Gran came back, did the same to the back door, and began to strangle me. Before I lost consciousness, I heard him remind me of what he’d said after Pauline’s murder, and that threat still stood.’13

  The Gorton & Openshaw Reporter tried to keep up public interest in Pauline’s disappearance. On 2 August 1963, the front page featured a photograph of Pauline looking strikingly pretty, leaning against a car and laughing with her best friend Pat while her brother Paul strummed a guitar. The article quoted her mother Joan: ‘She used to go dancing often. I was not worried at first, but I became alarmed when she failed to return . . . There will be no trouble for Pauline when she does come home’, and included a disheartening comment from th
e police in charge of the investigation: ‘The search has drawn a complete blank and we are very anxious about the situation.’14 Seven days later, the newspaper tried again, asking, ‘Have You Seen Pauline?’ and offered an update on the search: police had drained a large section of the canal in the vicinity of Cornwall Street and Ogden Lane, used tracker dogs, dragged ponds and visited fairgrounds, coffee bars and cinemas, and questioned people, but there was still no trace of the missing girl.

  Pauline’s family conducted their own desperate, haphazard search of the city. Allan Grafton recalls: ‘I was a postman at the time, living at my mam and dad’s house in Casson Street, and I used to catch the five o’clock bus to start work at half past five every morning. It’s pretty lonely, standing at a bus stop at that time. My bus left from Gorton Lane and most mornings I’d see Pauline’s dad, Amos, pass by. I’d ask, “Any luck, Amos?” and he’d say, “No, Allan, no luck.” He was out looking for her. I’d see Joan walking about, searching for Pauline, as well. The family were at the end of their tether.’15

  Every Tuesday Pauline’s mother offered a novena for her daughter at St Francis’ Monastery. Otherwise, her time was consumed with the search. ‘I was always looking,’ she recalled. ‘I even did Avon’s job, going from house to house, thinking I’d find her in one of the houses. I was always ready with my coat on, to run out as soon as daylight came. I went miles on my own, travelling on the buses and thinking I’d seen her and running, getting on one bus and running after another bus. I never thought Myra Hindley or Ian Brady were to do with it at all.’16