A psychopath to the end: Ian Brady’s f inal letters compare his murders to a nation at war
HE WAS one of the most reviled figures in British history.
Yet Moors murderer Ian Brady, who tortured and killed five children in the 1960s, was still claiming before his death that the killings were entirely justified.
And in disturbing letters the deluded Brady even argued that governments and elites were allowed to kill people in warfare – and that he should be allowed to do the same.
He even blamed his early taste of prison for turning him from a petty criminal into a murderer.
Brady corresponded with BBC editor Steve Crabtree in the last year of his life, after being approached to take part in the Horizon programme What Makes A Psychopath?
In letters seen by The Mail on Sunday, he wrote: ‘The question of global serial killers and thieves – politicians, bankers, military etc – forever unpunished and thriving is a separate question of legal/moral relativity, of course, constant throughout history.’
He added: ‘My Strangeways/ Borstal experience… created a resolve never again to commit petty crime, but to emulate the legal and moral elasticity of the privileged.’
Gorbals-born Brady and lover Myra Hindley perpetrated some of the most sadistic murders of the last century, killing five children – Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Three of the bodies were discovered on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines above Manchester.
But while Hindley died aged 60 in 2002, Brady lived on for another 15 years, succumbing to heart failure at high-security Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside in May at the age of 79.
Although he declined to be filmed by Horizon, he sent five letters – and a charity Christmas card – between July 2016 and February this year. Written with a dismissive pseudo-intellectual tone, they give an extraordinary insight into his warped mind.
Apologising for his spidery handwriting, he steadfastly refused to discuss his crimes, instead talking about his intellect, listing his good deeds and complaining about being mistreated.
He boasted he was fluent in German, had played chess with disgraced Government Minister John Stonehouse, cooked prisoners’ meals with Ronnie Kray, read William Blake and won prizes for his oil paintings. His charity Christmas card was in aid of the Dogs Trust and two of the letters have address labels on them with the logo of The Alternative Animal Sanctuary.
Trying to justify his crimes, he even included a cutting from The Guardian about the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, in which a study suggested humans were predisposed to murder each other.
And, bizarrely, having campaigned to be executed, he included a quotation from Albert Pierrepoint, one of Britain’s last hangmen, which stated that he did not believe capital punishment ‘acted as a deterrent against future murder’.
One of the most intriguing letters was written on October 26 last year. When asked why he organised the braille unit at Durham jail, he responded: ‘A blind stranger outside did a favour for M.’ The programme makers are unsure whether ‘M’ meant Myra Hindley or his mother.
Crabtree, who keeps the letters locked ‘in a dark drawer’ said: ‘I feel really tainted by them… They are not something you want to own but they are interesting. It’s a really odd feeling.’
Horizon: What Makes A Psychopath? is on BBC Two at 9pm on August 29.
‘Moral elasticity of the privileged’