by Ian Brady
Whether Brady was a sadist in the technical sense, of enjoying inflicting pain on his victims, I am still by no means convinced. All that we know for certain is that he enjoyed a sense of power over them, of treating them as sexual throwaways.
As soon as I began corresponding with Brady, I realised that he belongs to that rare group of criminals who will never admit that they are in the wrong. At first I was inclined to take him at his word, and accept that he was so convinced of the rottenness and corruption of society that he genuinely believed that he was not a criminal but a kind of avenger. But as we went on arguing, it became very clear that his position simply lacked consistency. He never tired, for example, of pointing out that society is capable of criminal violence, citing the children who died of napalm burns in Vietnam. But how could he claim that raping and murdering children was his own way of punishing society for burning children with napalm?
In short, where the Moors murders were concerned, he obviously had a blind spot. He liked to compare himself to Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. But it was quite obvious that there was something badly wrong with his interpretation of Crime and Punishment. Its hero Raskolnikov decides to kill anold pawnbrokress to demonstrate that men of genius — like himself — are not subject to the usual laws of morality. Dostoevsky did not agree with him, and at the end of the book, Raskolnikov accepts his prison sentence as a way of expiating his crime. For Brady, this was merely Dostoevsky’s attempt to appease the censor, and Raskolnikov remains the defiant criminal genius, shaking his fist at morality and the law.
Brady, of course, had his right to his own interpretation of Dostoevsky (although I sent him duplicated pages from Dostoevsky’s notebooks showing that he was mistaken). But even if you were, for the sake of argument, willing to accept Brady’s strange upside down interpretation of morality, it still made no real sense. He was not trying to argue his own consistent view of morality and the law, for he always seemed to come back to his view that two blacks somehow make a white, and that if it can be shown that judges and politicians are corrupt, then crime is not really crime.
It was because Brady argued so long and so bitterly about the criminality of society that I suggested that he ought to write a book. It was obvious that he knew a great deal about the mentality of ‘serial killers,’ and might well bring his insights to bear in analysing killers like Ted Bundy, John Gacy and Henry Lee Lucas. I approached my friend Nick Robinson, of Robinson Publishing, to ask if he might be interested in publishing a book on murder by Brady. It would have to appear anonymously, of course, but I would write an introduction guaranteeing that the author was a genuine serial killer. Nick Robinson agreed; but when he received Brady’s typescript, wrote to tell me that it was unpublishable.
I asked him to let me see it, and immediately saw what he meant. It was a fairly competent book about a number of serial killers, including the Yorkshire Ripper and the mass poisoner Graham Young, both of whom Brady had met in prison. But it contained no real insights—it might have been churned out by any competent hack.
I read the book carefully, then wrote to Brady trying to point out its weaknesses, and offering to help him rewrite it. The result ws an enraged reply, telling me that no one had asked my opinion, and that Nck Robinson had no right to have sent me the book.
The whole tone of Brady’s letter infuriated me. He made it sound as if he was justifiably losing his temper with someone who deserved it. But there had always been an element of formality in our relationship. Now he was shouting and raging like a man with a grievance. He was, in fact, raving like a ‘Right Man’ who has made ‘the decision to be out of control.’ I wrote back telling him that if he ever again addressed me in that tone he would never hear from me again. For several weeks I heard no more from him. Then came a more reasonable letter that was, in effect, a tacit apology.
The same kind of thing had happened on a previous occasion but I had failed to see its significance. I had told him that I would be abroad for several weeks, but he evidently failed to make note of it. The day I returned, I dropped him a postcard saying that I was now back and would soon be writing to him. This crossed with an angry letter from Brady, written on the assumption that I had decided to drop the correspondence, and demanding that I return all his letters to his solicitor forthwith.
The next day I received a sheepish note from him saying: ‘Oh, well, no harm done.’ What failed to strike me as significant was that Brady should write like a jilted mistress, demanding all his letters back. Obviously, he had no more right to the letters he had written me than I had to the letters I had written him. He was transposing our relationship to an emotional level it had never possessed. And according to Myra Hindley, he had often lost his temper with her in the same way, and sometimes beat her up. I should have seen then that Brady is a person who, in the last analysis, has no self-control, and that I had made a fundamental error in treating him as a rational being.
About a year or more later, Brady’s solicitor, a delightful and kindly man named Benedict Birnberg, wrote and asked me if I would care to see a rewritten version of the book on serial killers, now called The Gates of Janus.
I thought it was greatly improved. But it still seemed to me virtually unpublishable. To begin with, the whole of its first part was devoted to his usual claim that criminals are not really criminals because society is just as bad. The second part dealt with individual serial killers like Bundy, the ‘Night Stalker’ Ramirez, Carl Panzram, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and the Hillside Stranglers Buono and Bianchi. His unreserved admiration goes to Panzram for his defiance — yet he is unable to see (what I have pointed out in this book) that Panzram’s notion of murdering innocent people to make society ‘pay’ for his own sufferings, is simply an example of absurd illogicality.
It is when Brady describes the Night Stalker as ‘the Shakespeare of serial killers’ that the sheer absurdity of his argument becomes obvious. Like Sade, he continues to claim some kind of creative status for the criminal.
Now provided this is done tongue-in-cheek, as De Quincey did it in ‘On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts,’ it can be accepted as satire. But as soon as such a claim is made seriously, its irrationality becomes obvious. Art is the outcome of discipline. Murder is the outcome of a lack of self-discipline.
I asked my American agent to look at the book; he confirmed my opinion that it was unpublishable. But at that point I decided to try it on a friend in California, Adam Parfrey, who had published a number of books by serial killers like Danny Rolling, the ‘Gainesville Ripper,’ and the sadist Gerard Schaefer. Adam found Janus interesting, and agreed to publish it if I would write an introduction. He offered Brady an advance of $4,000, and suggested $1,500 for my introduction. I told him I would do the introduction for nothing if he would raise Brady’s advance to $5,000.
When its forthcoming publication was announced in the UK, I came in for a great deal of criticism. Why was I giving this atrocious murderer the opportunity to make money from his crimes? I replied that The Gates of Janus makes no mention of the Moors murders, and pointed out that any money made by the book would be paid to Brady’s mother, who was in her nineties. At that point, Ashworth Hospital, where Brady is confined, demanded to see the book. For many years, Brady’s relationship with the authorities there had been bitter and denunciatory, and by 2000, his circumstances had deteriorated badly. There had been a time when he was by no means uncomfortable — when I first wrote to him, he was typing books for the blind in Braille, and was allowed books, videotapes, and his own television. Later he was even given a computer.
In 1998, this was taken away from him without explanation, his own assessment of the situation being that he had been ‘making trouble’ by writing to the press about the notoriously corrupt regime at Ashworth, and even appealing to the European Court of Justice. This was at the time that it was revealed that a girl of eight, daughter of a man who ran a shop on the ward, was allowed to mix with convic
ted paedophiles.
The scandal led to an enquiry costing £7.5 million, whose 1999 report by Judge Peter Fallon declared unequivocally that Ashworth should be closed completely. It spoke of ‘years of abuse, corruption and failure,’ and said that although the inmates were forbidden to have money, there was about £10,000 in banknotes circulating around, which was used to purchase drugs, alcohol and child pornography. Three earlier reports had also been highly critical of Ashworth, and in one case, only nine pages out of 385 were made public.
The Fallon Report was ignored or overruled by the government; nothing more has been heard of it.
On September 30, 1999, several warders rushed into Brady’s cell, pinned his arms, and strip-searched him, breaking his wrist. The reason, he was told, was that a kettle handle that might be fashioned into a weapon had been found taped under a sink elsewhere on the ward.
Brady was placed on a personality disorder ward, and when he went on hunger strike as a protest, was force-fed. In letters, he told me repeatedly that guards talked in loud voices outside his door all night, preventing him from sleeping.
There was a time when, if I had something private I wanted to say to him — for example, about his projected book — I could make sure the letter was not read by the prison authorities by putting it in a book parcel, which was handed to him unopened. After the ‘weapon’ incident, everything was opened and read. In any case, there would have been no point in sending him books, since he was now permitted only half a dozen. Just before Christmas 2000, I sent him a parcel full of envelopes, with £52 worth of first-class stamps. They simply never reached him. I had to send another lot by recorded delivery.
At the time I write this (February 2002) the hunger strike goes on. Brady’s own temperament guarantees that he is in a no-win situation. Because the basic characteristic of the ‘Right Man’ is that he refuses to give way an inch, he will continue to charge brick walls until he collapses with exhaustion or dies of a heart attack.
On its publication in the UK at the beginning of December 2001, The Gates of Janus was as violently attacked as I had expected. One perceptive reviewer remarked that ‘Brady is intelligent, but not half as intelligent as he thinks he is,’ while others pointed out that the book sets out to impress the reader by a combination of semi-academic style, long words and literary quotations.
But for Brady, the final insult was that the publisher had decided to include an ‘erratum’ slip, listing various objections raised by Ashworth. For example, Ashworth disputed that Brady’s wrist had been broken during the struggle with the warders, although a judge had stated in court that Brady’s wrist has a hairline fracture. Ashworth also denied that Brady had been kept awake by guards talking all night, although he had complained about this to myself and to other correspondents. Finally, the distributor of the book decided to mention Ashworth’s objections in an erratum slip, which was glued on the back of the title page.
As far as Brady was concerned, this was the last straw. When Benedict Birnberg went to Ashworth to see him, shortly after Janus was published, he told me that Brady had shrieked obscenities for an hour without stopping. At first I found this baffling, for the erratum slip is only a few lines long, and makes it clear that, in spite of Ashworth’s denial, Brady’s wrist was fractured.
Then I understood. Brady has spent years in a battle with the Ashworth authorities, and with authority in general. He had done his best to convince himself that the Moors murders were no more criminal than acts carried out by society every day. Not long before the publication of Janus he had written to me saying that he was looking forward to seeing the book in print, and finally being allowed the satisfaction of denouncing our corrupt society as it deserves.
Instead, he obviously felt that his triumph had been stolen away from him, and that the Ashworth authorities had won.
After that traumatic afternoon with Brady, Benedict Birnberg advised me not to write to him — that if Brady felt in a forgiving mood, he would no doubt write to me when he felt like it.
But the truth was that I had no particular motivation in wanting to renew a correspondence with Brady. Ten years of exchanging letters had taught me something I should have realised sooner — that even an intelligent criminal remains trapped in the vicious circle of his own criminality, and cannot escape. The character flaws that turned Brady into a rapist and killer would prevent him from ever achieving the kind of self-discipline to see himself objectively.
BAIT
by Peter Sotos
My mother gave her permission, along with the other families, for Brady to publish his ‘full and honest account’ of what happened. This was nothing more than another game by Brady as time has shown once again. He led them to believe it was some sort of confession on his part and then started his ‘to be published after my death’ routine.
It was nothing more than another sick and twisted game and yet another example of his mind games and taunts towards the families.
This was nothing to do with The Gates of Janus. I will also add that the Foreword, Introduction and Afterword are as full of **** as the rest of the book.1
See it as defensive. Where I have to explain to the brother of murdered Keith Bennett how the book he read wasn’t as full of shit as he is. And the easy insensitive shots I take at someone like him, still grieving over the unfair robbery of his possible best friend and definite blood-tie over these monstrously difficult day-in and day-out decades, are done simply because he had the perfect temerity, probity, copyright to declaim the scavengers not following his party line. Lately, that being anything Brady must be anything Keith Bennett. All is now in effort to find Keith Bennett’s corpse so that it can be delivered back to the family for a proper Christian burial. And until Keith is discovered, any new development about Brady must reiterate that Brady continues his evil since capture in 1965 by deliberately keeping this burial information from the still living victims. No matter what the headline proclaims, whatever the desperately negligible or mandatory recap or gossip might be, somewhere inside the article or book or documentary must be that Brady’s true sadism is evidenced through his cruel refusal to divulge where he may have hid, or couldn’t possibly have forgotten where it was dropped, the body of the one child that still hasn’t been found when dead after raped. Brady either enjoys the pain of the family from his hospital prison. Or he enjoys the media attention. Plays games with words and characters, loves to write letters, manipulates the parasites, and all in quotidian effort to torture someone very specific in the only way he still can. Either expands the spotlight that would otherwise narrow around him to a dot or keeps the Moors Murders perpetual.
Serving himself, the paid employees of the media and hungry ugly public interest. Brady: narcissistic, desperate, selfish and caged. The suffering tool of public revulsion and the angry horror that fascinates and confounds. And the boy up there in the dark cold, whispering ‘find me.’
Winnie Johnson died in 2013 without finding Keith. However, three years before her death, Winnie was able to attend a memorial service held for her boy in lieu of a funeral at Manchester Cathedral. Over three hundred people attended the public service and listened to a popular song from the days before Keith was abducted as well as an archeologist who worked tirelessly on the Moors search, the right reverend bishop of Manchester and Winnie herself:
“I’m Keith’s mother, I’ve lived through this life knowing he is on those Moors. I just want him back.
‘I’ll do anything, go anywhere for him. As long as I know one day, I’ll be grateful. I hope he’s found before I am dead. All I want out of life is to find him and bury him. I just wish he is found before I go.”2
Alan, Winnie’s son, just a year younger than Keith, continues the search for the body. Now dedicated to the cause with the added emotionalism of also serving his mother’s last wishes and lifelong quest to bring Keith home. Their home.
From June 9th, 2014: on a new hunt in The Liverpool Echo:
“My mother campaig
ned her entire life to be able to give Keith the Christian burial he deserved.
“We will continue her efforts and will never cease until he is found and laid to rest.”3
Before, just after Winnie’s death:
“Our fear as a family is that now my mother is no longer with us, this may be seen by the police and the media as some sort of closure to the case.
“As far as I am concerned, until Keith is found then he is still in the possession of Brady and Hindley.”4
Why else would Alan Bennett give a rat’s ass about what Ian Brady has to say, now or then. Especially now. His comments on Brady’s state of mind and state of care are justifiably laced with hatred for the bent creature that killed his brother and withered his mother. And no one, especially Alan, needs to know about this sick shit anymore. This happened to him too. Alan is vocal about Brady. Has corresponded with Myra, David Smith, as well as Brady. Visited Hindley in jail, attended Brady’s Tribunal hearings.
I’ve not found much, thank fuck, without a response. My concern with what happened, what happens again, is parasitic. I don’t feel less like one while I read and more like one when I compile. I don’t think I feel especially extra parasitic when I read the same sentences over and over again all coming from what became one single voice long ago. I don’t feel that it’s been my snide prejudice that has kept all of this perpetual, living, abiding.
The case has never been without the victim’s voice as provided by the families. The press and the concerns of the public have never been without the family say. I’ve been watching the case for decades now as well. The clippings I’ve kept with the same photos of Myra and Ian in every one add new perspectives by whatever family member is hardly ever unavailable at the moment. Or of current focus. In recent years, this seemingly timeless endless case is marked by the deaths of the victims’ family members and the slight shift in memorial. Cancer has been responsible for enough deaths among the figures in this case to make a seriously bad joke about Brady’s lousy body count. Or another one, less bad, about the health benefits of force-feeding.
