One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Inside the brown suitcase were more pornographic books, including one called Jailbait, and a study of Jack the Ripper, fifty-four negatives and fifty-five photographic prints, key rings, a pamphlet on family planning addressed to Mrs A. Hope of 7 Bannock Street, a notebook belonging to Ian, his 1962 pocketbook diary, some papers, Myra’s 1964 pocketbook diary, correspondence, an SS knife, a key on a shoelace, a sheaf knife, a key wrapped in cloth, Ian’s birth certificate, small truncheons, pieces of soap, a cutlery box containing a cosh and a black mask, another cosh with ‘EUREKA’ on it, some pieces of cloth, a Halibut oil tin – and two tapes.

  The red leader on one of the tapes was damaged; Talbot found a technician to replace it. Then a reel-to-reel machine was brought into the office and the first tape was loaded onto the spindle. An impenetrable silence fell as the detectives leaned forward to listen. ‘Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil . . .’ Ian Brady’s voice chanted as the tape segued into German marching music, then a Goons sketch, and Freddie Grisewood, presenter of the BBC’s Any Questions? talking about the rise of Hitler. The last track hissed into play, and the silence in the office was rent apart by a little girl’s scream.

  ‘People wept when they heard that tape,’ Fairley recalls quietly. ‘I heard it a week or so later and I cannot describe how horrific it is. Not just the content, but the preparation that had gone into its creation. I wouldn’t like to hear it again.’5 Pat Clayton remembered, ‘I heard the tape many, many times. And it was probably more horrendous the more you heard it . . . the more you could understand what was being said . . . It got worse. The horror of it.’6 When Jock Carr returned home that night, his wife June was shocked to see him sit down and cry. Their own daughter was three years old at the time and Carr recalled, ‘I thought about this little girl’s voice on the tape and about how I would feel if that had been my daughter . . . Hindley was a willing partner in the atrocities that were taking place.’7

  The search started early that day: Saturday, 16 October 1965. Young Scots Police Constable Robert Spiers was among the men moving in a slow line along the roadside at Hollin Brown Knoll. He recalls: ‘All the forces had given in except for Mounsey. He said, “My boy’s up there”, and he got the bosses to organise a small group from Ashton division, about a dozen of us, and a few lads from Droylsden. I’d rolled up for the early shift but was told to go home, get some breakfast and get changed. About an hour later I was on the moor in a pair of wellies and a “submarine” sweater. We were armed with picks, shovels and rods. It was dry but cold. I was working not far off the road.’8

  Probing around the protruding rocks, Spiers felt himself inexplicably drawn to the hill. He continues: ‘I kept looking up there. It was the strangest thing. But I went on as I’d been told, prodding the peat, fumbling my way along. It was so quiet, grey and cold. All I could hear was the wind. It got to lunchtime. Mounsey and Mattin went back to Ashton. We went down to the Clarence for pie and chips and a pint. Then back in the Black Marias to the moor. The boss, Detective Sergeant Leslie Eckersley, said we’d give it till three. After that, the search was off.’

  The light drizzle died out, the breeze dropped and a mist began to roll in from across the valley. ‘We started wrapping up about half past two, bringing all the gear down,’ Spiers recalls. ‘I decided I was going over the hilltop before we left, so I climbed up and looked about. It was getting really cold by then and the mist had thickened. But I couldn’t see anything, so I started heading back. And then I saw it: a sunken pool in the peat and what looked like a short length of white, withered stick. I peered at it, at this white thing pointing upward from the black water, and I found myself a proper stick and poked about in the hole. It was too dirty to see – just thick, peaty water that stank. But beneath the water, I could feel something.’

  Not wanting to admit that he’d felt drawn to the hill, Spiers told his colleagues that he’d been for a pee and had found something over the rocks worth investigating. Detective Sergeant Leslie Eckersley was in charge; he looked quizzically at Spiers, who reached for a metal rod and went back up the hill. ‘I wasn’t going to leave it,’ Spiers explains. ‘There was something lying there, beneath the murky surface. The sky was getting darker now, and by this time everyone was shouting at me, but Eckersley started up the hill and they piled up after him, grumbling. I showed him the white withered thing poking out of the water and he nodded for it to be inspected.’

  The ‘white withered stick’ was the mutilated forearm of a child, wasted to bare bone by the weather conditions on the moor. ‘It was nothing like the media made out,’ Spiers remembers. ‘They described it as a beckoning arm: find me, find me. It was actually far more eerie than that. We drained the water by digging a trench, then began moving the peaty soil, bit by bit. I was getting a load of earache at this point from a certain Scots sergeant, who was telling me I was an idiot and we should have been on our way home, not standing there in the cold and dark next to this black mess. He said, “It’s just a bloody sheep, that’s all, just a bloody sheep.” We stood there, arguing back and forth while the others kept carefully digging away, and then all at once I looked down and said, “Well, if it is a sheep it was wearing a dress.” And he shut up straight away because there at our feet was a little tartan skirt and a pair of buckled shoes.’

  The press presence on the moor had dwindled to a lone News of the World photographer. ‘He came over to ask if we’d found something,’ Spiers recalls. ‘I told him no, I said it was a sheep. But he wouldn’t leave and we had to give him the slip by heading down to Greenfield and splitting into two groups. Eckersley rang Mounsey from the phone box by the Clarence, then we hid in the van by some old gasworks and the photographer followed the other van back to Ashton.’

  When they returned to the now pitch-black moor, where Mounsey and Mattin were waiting for them, Spiers remembers: ‘Mounsey said, “Right. You, me, Mattin and nobody else. Take me back up to what you found. What did you see?” I told him I’d seen bones and a plaid skirt. And a skull. Once I’d explained everything to him, he got hold of the circus. They came up with lights, tents, pathologists and all that. I left at five, before they brought the body off the moor.’

  Figures crowded onto the misty Knoll as canvas screens were placed around the grave and the huge, hissing arc lamps were switched on. The sodden peat was dug away to reveal the body of a small girl. Piled at her feet were her clothes: a blue coat, pink cardigan, tartan skirt, socks, shoes and the white plastic beads won at the fair by her brother. After Inspector Chaddock witnessed the remains, the pathologists – Professor Cyril Polson, head of forensic medicine at Leeds University, and his colleague, lecturer Dr Dave Gee – took over. Gee testified that the child lay in a shallow grave on her right side: ‘The skeletal remains of the left arm were extended above the head, and the hand was missing. The right arm was beneath the body, the hand being near the right knee. Both legs were doubled up towards the abdomen, flexed at hips and knees. The head was in normal position. The body was naked. A number of articles of clothing were present in the soil near to the feet . . .’9 Animals had caused two injuries to her chest and groin, and ‘disappearance of the abdominal organs’.10 Detective Constable Tom McVittie, part of Mounsey’s team and husband of Pat Clayton, recalls, ‘We could see that it was the body of a little girl, but where she had lain against the mud, that half of her was gone. It was destroyed, no features, nothing. But the other half had been perfectly preserved by the peat. Half of her face was intact.’11

  Clive Entwistle was tipped off by the Granada newsroom and raced up to the moor: ‘I blew the engine because I was going so fast. When I arrived, it was just like a scene from a Hitchcock film. It was pitch black, no moon. I parked the car and walked up to the Knoll. The arc lights were burning, there were shadowy figures standing about and there was thick, low cloud. The only other light came from the odd car passing by on the road below. I saw four officers lifting a tarpaulin sheet off the ground and start carrying it down to the van. I stood on
the bumper of a black Maria, not realising that they were actually going to put the bundle into it. And as they came along, they drew back to lift it in and I saw the remains of Lesley Ann Downey. It was awful. Just awful.’12

  Lesley’s body was driven to the tiny mortuary at Uppermill. The screens were left on the Knoll, but the arc lamps were switched off. Two policemen were stationed on the moor for the night.

  ‘I didn’t know it was Lesley Ann Downey until I heard it on the news,’ Robert Spiers recalls. ‘I didn’t sleep much that night. I couldn’t get the sight of the hill and the protruding bone out of my mind. I couldn’t forget the smell. Once we’d drained the hollow . . . Death has a smell, and on the moor it was distinct. You can’t forget. That’s why you’d see people lighting up cigarettes, just to try and get rid of the smell.’13

  The post-mortem examination on Lesley’s body, conducted by Dr Gee, Professor Polson and Home Office pathologist Dr Manning, casts doubt on Ian’s accusation that Myra killed Lesley with a silk cord. Violent injury was ruled out, but Gee’s examination of the body ‘excluded strangulation by ligature [but not] other forms of mechanical asphyxia, notably smothering’.14 None of that was any comfort to Lesley’s mother, who arrived at Uppermill to identify her daughter’s body. She had to endure the procedure alone; because he wasn’t a blood relative, her partner Alan wasn’t permitted into the mortuary. Inspector Chaddock was at her side as she identified Lesley’s clothing and was ‘led deeper into the place. There were more doors. There was a new smell to assault the senses, a smell of rubber and formaldehyde. The room was cold even for October . . . A green sheet covered the little body from stomach to feet. For some reason the sheet had been drawn up to hide the right-hand side of her torso and face . . . She looked beautiful. She seemed to be asleep. Her dark, curly hair spilled out over the protective sheet. I winced as I saw the swelling round her lips. It was as if she had bitten hard on them . . . Lesley lay so silently. She had always been a quiet girl, but this silent stillness was something I had not experienced before. This was the absolute and final stillness of death. My Lesley was dead. I knew it now. I knew it but could not accept it.’15 Ann was not allowed to touch her daughter or take a lock of her hair. When she returned home, her house was under siege from the press.

  ‘Anonymity is a luxury much undervalued until you lose it,’ Ian Brady wrote years later.16 On the morning of Monday, 18 October, he and Myra made separate remand appearances before magistrates. The driver of the van ferrying Myra to the courtroom didn’t address a single word to her, but, as they neared the town, the accompanying prison officer advised her to put a scarf over her hair. Myra was puzzled by the suggestion, until they arrived at the back entrance of the court, where yelling crowds jostled the van and flashbulbs exploded in bursts of blinding light. She stooped to avoid the distorted faces at the glass, pushed her chin into the collar of her cherry-red coat and kept close to the guards as they shuffled her into the building.

  Ian appeared first, in his grey suit, charged with Edward’s murder. He said nothing as he was remanded for a further three days. Then Myra entered the dock, charged with ‘well knowing’ that Ian Brady had murdered Edward Evans on 6 October and had thereafter received, comforted, harboured, assisted and maintained him. She and Ian met in the canteen of Hyde police station immediately afterwards with solicitor Robert Fitzpatrick. After a brief discussion about legal visits and their defence, Fitzpatrick left them alone in the canteen. In her autobiography, Myra records that she told Ian she loved him and he replied that he loved her too.

  In the afternoon, they were each taken in for questioning. At half past two, Benfield threw Lesley’s shoes and socks and the soiled plastic beads on the desk in front of Ian. ‘These garments were recovered from the moor near Greenfield late Saturday night,’ he said. ‘This clothing has been identified as Lesley Ann Downey’s, whose body was recovered at the same time and place. I’ve reason to believe that the photographs of the naked girl which were found in your suitcase are of Lesley Ann Downey. Would you like to say anything about these photographs?’17

  ‘Not at present.’

  Benfield glanced at Talbot, then said, ‘I’d like you now to listen to a tape recording. Two tapes were found in the blue suitcase belonging to you—’

  ‘—I know the tape,’ Ian interrupted, but the tape had already begun to play. He bowed his head and sat with his face averted until it finished.

  ‘You say you know the tape,’ Benfield said. ‘The voices appear to be those of yourself and Myra and Lesley Ann Downey.’

  Ian raised his head: ‘She didn’t give the name Downey. It was something else.’

  Benfield and Talbot were taken aback by his flat response. Ian admitted he had photographed Lesley but claimed that she was brought to his house by two men who dropped her at Belle Vue afterwards, matching the press reports of parapsychologist Emile Croiset’s ‘vision’ of Lesley. When the interview ended at five past eight, Ian refused to sign the deposition notes.

  Benfield and Talbot moved on to Myra, questioning her in the presence of Margaret Campion and Detective Chief Inspector Clifford Haigh of Manchester Police.

  Benfield threw the black wig on the table. ‘What’s this?’

  Myra stared and said nothing.

  He pushed the photographs Ian had taken of Lesley across the table. A muscle moved in Myra’s jaw. Then she bent her head.

  Benfield dropped the discoloured beads onto the table, together with Lesley’s socks and shoes. Myra raised her hands and pressed them against her skull. She put her elbows on the edge of the table, holding a handkerchief to her face.

  ‘This little girl was reported missing from home on Boxing Day last year and these photographs were taken on the same day.’ Benfield paused to give Myra the opportunity to speak, but she went on staring down at her lap. ‘Brady told us the girl was brought to your home by two men. One of them came into the house and remained downstairs while Brady took the photographs in your presence.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘There’s a tape recording, too. I believe the voices are those of yourself, Brady and Lesley Ann Downey.’ He paused again. ‘I’m going to play it.’18

  He flicked the switch on the machine and the spools began to revolve.

  Myra took her elbows off the table. She kept her head bowed and shut her eyes. A pulse throbbed rapidly in her throat. As the tape played on, she began to sob. When the music faded and the footsteps died away, Benfield turned off the machine.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

  She nodded, then whispered, ‘I’m ashamed.’

  But if the detectives were hoping Myra’s tears marked a change in her demeanour, they were mistaken. DCI Haigh later testified that her weeping ‘lasted for a very short time. And then she said again, “I’m saying nothing.”’19 The interview ended at quarter to ten. Myra told Peter Topping that she had been terrified of the police, whose methods ‘left a lot to be desired . . . they frightened me to death’.20 She claimed that her silence was a defence mechanism and that she ‘took refuge behind the mists that swirled in my mind . . . my instinctive reaction to escape the unbearable reality was construed as arrogance and hard defiance’.21 She used the same phrase in her parole plea, maintaining her ignorance of everything but the photographing of Lesley and the murder of Edward, insisting that during the police interrogation her mind was fogged with fear and shame, leading her to construct a front behind which she could hide. The veneer, she insisted, had enabled her to bear the condemnation that came her way during the trial, and in time became second nature to her: ‘Such is how one part of my reputation evolved.’22

  19

  Joe was always convinced Brady and Hindley had taken photographs of where they’d buried their victims . . .

  Margaret Mounsey, author interview, 2009

  Hyde police station was transformed following the discovery of Lesley’s body on the Knoll – the canteen became the press room and was inundated with i
nquiries – while over 200 journalists descended on the moor itself. A press conference was given daily, filmed by Granada – the first of its kind to be televised. The case was permanently in the headlines, and the Manchester Evening News frequently referred to the disappearances of John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Pauline Reade and a 16-year-old girl named Susan Ormrod who had ‘vanished 15 weeks earlier from her home in Gibbon Avenue, Woodhouse Park, Wythenshawe’.1 But with nothing specific to link Myra and Ian to those cases, there was very little the police could do to gain information from them.

  In the days following Lesley’s discovery, searchers swarmed over Hollin Brown Knoll on Mounsey’s instructions. He paced about the place, marking sites of interest on his map, wearing what was known as his ‘Dunkirk look’ beneath the tilted trilby. Several members of the public had come forward with sightings of Ian and Myra, ranging from Saddleworth to Thurlston Moor; some were highly detailed, others less so. Mounsey wanted each one investigated, with a view to linking them with the photographs found at Wardle Brook Avenue. Detective Constable Ray Gelder, a police photographer, took comparison shots on Hollin Brown Knoll and was satisfied that four of Ian’s pictures were taken within fifty yards of Lesley’s grave.

  Mounsey gave a bundle of negatives to Mike Massheder and told him: ‘Get more enlargements. Are we absolutely sure it’s the same rock outcrop as in the album – there must be dozens like it. We’re concentrating on this north side of the road. But could it be on the other side?’2

  Massheder recalls, ‘I was handed them in a big envelope and told, “There you are, get cracking on that.” They were all 2¼ sq. negatives. When you printed them off, the problem was that they were square and the format of a photo is oblong, so the skyline and other details would be missing. There were other people working on the photos and they cropped bits off at will under the impression that the middle section was the point of interest. But they missed vital clues by doing that . . .’3