One of Your Own (48 page)

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 . . .’
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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.’
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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’.
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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’.
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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.’
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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’.
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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.’
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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.
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To John Trevelyan she wrote that she would only recover from the shock ‘when my spirit has wept its last weary tear’.
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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’.
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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.

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.’
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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 Home 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.
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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.’
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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.
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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.’
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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.’
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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.’
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It fell to Bill to inform Bob Hindley that Maureen was dead. He took the news badly and four months later, on 7 November 1980, died of a heart attack. His son-in-law felt it was for the best; the elderly man had been plagued by gangs of teenagers who knew that he was Myra Hindley’s father and threw bricks at his windows and shouted abuse through his letter box. Again, Myra informed the prison authorities that she had no wish to attend the funeral, although her reasons were different, since she had never been reconciled with her father. It was another 14 years before she began to make her peace with him, telling her prison therapist: ‘I’ve only recently understood why he was the way he was. His experiences in the war produced violence in many men; my dad was no different.’
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Although Bill continued to visit, bringing Sharon with him, and her relationship with her mother grew even stronger, Myra sank into a deep depression towards the end of the year. At the start of 1981, she wrote to Lord Longford that she had asked to be placed on Rule 43 (solitary confinement), which was refused: ‘These feelings have been building up inside me for a long time now. I can trace them back clearly to when Maureen died, because – personal grief apart – I was beginning to realise that someone whom youth and health guaranteed to be around when they finally let me out wouldn’t be after all . . . Maureen’s death . . . crippled me with grief.’
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She brightened when, following a relaxation of British law, ex-prisoners were granted the right to correspond with and visit inmates, resulting in a torrent of letters for her from Rachel Pinney, Janie Jones and Carole Callaghan, among others.
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She also sought solace in affairs; an internal memo dated 1 September 1981 states that Myra had been found in a compromising position with another inmate and lost 14 days’ privileges as a result. In protest, she went on hunger strike. A report on her progress two months later observed: ‘She does possess a strong will and character, but has always shown a feeling for others which would appear genuine and not entirely self-centred in character. I think in particular this relates to her own family and to one or two close friendships she has struck up with other inmates. Whilst the nature of her inmate relationships has, on occasions, been questioned, I think they simply reflect the constraints and experiences imposed by long-term imprisonment.’
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Myra had passed another Open University course and began her next, Man’s Religious Quest, which she was forced to drop after breaking a heel in the prison gym. She set her academic ambitions to one side, but told friends she hoped to complete an external MA in English Literature either at Durham or London university in the future. In letters, she scoffed at the idea that her studies would have any influence on her chances of parole: ‘After all, what will it matter to the decision-makers that I’ve obtained a degree, when I wasn’t sent to prison because I was illiterate? The public are only concerned with the myth they’ve been saturated in.’
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Two new and hugely influential people entered her life: Peter Timms and David Astor. Timms began his career in the Prison Service as an officer at Wakefield Prison in 1952 and after various promotions became governor of Maidstone, where he met Lord Longford during one of his regular visits to East End gangster Charlie Richardson. Through Longford, Timms met former
Observer
editor David Astor, who used his name and connections to lobby for various causes, including the early anti-apartheid campaign. At Astor’s request, Timms became a trustee of the prison arts charity, the Koestler Trust. Longford pressed both men to help Myra. ‘He wasn’t getting anywhere,’ Timms recalls. ‘Not in terms of getting her case thought about seriously. He said to David, “You’re a press baron, what can we do?” So David and I went to the House of Lords and had a cup of tea with Frank. I said there was really no point in being involved unless Frank shut up. Frank was one of the world’s angels, really, but every time he opened his mouth about Myra it was a disaster. He said, “But you can’t expect me to stop saying things altogether”, and I said, “Well, just shut up a lot then.” And, in fairness, he did, and when he couldn’t stop himself, he told us about it.’
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David Astor’s widow, Bridget, recalls: ‘David and Frank were very good friends; Frank was a contemporary of David’s older brother, Bill. Frank and David discovered they had various social concerns in common, though they quarrelled violently on other issues, but neither of them really minded and they were extremely close. David was particularly interested in prisoners because he had a half-brother who was jailed for homosexuality in the 1940s for about six months.’
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Timms is at pains to point out that he never argued for Myra’s release: ‘That’s not why I got involved. I know people think I said that, but I didn’t. All that concerned me was that she shouldn’t be treated differently to any other prisoner because of her name, her crime or her gender. She was entitled to justice like every other prisoner.’
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His first attempt at intervention concerned Pope John Paul’s visit to Britain: ‘I rang the chaplain to the Archbishop of Westminster beforehand and said, “Look, I think that if the Pope were to ask to see Myra Hindley, that would be enormously liberating for this country. People are locked in a vicious cycle of bitterness fuelled by the press. I think the Pope could create a whole new climate of the way in which we approach people who’ve done awful things.” He said no. I said, “Well, get the Pope to at least ask about her then. On the record if possible.” But he didn’t.’
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In the meantime, Astor wrote to Myra – they corresponded for several months before meeting – explaining why he thought people in general were so staunchly opposed to her and Longford’s efforts on her behalf: ‘The public associates both of you with something which they are frightened of in themselves. It is generally admitted that violence towards children is much more prevalent than people generally like to admit. My wife and I think that every parent instinctively knows that the possibility of this happening is present in all parent–child relationships. But of course this is something of which most people are very much afraid and about which they feel very ashamed.’
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