One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  The couple arrived each day from Risley, sitting in separate compartments in the back of the van. As they entered court that first day, every member of the press and public craned their necks to stare. Myra was the one whom the women queuing for seats in the public gallery wanted ‘to get their hands on’ – she was the focus of national disbelief, hatred and curiosity, and there was a media scrum each day to snap her as she arrived and left Chester. How she looked became an obsession; for many, the concept of evil had put on a face and walked into a courtroom. Her freshly bleached blonde hair was tinted lilac and she wore her make-up like a mask. She dressed in a neat suit that first day, with a blue blouse. Pamela Hansford Johnson described her: ‘Hair styled into a huge puff-ball, with a fringe across her brows . . . the lines of this porcelained face are extraordinary. Brows, eyes, mouth are all quite straight, precisely parallel. The fine nose is straight too, except for a very faint downward turn at the tip, just as the chin turns very faintly upward. She will have a nutcracker face one day.’11 Ian, in his smart grey suit, white shirt and blue tie, looked ‘like a cross between Joseph Goebbels and a bird’, but Myra resembled Clytemnestra or ‘one of Fuseli’s nightmare women’, with the authority one expected to find ‘in a woman guard of a concentration camp’.12

  There exist two photographs of Myra and Ian, taken illegally at the trial, shot from the bench where the dignitaries sat. Clive Entwistle recalls: ‘Allegedly, it was a Paris Match photographer who managed it. He flew into an airstrip near Chester, was chauffeur-driven to town, slipped into court with a James Bond-type camera that clicked sideways, but was spotted by a court usher who started beckoning security, so dashed from the room, back to the waiting car, and off to the airstrip back to France.’13

  In response to the charges read out to them, Myra and Ian answered ‘Not guilty’ to each one. As the jury were sworn in, their solicitors objected to four women, resulting in a men-only jury. Proceedings were opened by the Attorney General, who outlined the crimes and their background. He warned those in court that they would have to listen to a harrowing tape recording and examine distressing photographs. After completing his speech, he presented the photographs Ian had taken of Lesley. Among the victims’ relatives who didn’t attend the trial was Winnie Johnson: ‘My mother wouldn’t let me, she knew it would be too much for me. We had come so close to solving Keith’s death, but we still didn’t know where his body was. I couldn’t have faced seeing the killers in the flesh.’14 John Kilbride’s parents did not attend either, Danny recalls: ‘They stayed away, but I wanted to go. My dad wouldn’t let me though, no matter how hard I pleaded. I was an old 13, but I had to be. I was getting a lot of tormenting – “You’ll end up on the moors like your brother” – all that. Then you’d get some people who would cross the street so they didn’t have to speak. Perhaps it was embarrassment. But my dad flatly refused to let me go to the trial.’15

  The second day of the trial opened the evidence for the prosecution. The first witness proper to take the stand was Myra’s sister, Maureen. She was called earlier than planned because her baby had been due on the first day of the trial; arrangements were in place to whisk her off to hospital if necessary.16 Wearing a black polo-neck jumper and maternity smock, she described the relationship between her sister and Ian, the friendship that had sprung up between her husband and Ian, and confirmed Myra had shopped at Ashton-under-Lyne market. Maureen’s relatively calm exterior belied her fear of reprisal; a few days earlier she had been viciously attacked in the lift at Underwood Court and the flat she shared with Dave was daubed with foul graffiti, while every post brought a new pile of hate mail. Despite Myra’s claims of being rejected in favour of Maureen during childhood, Nellie continued to disown her younger daughter in order to give her full support to Myra. Maureen was also still estranged from her father, who had become a recluse from the wrath of the public.

  That afternoon, a dense fog crept across the city, causing traffic chaos. Myra and Ian were kept in the cells at Hyde police station overnight. The Police Ball was held that evening, and while Myra and Ian sat alone in their cells with a blanket and a cup of tea, above them the police entertained local dignitaries – big band music and the sound of hundreds of foxtrotting feet reverberated through the ceiling.

  The following day, Maureen took the stand again and described the night of Edward’s murder. She admitted that Dave was receiving a regular income from a national newspaper in relation to the case and that they stood to receive a large sum for syndication rights if Myra and Ian were convicted. When Dave was called to the stand, it emerged that not only were the couple receiving £20 a week from the News of the World, but they had also taken a holiday in France at the newspaper’s expense and Dave had been promised £1,000 for his post-trial story. The Press Council later condemned the newspaper’s interference in the case, while Fenton Atkinson declared that the News of the World had given the defence ‘a stick with which to beat Smith’.17 Dave’s background caused a few eyebrows to be raised in court, and some of his comments (‘I love having money, it’s gorgeous stuff’) and use of journalistic phrases did him few favours.18 Nonetheless, he remained calm, despite his habit of fiddling with the microphone, and answered every question directly.

  On the fourth day, Carr and Campion were among those to give evidence.19 The court then adjourned for the weekend. When it reconvened on Monday, 25 April, the evidence moved away from Edward Evans to the murder of Lesley Ann Downey. Most of the witness statements were read to court, but Patty Hodges gave her evidence in a rapid clip and remained unfazed during her brief cross-examination. On 28 April, evidence concerning the abduction and murder of John Kilbride was presented. Throughout it all, Myra’s face remained a blank disc, except to share a smile with Ian or whisper with him. They played noughts and crosses in her notepad and passed each other mints. On one journey from Risley to Chester they shared a Quality Street Easter egg and felt sick as they climbed the stairs to court. Only once did Myra’s impassive public facade drop: when she stuck her tongue out at reporters as she left court.

  On 29 April, Emlyn Hoosen opened the case for the defence by reminding the jury, ‘It is terribly, terribly important that you dispose from your minds all the natural revulsion one has in reading or hearing evidence connected with the death of children’, and that ‘the very least or meanest person of this country is entitled to a fair and dispassionate trial and a proper assessment of the evidence for and against’.20 He then stood aside and Ian Brady stepped into the dock. He stuck to his story of bringing Edward to the house for the purpose of blackmail, and that Lesley had left the house safely in the presence of David Smith and another man. But he made two significant slips during his account of what happened while Lesley was at Wardle Brook Avenue.

  He told the court that after the nude photographing session, he had put the handkerchief in Lesley’s mouth, then covered the lower half of her face with a scarf ‘just before the end’.21 Fenton Atkinson leaned forward: ‘“Just before the end” – what do you mean by “the end”?’ Ian stuttered, ‘The end of – just before the – or it could be just after the tripod being opened.’

  The matter was allowed to pass, but, only a minute later, after Hoosen prompted him to explain what followed the taking of the photographs, Ian declared, ‘After completion, we all got dressed and went downstairs.’22 The blunder went unnoticed until after the weekend, when the court reconvened and Ian entered the witness box to be cross-examined by the Attorney General, who asked him about the slip. Ian refused to admit he had said it, and Hoosen backed him up, but a note of it had been made and one of the jurors piped up, ‘He said that, sir.’23 Ian insisted, ‘I didn’t say that. I said the girl got dressed and we all went downstairs. The girl. The girl.’ Later, in his summing up, Fenton Atkinson referred back to the error on Ian’s part, telling the jury, ‘It possibly casts a flood of light on the nature of the activities that were going on.’24

  The Attorney General questioned Ian about the ‘la
ndscape’ shots, asking, ‘Those are photographs of this cemetery of your making on that moorland, are they not?’25 Ian replied that they were snapshots, but the Attorney General insisted that the photographs served a dual purpose: both as markers ‘for future reconnaissance’ and as ‘morbid enjoyment of the trophies of murders’.26 Asked whether he read ‘dirty books’, Ian responded, ‘It depends on the dirty mind. It depends on your mind.’27 The Attorney General pressed him: ‘This is the atmosphere of your mind. A sink of pornography, was it not?’28 Ian delivered a pithy reply, ‘No. There are better collections in lords’ manors all over the country.’29

  Whenever an opportunity presented itself for him to protect Myra, Ian did so. He stated that during Edward’s murder, ‘She wasn’t in the room. I told Myra, Evans was dead and she became overwrought, hysterical.’30 He asserted that Myra hadn’t wanted to be present when Lesley was photographed, but he’d insisted. He said that Myra had asked him to destroy the tape recordings and that she had never been involved in any plans for robbery. He deliberately belittled her in order to give weight to his argument that she was a dupe: ‘She was my typist in the office. I dictated to her in the office and this tended to wrap over.’31 Myra kept her eyes fixed on Ian throughout his time in the dock, except for brief moments when she rested her forehead on the wooden bench in front. She wrote to her mother during the trial, ‘He’s not concerned about his future, just mine. It’s the same with me: I’m not interested in my future, just him. However, we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I believe in one thing though, that no matter how black things look, some day we can begin together again. I know what we’ve done and what we haven’t done. You know too, no matter what happens.’32

  The two of them had banked on Myra receiving a minimal sentence; after her release she would travel and share her experiences with Ian through letters until his release. Years later, she told Peter Topping a quite different tale, proclaiming that Ian had tried to exonerate her only within the boundaries of what he was willing to admit. ‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘he was prepared to sacrifice me to my fate.’33 But in court, she was keen to see that the stories they had agreed upon were put across accurately and passed a note to her solicitor, Godfrey Heilpern, with a distinctly peremptory tone: ‘I told you, no cross-examination that damages Ian.’34

  Ian’s testimony ended on 3 May; he was followed into the dock by Nellie Hindley, who told the court that Myra was not in the habit of shopping at Ashton market, whatever Maureen said. When she had finished giving her evidence, Myra stepped into the dock, with every eye in the courtroom turned upon her. A glint came from the public gallery, where someone was watching her through opera glasses.

  Asked if she wished to take the oath or affirm, Myra replied, ‘I want to affirm.’35 Fenton Atkinson said, ‘That is because you have no religious beliefs?’

  ‘Yes.’36

  Her defence counsel’s first question concerned her relationship with Ian: ‘Could you tell us, Miss Hindley, what were your feelings for Ian Brady?’

  In a low voice, she responded, ‘I became very fond of him. I loved him. I still – I love him.’37

  She was in the witness box for almost six hours; Ian had been there for a little under nine. He kept his gaze averted while she stood there, either sitting with his chin resting in his left hand or glancing about the court. Questioned that day and the next, Myra gave little away. She declared that she was ashamed of the tape recording of Lesley and that her attitude towards the child had been ‘brusque and cruel’ because she was worried someone might hear.38 She said that she had drawn the curtains and was only there as ‘insurance’ that Lesley left the house safely: ‘I was in the room, but I was looking out of the window because I was embarrassed at what was going on . . . I was on the other side of the curtains, looking out of the window, which was wide open. I didn’t want to be there in the first place, but Ian asked me to. She started getting undressed and I went in there.’39 The Attorney General retorted, ‘A pretty rotten witness you would have been, looking out of the window.’40 She claimed not to know who told Lesley how to pose, to which the Attorney General responded with more sarcasm, ‘It isn’t the Albert Hall; it’s a small room and you were there.’41 Inexplicably, she claimed that the woman’s voice clearly heard at the beginning of the tape recording was not hers but in fact Ian’s. Asked about the threats she had made to Lesley, Myra responded, ‘I wouldn’t have hit her much. I never touched her. I never harmed her . . . when she started crying and shouting and screaming I just wanted her to be quiet.’42 The Attorney General thundered, ‘The screams of a little girl of ten – of your sex, madam’, and demanded to know why she hadn’t removed the child from the room and ‘treated [her] as a woman should treat a female child, or any other child’.43

  ‘I should have done, but I didn’t.’ She paused. ‘I have no defence to that.’44

  Grimly, he told her, ‘Your shame is a counterfeit shame, Miss Hindley.’45

  Myra answered a torrent of questions about the ‘landscape’ photographs and denied knowing that any were taken on or near graves. She never slipped up, as Ian had, and threw off the question about his blunder over the three of them getting dressed after Lesley was photographed. Junior Prosecuting Counsel was the now-retired High Court Judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse, who recalls: ‘She was an intelligent woman – that, I think, everybody recognises – and she had a rather statuesque appearance. She seemed to be really rather unblinking and certainly, for most of the time, quite emotionless.’46 Myra said later that the icy mask she presented to the courtroom hid her terror and sickness; she didn’t want to add fuel to a fire that was already raging by showing her emotions: ‘I needed that veneer . . . I could not express my ravaged self.’47

  Godfrey Heilpern, Myra’s own lawyer, put to her the one question that everyone wanted to ask: why she had done what she did.

  ‘I would go along with him,’ she replied, referring to Ian.48

  ‘Miss Hindley, why?’

  ‘Because I just did.’

  ‘Can you help us with the reason?’

  She shook her head. ‘I cannot.’

  The grilling ended with a number of questions from the Attorney General about John Kilbride, finishing with, ‘It was from Ashton market that you and Brady picked up this little boy. It was from there that, ultimately, with your assistance, his body ended up in that lonely grave on the moors.’49

  Myra uttered her last line in public: ‘No, I was nowhere near Ashton at all.’50

  Her solicitor stood up. ‘I have no re-examination. That is the case for the accused, my Lord.’51

  The closing speech for the Crown followed, in which the Attorney General conceded that the main witness for the prosecution, David Smith, was ‘certainly no angel’ but had told his story ‘frankly . . . and exactly’.52 The two accused formed ‘an evil partnership together and cooperated together in all they did’, while Myra was ‘a calculated, pretty cool operator’.53 He ended: ‘My submission is that the same pairs of hands killed all three of these victims, Evans, Downey and Kilbride, and these are the pairs of hands of the two accused in the dock.’54

  Over the next couple of days, Hoosen and Heilpern gave their closing speeches on behalf of Ian and Myra; Heilpern described the evidence against her as flimsy and intimated that her relationship with Ian was one of master and servant. Fenton Atkinson then began his summing up, describing it as ‘a truly horrible case’. He told the jury, ‘From first to last, there has not been the smallest suggestion that either of these two was in any way mentally abnormal or not fully responsible for his or her actions. That leads on to this – that if the prosecution is right, you are dealing here with two killers of the utmost depravity . . . they are entitled to the unusual incredulity which such terrible offences must raise in the mind of any normal person. Could anybody be as wicked as that?’55

  On the morning of Friday, 6 May 1966, Myra tried to compose a letter to her mother. She knew that the day ahead would determine
the rest of her life: ‘Dear Mam . . . I don’t know what the verdict will be yet, but I do know that I will be convicted of something, like harbouring Ian after he and Smith killed Evans. Once you know what the verdicts and sentences are you must not let them affect your life as they will mine. I’ve just started crying and don’t want anyone to see me . . .’56

  In Chester, the van carrying the two accused swept through the vast crowds and blinding flash of camera guns to the back of the courthouse. Myra climbed the stone steps to the dock, and Fenton Atkinson finished his summing up by referring to her as being ‘very closely in Brady’s confidence . . . Brady was quite dependent on her for transport.’57 He described the Downey case as the ‘really crucial’ one against her and told the jury that if they were convinced she was guilty in that instance, then they might think similarly about the Kilbride case, and thus conclude that she was a willing participant in the Evans murder. Nonetheless, he advised, ‘The first thing to remember in considering Hindley is this: that a great deal of the evidence against Brady is not evidence against her; and in particular Brady’s statement to Smith about killing people and burying them on the moors. That is something said behind her back and that is not evidence against her. Anything that Brady may have said to the police by way of an apparent admission is not evidence against her. The plan to dispose of Evans’s body is only evidence if you think that from the whole of the evidence she must have seen it and known its contents. It is very important to remember this . . .’ He paused: ‘There it is. You have listened long and very patiently to all the evidence in the case and you must now go and consider your verdict.’58

  At twenty to three, the jury retired. Two and a half hours later, they filed back into the courtroom and took their seats. Myra and Ian stood side by side in the dock, staring resolutely ahead. The clerk asked the foreman of the jury to stand and give their verdict: Ian Brady was found guilty of all three murders; Myra Hindley was found guilty of the murder of Edward Evans, guilty of the murder of Lesley Ann Downey, not guilty of the murder of John Kilbride, but guilty of the charge that she ‘well knowing that Ian Brady had murdered John Kilbride did receive, comfort, harbour, assist and maintain the said Ian Brady’.59