One of Your Own (51 page)

When Topping mulled over her confession, he felt that she truly wanted to help but was at pains to make her behaviour understandable: ‘She showed tremendous emotion at times, very deep emotion – but it was coupled with complete control.’
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He couldn’t forget the starkly objective phrase she had used after telling them about Pauline’s death: ‘Well, that, as far as I remember, concludes the first murder, which was Pauline Reade.’
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Ultimately, Topping felt he had witnessed ‘a great performance rather than a genuine confession’.
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Afterwards, Myra returned to her cell, but called Timms to say that she was ready to go on the record. ‘I said, “Myra, please don’t. Give yourself time to reflect and think before doing that,”’ he remembers. ‘But she said, “No, I should have done this 20 years ago.” Not that I didn’t want her to do it – that was up to her. I rang Peter Topping that evening. And then we started all over again for another two days. This time under caution . . . Topping, of course, took those tapes and wrote his book.’
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The Home Office ended Timms’ counselling sessions in the aftermath of her confession. Timms lobbied furiously against the decision, but memos and letters from the prison authorities show that they regarded him as a nuisance in his doggedness about the counselling he was promised. Myra also complained about the loss of their meetings, writing to the Home Office that she was ‘burdened with the aftermath’ of her confession. The letter had no effect, except possibly to perplex its recipient with the line: ‘I believe suicide to be a mortal sin, and one that cannot be forgiven, unlike the mortal sins I recently confessed to and received absolution from.’
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Ian was clearly agitated when Topping visited him with the news that Myra had confessed. But he was lucid and polite, and said that he was willing to do the same provided he was given the means to kill himself afterwards, which he knew was out of the question.

On 23 March, Myra returned to the moor again, travelling by car in an unmarked convoy and evading the press. She spent the night at a flat in Sedgely Park Greater Manchester Police Training School before being taken, in the pre-dawn darkness, to the chill moor, where Topping had arranged for her to visit Hoe Grain first. She seemed keen to concentrate on the area he’d suggested, then after lunch travelled the two miles to Hollin Brown Knoll, where the mist clung to the crags above the reservoir. She told Topping that he was looking in the right places, but other than that had little to add – except to say that she and Ian had buried a metal box of some significance on the moor. She wouldn’t say what it contained and police were unable to find it.

On 15 April, Myra wrote to inform the authorities that she didn’t want to be considered for parole in 1990 and was focusing on her autobiography: ‘I hope that in some way what I am able to relate will enable a wiser understanding of the awful complexities surrounding the abuse of children . . .’
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The news of her confession broke in the press that month, causing another media storm. Winnie Johnson wrote again to Myra, who responded, thanking her for the letters and stating that if she had only written to her 14 years before (when Myra ended her relationship with Ian), she would have tried to help them then. The possibility of a trial was raised by the victims’ families and Myra said she was willing to stand, but Topping informed her that it wouldn’t be necessary. Her friends and family were stunned by the news. Sara Trevelyan recalls: ‘I felt very confused. I’d really put myself on the line to support her and that whole ’70s thing, I instigated a lot of that, and got these people involved, a solicitor and so on, working on her behalf. In a sense I felt very betrayed by her and I didn’t feel that we were able to resolve that. It didn’t stop me supporting her, but our contact became pretty infrequent. I would always want to acknowledge her and wish her well. But it was never properly repaired.’
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Myra’s ex-fellow inmate and friend Janie Jones immediately began writing her own book about how she had been ‘duped’ by her; other ex-inmates similarly gave interviews to the press about their feeling of having been hoodwinked. Nellie’s life was altered immeasurably by the news of her daughter’s confession; she resigned from her work and became a recluse, sitting indoors with the curtains closed, leaving the grocery shopping to her husband, who wanted no more to do with Myra. Bill Scott, Maureen’s widow, stopped taking Sharon to visit her aunt and grandmother until the furore had abated. The house at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, which the council had long ago abandoned attempting to rent out and used as an on-site office, was demolished in an effort to discourage visits from ghoulish sightseers.

Myra was psychiatrically assessed following the confession and found to be of sound mind, although she declared that confessing had ‘unleashed a thousand demons and they have not left me alone’. She felt ‘like a walking time bomb’ and was ‘haunted by not talking earlier’.
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The psychiatrists concluded that her revelations ‘might have been partly motivated by a wish to remain a centre of interest to acquaintances, if not in the public mind as a whole’.
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Myra’s subsequent ‘open letter’ to Ian gave some credence to their analysis; via the BBC, she urged Ian to assist the police as she had done. Ian had already spoken to detectives again, but in return for his full cooperation, he asked for a ‘human week’ of being allowed to eat and drink whatever he pleased and permission to watch old films such as
Gone with the Wind
. He told Topping that Myra knew perfectly well where the graves were and could have taken him straight to them if she had wished.

After six weeks, torrential rain flooded the excavated areas at Hoe Grain and Shiny Brook and the search moved to the higher ground at Hollin Brown Knoll, in the immediate vicinity of Lesley’s grave, out of sight of the road. During her confession, Myra had remarked on Pauline’s body lying on the grass, which seemed to suggest the search should be concentrated deeper onto the moor, away from the road. On 17 June, Topping questioned Myra again by telephone; prompted by him, she recalled that Pauline was buried further back than Lesley and not in the gas pipeline trench. Almost in passing, she mentioned that when she had stood next to the dying girl she could clearly see the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll outlined against the sky.

On 1 July 1987, the body of Pauline Reade was unearthed from the moor. The discovery came towards the end of the afternoon. Topping was with Ian at Park Lane when Knupfer rang to inform him that they had noticed a change in the vegetation and after a few minutes of careful digging, a white shoe had poked out of the soil.

The search team left the moor as usual in order not to alert the press and returned to the site that evening, with Topping. In the copper sunlight, the grave revealed Pauline’s almost perfectly preserved body; like Lesley, she lay on her side, but on her left, facing the road 150 yards away, and 100 yards from where Lesley had been found. Her left arm was crossed over her front and her right lay along her side; her knees were bent up towards her abdomen. The injury to her throat was evident, and the disarray of her clothing left detectives in no doubt that she had been sexually assaulted. One shoe had fallen off; the exposed foot was better preserved than the other. As police lifted the shoes from the grave, the manufacturer’s gold lettering glinted brightly.

Topping visited Amos Reade. Pauline’s father received the news quietly, expressing deep regret that his wife Joan was in psychiatric care. Topping then had the equally painful task of informing Winnie Johnson that a body had been found but it wasn’t Keith. She wept on the telephone as he assured her the search would continue. The media tide finally turned in the police’s favour; Myra read about the discovery the following day. Visiting Ian, Topping was angered by his gloating comment about how close police had been to Pauline’s grave for so long without finding it.

On 3 July, Ian returned to the moor, visiting Hoe Grain, where Topping hoped he would now lead them to Keith’s grave. The visit was a fiasco; often Ian would stride off purposefully, then suddenly become confused and stumble about. At the junction of Hoe Grain and Shiny Brook, he pointed to an exposed slope and told police he had hidden a spade there, but excavations revealed nothing. He insisted on climbing a high rock formation; Topping scrambled after him, worried that he planned to throw himself off, but he only wanted to look at the view. Afterwards, Topping realised that the visit had been of little benefit to anyone but Keith’s murderer.
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Ian’s inability – deliberate or otherwise – to assist the search gave Myra a curious satisfaction. Her relationship with Topping had deteriorated, Fisher recalled: ‘She was terribly hurt when he didn’t ring her, didn’t come to see her . . . she was annoyed with him that he took so long finding Pauline’s body . . . On the other body, she gave him a clue that he thought he could crack – information about something, not a body buried on the moors. He preferred to go after that first, and he failed to find it. We believe he would have been better going for Pauline Reade’s body first.’
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Topping remained in talks with Ian and during one visit: ‘He told me that he was ashamed of what he’d done. He said it very simply, his head down . . . He said when he tried to recall the details of what had happened, “blocks” came down in his mind. He was struggling to explain himself; he said he did not want to discuss how he had killed the children. He got very disturbed and agitated whenever the subject was mentioned, saying he was frightened of losing control if the blocks were removed.’
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Topping also spoke to Ian’s mother: ‘She seemed a very sensitive person, very keen to help . . . both she and her home were very clean and tidy . . . she felt responsible for her son’s behaviour and was always trying to work out what had gone wrong . . . She had obviously lived with a sense of guilt and distress for many years.’
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On 4 August, he and Knupfer visited Myra to show her a video of Ian’s photographs superimposed on footage of the moor. She pinpointed different areas, some over a mile apart, leading to further confusion.

On 7 August, Pauline Reade was laid to rest in Gorton cemetery. Her mother left the hospital under heavy sedation, accompanied by two nurses. Rain pattered down as a requiem Mass was said for Pauline at St Francis’ Monastery before the internment. Hundreds of people lined the roads as the cortège passed by; among the mourners at the graveside were Ann West, Winnie Johnson, Patrick Kilbride, Danny Kilbride and his wife Ann, and Pat Kilbride. The funeral marked a breakthrough in Joan’s mental health; although she remained hospitalised for some time, eventually she was able to return home.

The search was called off on 24 August. Topping promised a shattered Winnie Johnson that he would return to the moor if significant information came to light. He remained in contact with Myra and Ian for some time afterwards; in December, following positive discussions, Ian returned to the moor again, but the visit proved as futile as the first. Ian’s suggestion that he and Myra should meet to discuss the location of Keith’s grave was refused outright. Topping reflects: ‘Despite the fact that he was at times very critical of her, and despite the fact that she had not hesitated to outline his crimes, I felt they both still had a lingering regard for each other. Neither seemed to want to hurt the other.’
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Myra returned to her autobiography, opening it with the ‘unpolluted minds’ quote from
Jane Eyre
. Elizabeth Longford offered to help with the manuscript, but both Timms and Astor felt that any connection with the Longfords would prove damaging to both parties. Myra worried that the public would assume she was writing for financial gain; Benedict Birnberg, a widely respected solicitor who also happened to represent Ian Brady, drew up the deed of trust for the charity that would administer the funds raised from sales of her book. The objectives of the Open Hand Trust were ‘to alleviate the suffering experienced by children and young persons resulting from sexual and other abuse and violence and to promote their well-being’ and ‘to promote research into and the study of the cause, nature and effects of such abuse and violence and to publish the useful results of such research and study’.
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Public condemnation followed the release of a long, introspective letter Myra had written to Ann West. Her maladroit attempt to express sorrow (‘the remorse I feel is agonising – the wounds have reopened again and are raw-edged and festering’) backfired spectacularly due to one particular sentence, which drew censure from almost every quarter: ‘I now want to say to you, and I implore you to believe me, because it is the truth, that your child was not physically tortured, as is widely believed.’
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Her words were abysmally inept; intending to refute the rumours that Lesley was not mutilated prior to her death, Myra failed to grasp that the ordeal to which the little girl was subjected before her murder was precisely that – physical and psychological torture.

Few journalists were willing to be magnanimous toward Myra. A rare exception was Peter Stanford, with whom she had corresponded since the beginning of the year. A reporter and then editor of the
Catholic Herald
, Stanford had become interested in Myra’s case through his friendship with Lord Longford. He began corresponding with her; Myra’s first letter to him largely concerns her loathing of the media, who ‘accuse me of never showing any remorse, as though I should put out a daily bulletin informing the unforgiving public of the particular degree of remorse on any given day . . . I find a great comfort in knowing that Christ, for very different reasons, was also maligned and reviled . . . It helps a very great deal to know that some small part of the media isn’t hell-bent on crucifixion but instead suggests a resurrection. The tabloids would no doubt vilify me for using such analogies as I have, but what better analogy to use?’
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She enclosed £5 for the
Catholic Herald
’s leprosy appeal: ‘that’s something I can all too easily identify with mentally’.
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Stanford visited her in Cookham Wood, wincing as he stood up when her name was called out in the antechamber to the visitor’s room and unsure which of the inmates was Myra: ‘I didn’t like to go up to someone and say, “Hello, are you Myra Hindley?” But then I caught the eye of this mousy-looking woman sitting at a table, her hair dyed purplish and cut in an unflattering style. She had a very red face, lots of broken veins, and was quite small, quite slight, and sitting at the table with her arms crossed. We talked mostly about three things: religion, Frank Longford and about her case. She was very witty and an acute observer of the world. We had a long conversation about Margaret Thatcher, by whom she felt very let down, and women’s rights. She was straightforward, articulate and warm. Having said that, I was never wholly won over by her. I could always think of a caveat to anything positive that she did, which was awkward. I supported her bid for freedom, but that was another matter.’
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