One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  Officers eventually went to Myra’s aid. She was taken to an outside hospital and booked in under the name ‘Susan Gibb’. Surgeons discovered her nose was broken, her lip and one ear had been split, her eyes blackened, front teeth loosened and the cartilage in one of her knees damaged. She had to eat liquid food through a straw for six weeks. Josie also ended up in hospital because the stitches from the tattoos she had recently had removed had burst open as she tackled Myra. She recalls, ‘The officers treated me like a celebrity. It was: “Here’s half an ounce of tobacco, Josie”; “Let me shake your hand”; “Well done, Josie, I’ve waited 12 years for someone to do that,” etc.’45 Myra wrote a private letter to the authorities, sensing what had happened: ‘It is my opinion, which I feel at liberty to express to you, confidentially, that Josie O’Dwyer was in some way used as a pawn, however willingly a pawn, in a most unhealthy and, to me, frightening game. If anything I have said here can be used as mitigating circumstances at the adjudication which Josie O’Dwyer faces, then I hope it can do so, even though I still feel a natural antipathy for what she did to me.’46 To other inmates, she was less charitable about Josie. Carole Callaghan claimed that Myra had asked her to ‘find that cow and break her arms and legs’ and an internal memo alleges that she and Lord Longford ‘both laughed’ when he informed Myra that Josie had been placed in the punishment block.47

  Myra’s facial injuries were such that in December she wrote to inform her mother that she didn’t want Sharon to visit in case she was frightened by her appearance. She was also depressed by the news that her friend Robert Speaight had died unexpectedly, but she welcomed a visit by Elizabeth Longford. Initially opposed to her husband’s friendship with Myra, Lady Longford decided she should meet her and recorded in her diary: ‘Myra, very slim, was dressed in a long skirt and white blouse, her long brown hair loosely combed – very pale complexion and dark blue eyes – black lashes and regular eyebrows . . . The impression she now gives is of deep sadness. Her voice is low and rather husky . . . She showed us her bandaged and swollen leg and knee and the marks of her two black eyes were still visible . . .’48 After persuading Myra to let them renew the campaign for her, Lady Longford recalled that Myra ‘kissed me goodbye, putting one hand at the back of my fur hat. I responded, feeling deeply moved and unhappy at the whole ghastly tragedy.’49

  For Myra, 1977 began auspiciously. On 23 January, she sent her mother a birthday card and enclosed £3 from the money she had won after coming first in the Koestler Prize for prison arts – she sang three Joan Baez songs while playing the guitar. But that same month, due to renovation work in Holloway, Myra was transferred without warning to Durham, where the routine was far stricter and the place itself uniformly dismal. Myra was put on H wing, within the men’s prison, where women had to eat their meals watched from a glass observation box. Every morning the inmates emptied their toilet pails into a sluice room whose stench hung over the breakfast table. Prisoners were not allowed to socialise behind closed doors, cameras were everywhere and even the toilets had half-doors.

  Anne Maguire arrived in Durham after being wrongly convicted of running an IRA bomb-making factory. Her husband and two sons were imprisoned for their alleged part in the Guildford bombings, despite the complete lack of evidence against them. Anne’s strong Catholic beliefs, and her knowledge that she was innocent and would eventually be reunited with her family, sustained her, together with the friendships she made in prison. She vividly remembers Durham’s bleakness, its poor and often contaminated food, and the cold gym. She recalls: ‘When Myra arrived, we were all locked in. There were girls already there from Holloway who knew her and didn’t want anything to do with her. They were called into the office about that. They wouldn’t go to church either, if she was there. I said to the priest, “Well, Father, it’s like this: the devil himself won’t keep me out of Mass. I don’t have to sit beside her, I have my own seat that I had before she ever came into the building.” He asked me to have a word with the other girls because I got on with them all – they called me Mother. So I did and the following Sunday they went to church as usual.’50

  Anne kept her distance from Myra, determined not to get involved in anything that would affect her own sentence. ‘I just passed the time of day with her. But then when I was sat in my cell, a knock came on the door and I heard Myra say, “It’s me, Anne.” Well, I just froze, I did. I’m telling the truth, I didn’t know what to do. I said, “Yes. What do you want, Myra?” And she said, “I know you don’t believe that I’m innocent of this.” I said back, “Look, Myra, please, I don’t want to know. Really, I just don’t want to know. I’ve enough to get on with. I don’t want you to talk to me about anything. But I’ll tell you this: at the time, when it all came out, if I could have got into Holloway I’d have smacked your face, so I would. What you’ve done is horrible.” And Myra said, “If you’d just read the court papers—” “No,” I said, “I couldn’t and I don’t see any purpose in it. I’m not a judge. The only judge who’ll judge us rightly is the Man above us.” She agreed with me, “I believe that too, Anne. That’s my belief.” So I said, “Well, you live with that, then. But I know I’m totally innocent.” She said straight back, “And what are people thinking about you today, Anne?” I said, “Yes, I’m sure there are mothers thinking I’m a horrible woman, but I am innocent.”’51

  Myra hated Durham, where exercise was taken in the concrete yard overlooked by male prisoners who chanted ‘Hang Mad Myra’ every time she appeared. When Longford visited her in February, bringing her repaired record player, she told him, ‘I’m all right, but I’ve gone back ten years and I’ve started my sentence all over again from square one. I’ve had to become a cleaner again. My pay has gone down 70p and I think it’s terrible to start again after ten years of it.’52 Sara Trevelyan also visited Myra in Durham: ‘The conditions were horrendous and had a profound effect on her. She was dosed up with Valium. Myra described the place as “a concrete submarine”. She got very depressed and her voice would become very low. Her handwriting, too, was infinitesimal, the microscopic handwriting of a deeply depressed and disturbed woman.’53 Myra had to give her small personal library to friends, keeping only those books that were essential for her OU course. The lack of fresh air and greenery turned her skin grey and her eyesight deteriorated. Her movements were shuffling; one prisoner described her as a zombie because she took so many tranquillisers, which also contributed to her weight gain. She smoked heavily, and the only thing that really cheered her was an affair with a married Scots woman. She liked the Roman Catholic chaplain, Father Algy Shearwater, and at his instigation began practising The Spiritual Exercises, a Jesuit book of prayers and reflections about the Bible.

  Anne Maguire recalls: ‘Myra was depressed, but so were all of us. I will say that she did a lot of good concerning prisoners’ rights, helping people write petitions and telling us what we were allowed. She arranged for us the right to offer refreshments to our visitors, because before then we hadn’t been able to give them so much as a glass of water. When she first tried approaching us, some of the girls didn’t want to know, but she said, “You either listen or you don’t. But I’m going to have a tray with a teapot, biscuits, you name it, I will have it on that tray and I will take it out with me on visits. Because I know my rights.” The first time I took a tray out, Myra was near the hot water boiler. This officer in spectacles came up to me – she was nice, we used to be able to have a laugh with her – she said, “Right, Maguire, I have to check everything on your tray.” I said, “Aye, all right then.” She said, “Right, teapot,” and I took the lid off the teapot and all the steam blew out and misted up her glasses. Myra went into fits of laughter, absolute fits of laughter. The officer said, “I should have known I could leave it to you to do that, Maguire.” I said, “Well, you asked to see the teapot, didn’t you?!” But Myra sorted that out, and it was really a blessing for us. She did a lot in that respect.’54

  Myra’s attention was deflected in
May to putting a stop to Our Kid, a play about her crimes.55 She asked for an injunction to be taken out against it on her behalf, writing to a correspondent: ‘Whilst it would be a change for something constructive to be written about me, as opposed to the usual unedifying rubbish, I don’t want it to be at the expense of people to whom it would cause any kind of distress, including Mrs West, who seems to think I condone and even encourage this kind of thing, or to my own mother, who has suffered also in her own way.’56

  On 6 July 1977, the BBC discussion programme Brass Tacks devoted an episode to Myra’s bid for parole. Representing her were Lord Longford, Janie Jones (recently released from prison), Maureen (in silhouette) and Sara Trevelyan. Among those speaking against her was Ann West, whose grief and fury lent eloquence to her delivery: ‘When does my parole begin? I am serving a life sentence because of that monster. I had to listen to those tapes of my daughter begging for mercy. If Myra Hindley comes out, I’ll be up for murder. I’ve said this to Lord Longford once and I’ll say it again: she will be one dead woman. I want justice.’57 Patrick Kilbride, John’s father, telephoned the studio to echo her words: ‘I’ll wait outside the jail for her and I’ll kill her.’58 Afterwards, the BBC switchboard was inundated with calls supporting the victims’ families; while those who had defended Myra were quickly ushered out of the back doors of the studio.59 An opinion poll taken in the wake of the show revealed that 84 per cent of those approached believed that Myra should never be freed.

  Writing to Maureen afterwards, Myra spoke of her desperation at the diminishing prospect of parole and the effect of her notoriety on her mother Nellie: ‘I often feel it would be better for her if I were dead, for although it would be terrible for her at first, eventually she would find peace of mind . . . I think of Ann West, her natural grief curdled and made rancid by hatred and bitterness, perpetually robed in almost manic fanaticism, and my heart aches for her, about the state she’s allowed herself to get into. But then I think of her constant harping about mothers and children, and think of my own mother, whom she never gives a thought to; my mother who is as innocent as that child was (whose innocence I was partly responsible for taking away, but whose life I was not) and some of her hatred and bitterness rubs off on me . . .’60 When Longford visited Myra, he found her in low spirits and wrote to The Times: ‘No one who knows her seriously supposes that she would be a public menace if she were released. Her state of remorse is such that she will be haunted by it all her life.’61

  In January 1978, Ian Brady resurfaced in the public eye with a letter in the Daily Mirror, declaring that Longford didn’t represent his views on parole; he wrote that he no longer allowed Longford to visit him because of his ‘Free Myra’ campaign, adding from his cell in Wormwood Scrubs: ‘I have always accepted that the weight of the crimes both Myra and I were convicted of justifies permanent imprisonment, regardless of expressed personal remorse and verifiable change.’62

  Myra was briefly cheered by another development: ‘On a recent TV programme, David Smith, chief prosecution witness, admitted to planning a murder with Ian Brady. Things could be changing, rapidly . . .’63 But no further action was taken, since Dave had told the police everything during his original interview at Hyde.

  In October, an internal memo noted: ‘Hindley . . . gives the impression that she is complying willingly with the system but beneath the surface she is continually trying to beat the system. She is most selective in her choice of associates and opts to mix with the brighter and financially endowed individuals . . . In addition, her correspondence is full of innuendos and these are written to people who she feels can be of help during her sentence.’64 The memo referred to John Trevelyan asking Myra to let him have a list of complaints that he might take up on her behalf; Myra had done so ‘with alacrity’.65 Although the memo ended more positively: ‘She maintains high personal standards, works hard in her studies and creates few problems’, a follow-up memo two months later describes her as ‘a devious and difficult prisoner’.66

  Since her arrival in Durham, Myra had worked tirelessly on her parole plea, penning 21,000 words over 36 pages, which was then sent on to Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees. In it, she presented herself as the girlish victim of her love for a cruel older man and innocent of the crimes for which she was convicted: ‘To me, [the Moors] have represented nothing more and nothing less than a peaceful solitude which I cherish. Of the bodies and graves I know nothing . . .’ Repeating her earlier declaration to Lord Longford, she went on: ‘I had placed Ian Brady on a pedestal, where he had always been, aloof and out of reach, and I had loved him blindly . . . Flaubert said we should never touch our idols, for the gilt always rubbed off on our fingers. One day I gained the courage to reach up and touch, and the gilt did rub off. He crashed from his pedestal and the dust and ashes of a dead love flaked around my feet. But it was unbearably painful, it always is when one is prepared to face reality squarely.’67 She described her part in the photographing of Lesley as an ‘unsavoury business’ that ‘bad as it was, was a far cry from what it has been alleged to be’.68 She ended her plea: ‘I feel that Society owes me a living . . . I have served Society in good stead as scapegoat and whipping boy for far too many years . . . Is my life going to be sacrificed? . . . Hope springs eternal, but I’m afraid the spring is drying up.’69

  Her petition was rejected. On the recommendation of a joint Home Office/Parole Board committee, Rees stated that Myra’s case wouldn’t be considered again for another three years. She described the outcome as ‘the latest piece of infamy connected with my fate’ in a letter to Longford.70 To John Trevelyan she wrote that she would only recover from the shock ‘when my spirit has wept its last weary tear’.71 At the same time, an internal memo discussed Myra’s attempt to change her name surreptitiously and concluded that she had ‘the intelligence to manipulate and subvert both situations and individuals without resorting to actual untruths but merely by quietly and persistently putting her case in a seductive and disarming manner and leaving it to others to carry through the inappropriate and untoward activities’.72

  Ian Brady was furious when he read in the press about the picture Myra presented in her parole plea. At Wormwood Scrubs, he received psychological help, worked as a cleaner in the hospital wing and used his literary skills to help other prisoners fill out parole forms. He played chess expertly with an array of infamous characters, including the disgraced former Labour Cabinet Minister John Stonehouse and poisoner Graham Young, who favoured the black chess pieces every time, even though he never won a match against Ian. He also had long conversations with Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Lord Longford visited to ask Ian to confirm the account he had given at the trial of Myra’s role in the crimes. The answer was a definite no; from then on, Ian intended to do whatever he could to establish her guilt without incriminating himself further – or revealing the truth about their other murders.

  24

  I really am haunted by that missing child and his poor mother: I’ve been haunted for years and years but more so now that I’ve been able to confront the nightmare.

  Myra Hindley, letter to David Astor, 28 March 1988

  In January 1980, Myra received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities, despite having had the beginnings of pleurisy when she sat her final exam. She declared: ‘I do feel an amount of pride. It was a challenge.’1 She aimed to continue with her studies, intending to convert her achievement into a BA (Hons) degree, but took a break for the remainder of the year when her sister Maureen died unexpectedly.

  During a night out that summer with Bill, Maureen complained of a headache and the following morning he woke to the sound of her retching. He called the doctor, who rushed her into hospital. A brain haemorrhage was diagnosed, but after an emergency operation, Maureen seemed to rally and Myra sent a get well card for her to Nellie, with £5 to cover her mother’s travel costs to the hospital and back. Then she heard that Maureen had suffered a relapse and was in a coma. Myra was hysterical; the H
ome Office granted her permission to visit her sister, but when she arrived at Crumpsall Hospital – where she herself had been born 38 years earlier – she was told that the life support machine had been switched off an hour earlier.2 Maureen died on the morning of 9 July 1980, at the age of 34.

  Three years later, Myra described the pain she felt at her sister’s death as almost unendurable, but if it gave her cause to consider the anguish felt by her victims’ families, then she never mentioned it; she untruthfully told another reporter that when she visited Maureen’s coffin in the hospital chapel, ‘It was the first time I had ever seen a dead person.’3 She wrote to her mother afterwards, telling her that however painful it was for her, as a sister, she knew it must be worse for a parent to lose a child.4

  Her fellow inmates were in no doubt that her grief was genuine. Anne Maguire recalls: ‘Maureen was such a lovely girl. When we passed through on our way to the exercise yard – you had to pass through the visiting room by the door – she would be waving and smiling at us. The day after she died, Myra asked if we would do a rosary for Maureen, and we did; you don’t refuse to pray for anybody. Myra thanked us all. She was broken by her sister’s death.’5

  On 11 July, Myra wrote to the authorities: ‘I do want to attend the funeral and share my family’s sorrow, but I feel I would only add to it if the press or other media are present, which I’m sure they will be. So I have decided not to ask to go for that reason – to protect my family and my sister’s dignity.’6 The press were indeed out in force at Blackley crematorium; the night before, Patrick Kilbride and Ann West were anonymously tipped off about the funeral and went, expecting to see Myra there. Patrick mistook Bill’s daughter for Myra and made a rush at her. He was tackled to the ground and the police charged in as Ann West started to scream. After everyone had gone, Lesley’s mother shredded the wreath Myra had sent and its card – ‘There are no words to express how I miss you. I love you – Myra.’7