Obituary: Myra Hindley

By ARNOLD PICKMERE

Myra Hindley, a shorthand typist, was only 23 in April 1966 when she appeared with Ian Brady, her 27-year-old lover of five years, in a courtroom at Chester in Cheshire, England. They were charged with three murders.

In the intervening years the memory of their deeds, which included sexual abuse and torture as well as murder, has dulled. But their names continue to inspire hatred.

When Hindley has occasionally been reported as ill, or Brady has repeated a wish to die rather than go on living in prison ("I am eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin"), some may have wondered how these murders differed from so many others.

The answer is that the callousness of their deeds horrified Britain.

When their trial began, a bullet-proof glass cage shielded the two accused. Fears that passions aroused by the trial might spark violence led police to guard the homes of defence lawyers.

Hindley and Brady, a stock clerk, were convicted of the murders of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, aged 17. Brady was also convicted of the murder of John Kilbride, aged 12.

It was the police search which found the two younger victims in shallow peat graves on lonely Pennine moorland, a few miles from Brady's home, that gave the case its name.

In 1987, 21 years after they were imprisoned for life, the pair also admitted killing Keith Bennett, 12, and Pauline Reade, 16.

The night before killing Evans in their home, Brady and Hindley removed two large suitcases and left them at the Manchester Central Railway Station. These were later found to contain books on sadism and sexual perversion, pornographic photos and a horrific tape of Downey's dying screams.

Edward Evans was lured to their home and Hindley's 17-year-old brother-in-law David Smith, whom Brady had been steadily corrupting and wanted present, was tricked into being there too.

Smith told police that Brady hit Evans around the head and shoulders with an axe, finally strangling him with an electric light cord.

The floor and walls of the room were covered in blood but Brady remained perfectly calm. He lit a cigarette, drank some wine and commented to Hindley, who had stood by: "That was the messiest yet."

Smith said Hindley, her feet propped up on the mantelpiece, remarked: "You should have seen the look in his eyes. The blow registered in his eyes when you hit him."

After agreeing to join them in disposing of the body, Smith ran home and called the police.

Police investigating the case have always believed Hindley was a willing and active participant, not the coerced and cowed woman she later claimed to be.

In jail, Hindley gained a BA by study through the Open University, and begged for her freedom.

A report in 1994 suggested taht she hoped for parole and wanted to start a new life in New Zealand. "I'm not saying I shouldn't be in prison - of course I should be punished for the terrible things that I did to those children," she said that year.

"Thank God the police got us when they did or it would have gone on and on - at least until Brady killed me, which I'm sure he would have done."

She added: "If life means life, that goes for everyone. But I have watched child murderers come and go, people who actually killed while I only lured, and I am still here."

The authorities never budged. Even as she was dying of respiratory problems, murder charges involving the confessed killings of Bennett and Reade were being considered in case Hindley won her freedom because of a European Court of Human Rights ruling this year.

Winnie Johnson, the mother of Keith Bennett, whose body has never been found, had her final word on the death of Hindley: "The sooner she gets to hell the better. I wanted her alive for one reason - to help me find Keith."