One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Massheder’s enlargements were passed to the CID, who searched a spot Patty Hodges had pointed out below Hollin Brown Knoll on the other side of the road. Ordnance survey maps identified it as Sail Bark Moss. Massheder recalls: ‘They were out by about a hundred yards. And by this point, the assistant chief constable, Harold Prescott, had begun to waver in his support for Joe’s mission. Four days after Lesley was found, Prescott rang Joe and said, “What you doing buggering about on the moors? Come on, it’s time you got back to work.” The search took a large amount of manpower and a lot of money. It wasn’t looking very productive.’ In a press conference on 20 October, Benfield was similarly dour, telling reporters, ‘I don’t believe there are any more bodies on the moor.’4

  Even as he spoke, searchers were spreading out across the moor in the bitter wind. Their method had been improved with the use of a new probing rod to which particles of earth stuck; it was the invention of local mill engineer Victor Hird, developed with the cooperation of the War Graves Commission years before. The Manchester Evening News ran a front-page article: ‘Boys Take Police to Moors Spot’, which described how Mounsey and another senior detective had been taken by two hikers to a spot two miles from Hollin Brown Knoll: ‘A police car stopped at Shiny Brook, Wessenden Head . . .’5 Mounsey and the detective followed the hikers down a small valley to a bluff beneath a rock face about a mile from the road. They returned some time later, with Mounsey ‘perspiring and with shoes muddy after the long walk’. He told the press, ‘The two hikers have given us certain information and we have been making a survey of the spot.’6 The newspaper also mentioned Susan Ormrod and highlighted public interest in the case under the headline ‘Hundreds Flock to Watch Moor Hunt’: ‘. . . in small family cars and executive limousines . . . sensation seekers have rolled up in their hundreds . . . Some stayed for only a few minutes. Others parked their cars by the roadside and settled down with vacuum flasks and sandwiches.’7 A policeman called it ‘morbid curiosity at its worst. All we needed was a hotdog vendor.’8

  Later that day, Tyrrell decided to have another stroll about the house on Wardle Brook Avenue. Home Office pathologist Dr Manning was there, and the curtains had been drawn against the crowds outside. Tyrrell ran his fingers along the bookshelf and pulled out a few books, fanning the pages of Forever Amber, Goldfinger, Return to Peyton Place, Frankenstein and Fanny Hill. He came to one book smaller than the rest and held it in his hands for a moment. A white prayer book, it was inscribed on the flyleaf: ‘To Myra from Auntie Kath and Uncle Bert, 16 Nov 1958, souvenir of your first Holy Communion’. He flicked through the pages, and the spine gave a small creak. He lifted the book and saw that something had been pushed inside the spine: a tightly rolled slip of paper. He unfolded it carefully: counterfoil number 74843 – two suitcases, deposited at Manchester Central Station on 5 October 1965 for one shilling each. The disposal plan flashed before his eyes: P/B and TICK. Prayer Book and Ticket. He drew in his breath.9

  Myra was charged with the murder of Lesley Ann Downey, at 9.40 a.m. on Thursday, 21 October 1965. Fifteen minutes later, Ian was charged with the same offence. At Hyde Magistrate’s Court, the couple appeared separately to face the charges laid before them. Myra, in her cherry-red coat, passed Ian on the steps into the dock. Like Ian, she pleaded not guilty and was granted Legal Aid, then returned to Risley.

  On the moor, in the watery sunshine, Mounsey strode up and down Sail Bark Moss with Detective Sergeant Clancy, holding a photograph that he hadn’t been able to put out of his mind. It was the one taken by Ian of Myra and Puppet crouching on the grave of John Kilbride, although no one else knew the intent behind it or where it was shot. Mounsey had given it to Massheder, who recalls: ‘The photograph had been cropped to print on normal paper, which meant that the skyline was gone. But I printed it again including the skyline, which was very faint. I used a common enough technique of two seconds’ exposure for the foreground, then covered the foreground and burnt in the horizon for another four or five seconds. Overexposure brought up the background and I saw these jagged rocks . . .’10 He showed it to Mounsey, who recognised the rocks from Hollin Brown Knoll.

  That morning Mounsey and Clancy tried to pinpoint the spot where the photograph had been taken. ‘I don’t know how Joe did it,’ Massheder recalls, ‘but lo and behold, he lined it up. He called me and said, “Bring yourself and your camera up to Hollin Brown Knoll and don’t let the bloody press follow you.” So I knew there was something going on. I got to the moor and nonchalantly strolled down to him. He gave me the photograph and said, “Right, stand there and look at that.” As soon as I saw it, I said, “It’s got to be.” I took a photograph to match the two scenes up and we knew we’d got it.’11 Mounsey, Clancy and Massheder were joined by John Chaddock, who recalled that shortly before midday, ‘I pushed my stick a short distance into the ground at that spot. Upon withdrawing my stick, there was a strong smell of putrefaction on the end of it. We removed the topsoil to a depth of about nine inches and uncovered a boy’s left black shoe. Underneath the shoe I saw some socks and what appeared to be part of a heel.’12

  Massheder remembers, ‘You could smell the putrefaction straight away. I looked at Joe as John’s black shoe was unearthed. The policeman in him was quietly euphoric. But I’ll never forget the sight of him leaning over the grave, smoking his cigarette and the look on his face. It affected him very deeply. My reaction was on a professional level. As a photographer, it was an achievement and as a detective, my first thought was, “We’ve found him. John Kilbride. Bloody hell.”’13

  Detective Constable Ray Gelder arrived and Mounsey said, with some measure of satisfaction, ‘One of you lads go back to headquarters and get on the phone to Harold Prescott. Tell him: we’ve found John Kilbride.’14 Massheder, who was Gelder’s superior, sent him down to make the call: ‘Polson and Gee were sent for and a canvas screen put up to shield the grave. Of course, that alerted the press and soon a whole crowd of journalists were standing on the roadside.’15 The police arrived in droves, too: Benfield, Prescott, Nimmo and Cunningham. At half past three, Gee and Polson began to excavate the body.

  Ian had buried John 370 yards from Lesley, less than 18 inches below the surface of the soil, face down against the earth. The boy’s feet were towards the road, his body twisted slightly to the left, right forearm under his chest and left arm straight down at his side. He was fully clothed except for his trousers and underpants, which were rolled down with the underpants knotted at the back, leaving the detectives in little doubt of the sexual cruelty that had been inflicted upon him prior to death. The young boy whose whistle and grin had made him a familiar figure about the streets where he lived was gone; buried close to a stream bed, his body was so severely decomposed that only bones, teeth and a tuft of brown hair remained. Only one of John’s shoes was found with him; Ian had thrown the other on the fire at Bannock Street. About a dozen bones were missing from John’s hands, but Polson was certain that his body was intact when he was buried.

  Late afternoon brought a glorious sunset, bathing the moor in pale red light. The pathologists ‘undercut’ John’s remains in order not to disturb what was left of him, digging down on both sides of the grave. Shortly before five o’clock, two stretcher-bearers arrived with a West Riding pathologist. Half an hour later, John’s body on its earthen bed was gently lifted onto a stretcher and covered in plastic sheeting. As dusk fell, the scent of putrefaction kept even the most forceful journalists at bay as John’s body was carried away from the moor to Uppermill mortuary. No one envied the policemen who were assigned to guard duty on the moor that night.

  Margaret Mounsey recalls: ‘When Joe came home that night, he was very quiet and terribly upset. In all the time I knew him, that was the most distressed I ever saw him from his job. He was usually very good at zonking out anywhere because he was always exhausted, as policemen generally are, but he didn’t sleep that night. Our children were very little at the time and, of course, you immediately think
how you would feel if it was one of your own.’16

  The post-mortem at Uppermill mortuary was conducted by Polson and Gee, who couldn’t establish a cause of death. Mounsey called on the Kilbride family at their home in Smallshaw Lane, carrying John’s small black shoe. Danny recalls: ‘My mum identified it straight away. I was there, I’d insisted that I wasn’t going to be pushed into the kitchen with my brothers and sisters. We all knew then, what had happened to him. Although . . . I didn’t know about the sexual abuse. That was kept from me until I was about 18. I was told that he’d been strangled, but no more than that. I can’t say it was a relief that he’d been found. Everybody imagines it must have been. I know it meant we were able to have a burial and had somewhere to lay flowers for him. But I didn’t want my brother to be found dead, and I’m positive my mum and dad felt the same way. Relief was the last thing any of us felt.’17

  ‘I had to go up to the mortuary,’ Shelia Kilbride remembered. ‘They’d cleaned [the clothing] up as best they could, but . . . I’ll never forget it, that. I’d altered his jacket, I’d altered his underwear – his father’s underwear, because I wasn’t rich, I couldn’t always buy him new. I knew it was him. The buttons on the jacket, footballs, I’d stitched on myself. There was no doubt at all.’18 There was nothing left of her son himself; only those few strands of hair, which she confirmed looked the same as John’s hair.

  Policewoman Pat Clayton was with her: ‘She was upset. We were all upset. We just hung to her in the back of the car. It was terrible. It was her child that was being identified, but there was no child to identify. Only clothing. It was horrendous, that murder. And particularly when you see pictures of a woman, which you later learn is a picture of a woman standing over the grave of a child that’s just been buried, dumped like a bag of rubbish on the moors. It’s horrific . . .’19 Mounsey helped arrange a special Mass to be said for John at St Christopher’s Roman Catholic Church in Ashton on 24 October, led by Father William Kelly, who had known John well.

  The police concentrated on building up their case against Myra and Ian. Detective Sergeant Roy Jarvis was given the task of proving that the headboard seen on the pornographic photographs of Lesley was the one in Myra’s bedroom; he matched marks on the wall and the headboard with marks on the photographs, and experts were able to prove that Ian’s old Ensign camera had been used for the photographs. The Fujica was the only one found in the house, but the owner of the shop where Myra had bought the camera using the Ensign as a deposit remembered her and was able to trace the Ensign to its new owner. The forensic team, led by Dr Manning, finished searching the house in Hattersley on 25 October and moved on to David Smith’s old home at 13 Wiles Street, where they stripped wallpaper, removed floorboards and labelled samples with ‘the grubby curtains pulled tightly across the windows all day’.20 Traces of blood were discovered, but Dave explained to the police that the blood was his from when he cut his wrist while installing a new pane of glass in the window. The incident occurred two months after Pauline Reade vanished; it was Joan Reade who had bandaged the wound for him, as she confirmed to the police. From Wiles Street, detectives moved on to 18 Westmoreland Street, Ian’s old home.21 His mother was in Glasgow, staying with the Sloans; her husband Pat insisted she get away from the ever-present reporters and ghouls. She collapsed after learning her son and his girlfriend had murdered children; however, she returned to Manchester to stand by Ian. Detectives also traced Myra’s first car to a farm on the outskirts of Nottingham, where it was being used to accommodate broody hens.

  The moor search, having yielded the graves of Lesley and John, was allowed to continue, with Benfield back-pedalling and declaring that he was now certain there were more bodies to be found. Ian’s landscape photos were distributed to rambling, cycling and hiking clubs in the hope that they might help. Police probed the Knoll and returned to Woodhead, where over 100 volunteers searched around the Snake Pass. The weather was starting to close in, with night frosts, thick mists and gale-force winds. At Wardle Brook Avenue, the police had turned over the garden but found nothing except large quantities of peat.

  On 26 October, the Gorton & Openshaw Reporter covered the funeral of Lesley Ann Downey at Trinity Methodist Church in Ancoats, where she had been a member of the Girls’ Guildry. A silent crowd of 2,000 people lined the rain-swept streets as Lesley’s small coffin covered by a huge cross of red roses was carried into the church. The £100 reward offered by local people for Lesley’s safe return went towards her funeral instead. The Reverend Harold Ford began the service with ‘One of our flock is not with us today . . .’22 He quoted from the Bible: ‘Woe be unto you that cause one of these, my little ones, to stumble. It were better for that person that a millstone were hung around his neck and thrown in the depths of the sea.’23 After Lesley’s favourite hymns – ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ and ‘There’s a Friend for Little Children’ – were sung by the 300-strong congregation, the coffin was borne to Southern Cemetery. A white headstone was erected soon afterwards bearing the inscription: ‘A little flower lent, not given/To bud on Earth/And blossom in heaven’.

  Two days later, on Thursday, 28 October, Myra and Ian were driven in separate vehicles to their remand hearing in Hyde. Myra was stunned by the volume and ferocity of the crowd that had gathered in the heavy, slanting rain on Water Street. The public gallery inside the court was packed with women, who had also brought their children along. Terence and Patrick Downey, Lesley’s father and uncle, were among the few male faces. The Gorton & Openshaw Reporter announced: ‘Brady, a bushy-haired man wearing a grey suit and a white open-necked shirt was brought into the dock first . . . After a few moments, Hindley was brought up, between Detective Policewoman Margaret Campion and Policewoman Hazel Simpson. Hindley, wearing a cherry red coat, appeared to have had her blonde hair freshly set.’24 The public gallery rumbled with anger and shouts of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Monsters!’ Kenneth Pickup, the magistrates clerk, read out the charges in less than two minutes, but Terence and Patrick Downey had used the time to try to loosen a wooden floor block with their feet. Terence recalled, ‘I would have smashed their heads in if only I could have snatched it up in time. But I daren’t reach down. The police were watching everywhere.’25 By the time he’d prised it free, the couple were being led out of the dock.

  Outside, the crowd had swollen to twice its earlier number. Lesley’s relatives thought they spotted Myra and Ian being driven away and made a dart for the car. Terence managed to wrench open the door before being roughly tackled by the police, who had used Margaret Campion and a young male colleague as decoys.26 Myra and Ian were safely inside the red-brick building, waiting until the crowd had dispersed. Overhead they could hear the whine of a Canberra jet heading to the moor for aerial shots.

  Thwarted by the police, the crowd turned on another couple in their midst. The North Cheshire Herald reported: ‘A young couple who had been spectators in the public gallery were later chased across Hyde market by a group of shouting women. As cameramen’s flashbulbs popped, the couple dodged in and out of the stalls. The girl, in high heels and a grey suit, had difficulty keeping up with the man accompanying her.’27 Dave and Maureen, who was pregnant at the time, were targeted for public abuse.

  At half past twelve, Ian arrived at Ashton-under-Lyne police station. Mounsey explained that the switch from Hyde to Ashton for the interviews that day was due to ‘an irate crowd’, but he had an unconventional plan in mind which he hoped would cause both Myra and Ian to crack.

  Mounsey and Detective Inspector Leach began by questioning Ian about John Kilbride again, asking him to look at various landscape photographs, including ones taken at Hollin Brown Knoll. Ian denied they had been taken to indicate a grave. Mounsey slapped down the photographs of Myra and Puppet on Sail Bark Moss: ‘This photograph was taken by you showing your girlfriend crouching over John Kilbride’s grave. How can you possibly say you know nothing about his death?’28

  ‘I’ve only got your word that it’s a grav
e.’

  ‘Do you imagine for one moment I would tell you lies about a matter as serious as this?’

  ‘If my solicitor gets another photograph from somewhere . . .’ Ian began, then broke off.

  Mounsey frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  Ian fell silent and the two detectives could get no further response from him. Mounsey left the room shortly after two o’clock, leaving Leach with Ian.

  In another room at the station, Myra had been brought in from Risley to answer a barrage of questions from Tyrrell and Mattin. Tyrrell began by asking her about her childhood and her relationship with David Smith. Myra was sweating; she wore a mohair coat and had Ian’s letters tucked into the waistband of her skirt, under her clothes.

  Tyrrell wanted to know where she thought the photograph taken on John Kilbride’s grave had been taken.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Myra said.

  ‘Who took it?’

  ‘Ian, I suppose.’

  ‘How old was the dog then?’

  ‘He was only a pup,’ Myra said. ‘He’s two years old in January. That will make him 20 months old now. It’s my other dog’s pup.’

  ‘What are you looking at there on the photograph?’ Tyrrell asked.

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘You’re looking at the ground.’

  Myra fell silent.

  ‘According to the photograph,’ Tyrrell said, ‘it appears to have been snowing.’

  ‘It looks like it,’ she conceded.

  ‘Who chose the place where you would kneel?’

  ‘No one. We just took a photograph where we felt like it.’

  ‘Did Ian take all the photographs of you?’

  ‘Not all, but quite a lot.’

  ‘Who else would take photographs of you?’