Brady became my God
Police files record how she tried to pin the blame on him Call for new probe after bullet shells found on moor
Pauline Reade, 16. Brady and Hindley were jailed for life in May 1966 over the murders of Lesley Ann Downey, 10, John Kilbride, 12, and 17-year-old Edward Evans. In 1985 Brady confessed to murdering Pauline and Keith Bennett, 12. That led Topping to interview them in prison prior to taking them back to the Moors to try to find the bodies. During the interviews Hindley said she would have ended up married with a family had she never met Brady. Speaking about the grip he held over her, she said: “I know people find it difficult to understand how I could feel what I did feel for a man who did such things and who involved me in them – and I did things – and who subjected me to that lifestyle.
MYSTERY
“I had this obsession about him, this infatuation, I believed it to be love. I think it stemmed from the fact Brady was so different to anyone I had met.
“He seemed cloaked in an aura of mystery I could never quite penetrate, never quite solve and this unknowability intrigued me and continued to enhance his attraction to me.”
But after 20 years in jail her feelings towards Brady had changed. She told Topping: “I placed Brady on a pedestal, he had always been aloof, out of reach and I loved him blindly, long after I had come to prison. I’d been reluctant to strip away the veneer from my emotions and examine what was beneath.
“I said we should never touch our idols because the gilt always rubbed off. One day I gained the courage to touch and the gilt did rub off. Gilt as opposed to guilt. I crashed from his pedestal and the dust and ashes of a dead love float around my feet and I step from it shaking the last remaining speck from my whole self. It was unbearably painful, it always is when one’s prepared to face reality squarely.”
Hindley told police she had psychiatric and psychological evaluations in prison, adding: “This is where I must make the point that, unlike Brady, I have no excuse for my actions.”
She said she believed she had been forgiven by God and hoped “in some way” the families could forgive too.
The interviews took place as Hindley was attempting to convince the authorities to grant her parole.
And Darren Roe believes she would have said anything in order to get it.
He said: “She was trying to portray a picture of compliance and co-operation, that she was sorry for her crimes. But if she was truly sorry she would have told where the bodies are. She was a serial killer, evil, dishonest, saying anything to get parole.”
Hindley died in prison in 2002 aged 60. Brady, 79, is still held in Ashworth Hospital, Merseyside.
Darren has pinpointed three “hot spots” on Saddleworth Moor where he believes Keith’s remains may lie. He also believes another two victims could be buried in the same area.
He said: “There is a matrix of information I have spent years piecing together, cross referencing everything. It is a really sad and tragic case, but I know I am very close to solving it.” phil.cardy@trinitymirror.com Darren is writing a book titled Finding Keith? The Definitive Investigation into the Moors Murders. He is setting up IMPSAR (International Missing Persons Search & Rescue) to probe unsolved cases. Anyone with information about the Moors case can contact Darren at contact@impsar.org.