One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Ian was driven back to Risley Remand Centre (known by its inmates as ‘Grisly Risley’) 30 miles away, near Warrington. It was Myra’s first night there; she travelled in another car and was shown into the reception area. Asked her religion, she replied none, then submitted to the routine medical inspections. Her pubic hair was examined for lice. She was given a room on the hospital wing for her own protection because rumours were already circulating that she and Ian were involved in the deaths of several children; neither of them dared venture out for exercise.

  Myra awoke early the following morning, her first in captivity. Her bladder was full, but she couldn’t bear the thought of using the pot beneath her bed and hoped she could hang on for a proper toilet. A guard had left her a pile of shapeless clothes in shades of brown and grey. She put them on in disgust. Before breakfast an officer appeared and handed her an envelope containing Ian’s reception letter. He told her that he was facing life imprisonment, which he wouldn’t be able to bear. His allusion to suicide was cemented by his next line, urging her to be brave like Emmy Goering, the widow of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering, who killed himself the night before he was due to be hanged. He wrote that his influence on her would pall and she would be able to begin a new life. Myra focused on the last line instead, recalling later, ‘In his first letter to me on remand he wrote at the end, in German, that he loved me and I poured all my love for him into my letters to him.’23

  She asked the governor of Risley whether she and Ian might be permitted to see each other before their first joint court appearance. Consent was granted and they met in a room separated by a sheet of glass, with a guard standing nearby on either side. Ian wore a suit, and smiled at the sight of Myra in the clothes she had been given, telling her that she was free to wear what she liked until after sentencing. She explained that she was saving her own clothes for court. He advised her to keep herself occupied and not dwell on things, recommending a visit to Risley’s library.24 He asked her softly if she had managed to retrieve the receipt for the suitcases that still lay unclaimed at the left luggage office in Central Station. She shook her head and whispered that the house had been under police guard.25

  Miles away, in the bitter air, a line of men moved across the land to the side of Penistone Road, near Woodhead. They carried sticks, pushing them into the earth continually, then sniffing the ends, resembling ‘a frieze of wintry flautists playing music beyond the human ear’.26 Detectives had managed to identify some of the locations in the photographs found at Wardle Brook Avenue: some were at Leek, others at Whaley Bridge and another, of Myra in front of a waterfall, was apparently taken at Shiny Brook Clough, six miles from the advancing line of police.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Douglas Nimmo of Manchester City Police had unearthed a receipt, but not for left luggage. This one came from Warren’s Autos on London Road and was for the twenty-four-hour hire of a Ford Anglia, registration number 9275ND, for 23 November 1963. The day that John Kilbride vanished.

  Nimmo met with Benfield and Prescott to scrutinise the missing persons files under their jurisdiction. They began with twelve files and narrowed it down to a possible eight, including those of John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey, Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

  That day, the press got wind of the search taking place at Woodhead. Clive Entwistle, who was the only reporter at that stage to have spoken to Myra, recalls, ‘On Tuesday morning I was doing a shift on the Daily Sketch and Jim Stansfield, in the Daily Mail, broke the story that morning that there was a search taking place on the moors. That was the start of everything clicking into place. Myra had been arrested by then, too. I spent the next three or four weeks on the moors or chasing people for interviews. The story just exploded. We had the world’s press coming to us; not just Britain, but everywhere – New Zealand, America, Japan, Paris. Every night we met at the Queen’s Hotel in Hyde, where the police also congregated, to swap information. It was a colossal story.’27

  The Manchester Evening News ran two major articles: ‘Police in Mystery Dig on Moors’ and ‘Forensic Men Comb Terraced House of Secrets’.28 Father Theodore, Myra’s priest from St Francis’ Monastery, wrote to her at Risley but received no reply. Reporters and detectives swooped on Millwards, where little work was done. Staff taking down the pictures above Myra’s desk discovered her black scrawl across the cream paint: ‘Money and food is all I want, all I want is money and food.’29

  On Wednesday, 13 October, Mounsey visited Woodhead with three other detectives. They dug through the fern-rich bank of a ravine beside the road but found nothing, while forensic experts from the Home Office Laboratory in Preston went inch by inch through the house on Wardle Brook Avenue. Blood smears were found on the clothing Myra had worn on the night of Edward’s murder, both on the sleeve of her coat and skirt, and spots of blood were found on her shoes. The Manchester Evening News covered both stories, adding that dossiers on eight missing people had been reopened and that among them were the files of Keith Bennett, Pauline Reade and Lesley Ann Downey. In Manchester, Edward Evans was quietly laid to rest in Southern Cemetery. His parents reserved places within the same grave.30

  The following day, heavy rain and gales called off the search at Woodhead. At twenty-five past eleven, Mounsey and Tyrrell arrived at Risley to question Myra. Mounsey kicked off the interview: ‘I’ve been told you visited Ashton market regularly for over two years, particularly on Saturday afternoons, and it was there that John Kilbride was last seen.’31

  ‘I’ve never been to Ashton market.’

  ‘I’ve been told by your sister that you visited the market regularly.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  Tyrrell questioned her about David Smith’s accusation that following Edward’s murder, she had mentioned being approached by the police on the moors while Ian was burying a body. ‘That’s rubbish,’ she responded, replying in similar vein to Mounsey’s queries about intended robberies, adding, ‘Smith’s an idiotic moron.’

  Suddenly, Mounsey switched to a different line of questioning: ‘A girl called Lesley Ann Downey, who is ten, has been missing from her home since Boxing Day last year. She was last seen on a fairground off Hulme Hall Lane in Manchester about half past five in the evening.’

  Myra stared at him, then snapped, ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I merely want to know if you know anything about her disappearance.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her. I’ve never been near a fairground.’

  At quarter past two, the interview ended and the detectives visited Ian in his cell, cautioning him before laying out photographs for identification. Ian looked at the photograph of himself on the rocks at Hollin Brown Knoll with the white car in the background and said, ‘That’s Whaley Bridge.’ They questioned him about his boasts to David Smith but got very little out of him, and left at five past four.

  Alone in her cell, Myra wrote to Elsie Masterton, asking her to take care of Puppet because ‘we don’t want him to have to be put to sleep as he’s only a baby . . .’32 She added that she had given her mother some money towards Puppet’s upkeep and that Ian was going to give his pensions contributions money to her as well. Her letter ended, ‘If you do write back, which I hope you do, don’t mention anything of the case, etc., as I won’t be allowed to read it. I hope the family are all right and if Pat’s took Puppet for a walk, thank her for me. Love, Myra xxx’.33 But Elsie had already given Puppet to the RSPCA’s Gorsey Farm Kennels in Ashton after her son Peter had had an allergic reaction to the dog. Elsie also told police that her daughter Patty had gone to the moor with Myra and Ian on countless occasions. When detectives asked Patty if she thought she might remember where they’d been, she replied that she’d already seen it on telly. They arranged to collect her the following day after she explained that she didn’t know the name of the place; Ian and Myra had always called it simply ‘the moor’.

  On the morning of Friday, 15 October, a press photographer took Lesley Ann Downey’s m
other to Woodhead, snapping her as she watched the search, which was resumed despite the gales and cold.34 Shelia Kilbride refused a similar request. ‘My mum never went up there while the search was on,’ Danny Kilbride recalls, ‘but my dad did, and I wanted to go too, but he locked me in my bedroom to stop me. I tried to get through the window, but it was too steep a drop. There was a feeling that John would be the first of Brady and Hindley’s victims to be discovered.’35

  At half past one, Detective Constable Peter Clegg and Policewoman Slater collected Patty from her school, Lakes Secondary, in Dukinfield. On Patty’s instructions, they drove along the A635 rather than the A57 Snake Road. She guided them through Greenfield, past the Clarence pub at the foot of the steep, winding road known locally as the ‘Isle of Skye’.36 They rounded a bend and a sign came into sight: Holmfirth 7, Oldham 7¼. ‘Stop here,’ Pat announced. ‘This is it.’37 She pointed to the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll. Clegg looked at his map and noticed an area two miles away called Wessenden Head. He remembered the W/H of the disposal plan and radioed through to Ashton police station.

  Following Clegg’s call, the search switched dramatically at three o’clock to Hollin Brown Knoll. Three buses filled with police lumbered up to the moor, tailed by four or five police cars. Areas were marked to be searched the next day. Patty told Detective Sergeant Leslie Eckersley that she and Myra had spent hours sitting in the van while Ian wandered about the moor with a spade, digging for peat. She also told him that she’d visited the spot with Myra and Ian on Christmas Day last year – 24 hours before Lesley Ann Downey had disappeared. As Patty was driven home, thrilled with the compliments she’d received from the police, Mounsey arrived at the Knoll and climbed out of his car, holding a sheaf of photographs. His face blanched as he turned to look at the jutting rocks. He held up the picture of Myra’s white car on its own and shook his head in disbelief. The scene was identical.38

  At Hyde, Jock Carr asked Ian Fairley to pick up plans of Hattersley and the house at Wardle Brook Avenue from Manchester Town Hall. He told him to call on David Smith and bring him back to the station. Fairley recalls, ‘I got the plans, came back to Hyde nick, then drove out – at Jock’s suggestion – to Hattersley, intending to go into Smith’s flat. We got up there, a dog in the flat, electricity on a meter. None of us had a two bob bit for the meter. So we ended up interviewing him in the car park next to Underwood Court. We sat there all afternoon and it started going dark. I was in the driver’s seat, Jock in the passenger seat and David in the back. And we ended up getting the biggest breakthrough in the entire case.’39

  Fairley remembers the interview in the ill-lit car park of Underwood Court: ‘Smith was cooperative. He never hid anything, and he never changed his story. But he was – well, not exactly belligerent, but I think he was fed up. During the course of the interview, Jock asked him where they spent their time. Smith said he’d already gone through all this: the moors, drinking, at home, drinking, plotting robberies. He mentioned the fact that Brady asked him to bring anything incriminating back to him. Like what? Dodgy books, mainly. We asked him what Brady had done with them. And he said, “Well, they put them in the suitcases.” What suitcases? “I don’t know,” he said, “just suitcases packed with stuff, but I don’t know what else apart from the books.” We questioned him again about the places they’d gone and he said, in passing almost, that Brady had a thing about railway stations. And Jock said, “Right, that’s it, you can go, David.” He knew he was on to something.’

  They returned to Hyde. Carr went ahead to the office, while Fairley parked the car. When he walked into the station, he heard Benfield shouting at Carr: ‘When I say shouting, I mean bawling, telling Jock to get his arse in gear, wrap up the investigation. He turned on me and said, “Where have you been?” I said, “Manchester.” “Oh aye. Well, don’t go anywhere.” I went into the CID office. Jock’s on the telephone. He said, “Can you field the door for me? I’ve just got to make one or two calls. I’m trying to get them to check the left luggage offices in Manchester.” So I go out and try to placate Benfield, act normal.’40

  Later that evening, Benfield asked for the file on Edward Evans. Fairley recalls: ‘He put the file, typed and finished, into his car. As far as Benfield was concerned, the inquiry was over. He buggered off. Talbot had washed his hands as well; he had other fish to fry. It was only Joe Mounsey who was interested, and because of him the search was due to last one more day – just one – and then the whole case would be closed. Jock said I could go home as well. I’d been in about an hour when the telephone rang. It was Jock Carr, asking if I could pick him up. I said, “What for?” and he replied, “Found the suitcases.”’41

  18

  They used the technology available to them. Thank God it wasn’t as advanced then as it is today . . .

  Ian Fairley, interview with author, 20 July 2009

  Detective Constable Dennis Barrow of the British Transport Police located the suitcases when the regional crime squad failed to follow up Carr’s inquiry. Barrow’s son-in-law happened to be reporter Clive Entwistle: ‘Dennis rang me when he got home from duty. He said he’d been asked by the sergeant at Hyde, Alex Carr, to look for a suitcase belonging to Ian Brady. He’d been through all five stations and at the last one, Central Station, he found them. He said, “I opened one. There were all sorts of things inside: German books, pornographic magazines, a gun, a knife, a cosh. And there was a tape, a reel-to-reel tape. We played a bit of it . . . Clive, I don’t know what it was, but there was a little girl, crying for her mum. We switched it off. It was terrible . . .”’1

  Carr, Fairley and their colleague Bill Edwards drove back to Hyde station. Fairley recalls: ‘Jock said, “Right, the situation is this: the suitcases are in Manchester, but I don’t trust Benfield and that lot to deal with this properly, so stay here and answer the phone if it rings.” He went off and came back with these huge suitcases and heaved them onto the desk. They were packed full, so we didn’t go through everything systematically, but we rummaged through and found some photographs. Pictures of a little girl with a scarf pulled tight around her face, wearing nothing but her shoes and socks, lying on a bed with her head to one side, one of her praying, and another of her stood with her back to the camera, her arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. I’ve got to confess we didn’t recognise her. But the nature of the photographs was enough. Jock said, “Right, OK, put them away. We’re not going through it all now. At least we’ve got them.” So I locked them in the property cupboard and Jock told me to keep the key. On the way home, after we’d dropped Bill off, Jock invited me in for supper with him and his wife, June. We were sat eating and watching telly when a Granada programme called Scene came on. This particular edition linked in with the inquiry. And up on the screen flashed a photograph of Lesley Ann Downey. Jock and I looked at each other. We knew then that the girl in the photos was her.’2

  The following morning, on Carr’s orders, Fairley took the suitcases to another office in Stalybridge and deposited them in a cupboard there. He remembers: ‘When I got back to Hyde, I found senior policemen from every area packed into the chief inspector’s office because they’d got wind of the suitcases. They were arguing over who was going to run the inquiry. Benfield came back from Cheshire, Eric Cunningham – head of the Number One Regional Crime Squad and a detective chief superintendent who carried the authority of an assistant chief constable – turned up and there were any number of others, including Joe Mounsey. All demanding access to the suitcases. Cunningham was trying to use his rank to get hold of them and a big row was going on. Then Benfield spoke over the lot of them: “Look, the situation is this: I’m the only one with a substantive murder inquiry and I have the prisoners. The suitcases have been found as a result of my officers, therefore I will lead the murder inquiry and this will be a Cheshire inquiry. Of course I’ll welcome any assistance.” And that was why it became a Cheshire murder inquiry. It should have gone to Mounsey. He deserved it.’3 The suitcases were
brought in from Stalybridge. ‘I wasn’t there when they were opened and inspected,’ he admits, ‘but I heard that the office was full that day. Mounsey and everyone else crowded round to see what was in those cases.’4

  Inside the blue suitcase was a stack of books: The Anti-Sex, Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, Cradle of Erotica, The Sex Jungle, The Jewel in the Lotus, Confessions of a Mask, Death Rides a Camel, Werewolf in Paris, The Perfumed Garden, Sexus, Paris Vision 28, Satin Legs and Stilettos, High Heels and Stockings, The Life and Ideals of the Marquis de Sade wrapped in the Daily Mirror, The Kiss of the Whip, The Tropic of Cancer, and a copy of Mein Kampf wrapped in the News of the World. There were several soft porn magazines – Men’s Digest, Penthouse, Swank, Cavalier, Wildcat – and various other items: a 1965 pocketbook diary belonging to Ian, notes, papers and photographs, an insurance form and a tax form belonging to Ian, two library tickets in the name of Jack Smith (David’s father), string, Sellotape, a bandolier belt for holding ammunition, bullets and a black wig.