Brady raped & drugged me: Shameless Hindley’s sob story letters
Documents reveal vile killer’s bid to win her freedom
MOORS murderer Myra Hindley tried to win her freedom by claiming she was drugged, beaten and repeatedly raped by partner-in-crime Ian Brady.
In a brazen bid for sympathy, Hindley said her former lover would have murdered her if she had not joined his killing spree.
Her claims were in a series of letters and notes believed to have been handed to a member of staff at HMP Highpoint, in Suffolk, the day she died in 2002.
But her sob story was last night dismissed by the brother of one of the five children killed by the twisted pair.
Terry West, whose sister Lesley Ann Downey was tortured and murdered by the couple when she was 10, called Hindley a “liar” for trying to shift the blame solely on to Brady.
He said: “What she is saying is a load of tripe. If she’d wanted to get out of it, she would have done.” The late Winnie Johnson, mother of victim Keith Bennett, believed Hindley was fully responsible and lured the BY PAUL BYRNE reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk children into Brady’s clutches. Winnie’s solicitor John Ainley said: “Winnie never accepted she was not culpable for all the deaths. She rejected Hindley’s assertion she was completely under his control.
“Winnie always thought she was the bait that attracted young children. They would not have been tempted to go in a vehicle or move away with a man, but a female they were far more vulnerable to.”
Some of the papers detail her efforts to win an early release from her life sentence. In them she painted herself as a “victim” of sexual deviant Brady, forced to accept his ruthless demands. Sick Hindley said once she was indoctrinated, he said they could commit the perfect murder.
She wrote: “It began as a joke, but slowly grew more serious. Ian would tell me how he was ‘special’, he was moved to do this because he was meant to do it. He was a fanatical Nazi, but despite that... I was completely besotted with him, which is why I put up with him and why his beliefs eventually rubbed off on me and caused me to accept and do things no one should ever do.”
But the papers also include letters from Brady to the thenhome secretary Jack Straw, saying the two twisted lovers were a “unified force”. He said Hindley believed the murders, which he described as “periodic homicides”, had the effect of “binding us ever closer”.
The pair killed five children aged 10 to 17, between July 1963 and October 1965.
Hindley claimed that after killing first victim Pauline Reade, 16, Brady warned her she could meet the same fate. She wrote: “As we were driving home, he told me that if I’d shown any signs of ‘backing out’ I would have finished up in the same grave as Pauline Reade did.”
She said he had tried to strangle her, adding: “I used to ask him why he kept strangling me so much, so many times – this was before the offences took place – and he told me he was ‘practising’ on me. I said one of these days he was going to go too far and kill me, but he just laughed and said he wouldn’t – he needed me.”
Hindley went into graphic detail about sex acts she claims she had to endure and also said Brady had drugged her.
In addition to killing Lesley Ann Downey, Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade, Hindley and Brady were convicted of the murder of Edward Evans, 17.
Brady was also convicted of the murder of John Kilbride, 12, with Hindley found guilty of acting as an accessory. Brady, 79, died in May last year. Hindley, 60, in December 2002.
Hindley’s documents have been acquired by the Crime Through Time museum at Littledean Jail in Gloucestershire.
Curator and owner Andy Jones, 56, said: “Myra Hindley clearly sees herself as the victim. Brady and Hindley were as evil as each other.”
Myra Hindley clarly sees herself as the victim. Brady and Hindley were as evil as each other ANDY JONES CRIME THROUGH TIME CURATOR