Suffer Little Children

They'd pulled in Myra Hindley and Ian Brady for questioning after Myra's 17 year old brother-in-law had stumbled into the local police station. He told them he'd just witnessed a brutal murder at a house in East Manchester. It was a Thursday morning, October 7th 1965. He'd just helped tie up a body and lock it in a room at a house on Wardle Brook Avenue, a boring looking 60s semi just off the road to the Pennines.

The cops showed up mob handed but there was no confrontation - just a surly looking couple. And a body tied up in a sack.

The story about what happened was vague. A real he-said-she-said, as the couple tried to pin the blame on the brother-in-law. But they'd told him about bodies buried up on the moors, and the police checked it out.

They found the naked body of a missing 10 year old, Lesley Ann Downey who had gone missing on Boxing Day the year before. The link to Brady and Hindley was circumstantial - so they went back to the house on Wardle Brook Avenue to do a more thorough search.

A ticket tucked into a prayerbook led them to a station left luggage office and a suitcase in a locker. It contained things that were genuinely shocking and brutal. Photographs. Tapes. That suitcase turned out to be a Pandora's Box of horrors that changed the face of British life.

Up until this point, murderers were crazed individual men who had lost the plot. The most significant female murderer people could remember was Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain, and she'd committed a clear crime of passion, shooting her one-time lover in a London street.

Up until then the term serial killer didn't exist. The idea of a couple tying up naked children, torturing them, photographing them, taping their screams, and laughing about it, just shocked everyone who heard the wholestory, which hit the papers the weekend of the 15th October.

The Rolling Stone's 'Get Off My Cloud' became the soundtrack to increasingly horrific stories about what these vile people did. It reduced people to tears and rage and disgust. And it created a revulsion in a nation unused to such horrors on their own soil.

That revulsion resounds this morning, as the news of Myra Hindley's death gets out. The younger end, used to routine serial killers and snipers and horror movies and psychological thrillers, will doubtless wonder why a generation still give a damn about a child murderer who's been locked up for the better part of forty years. So what's another child killer? Rose West made her look like an amateur.

What you Hannibal Lecter fans don't understand is that Myra Hindley introduced our parents to the idea of evil in female form. They'd taught their kids to fear male strangers in parks - the famous animated children's animation warning against shady strangers in long macs. Suddenly they had to get their heads around evil in the form of an ordinary girl from an ordinary town.

The hatred of Hindley grew out of the trial, when it became clear that there was going to be no remorse and no shame. They put in a plea of not guilty to three murder charges and continued to deny their involvement in any wrong doing. Two other missing kids were surely murdered by the pair, but they were saying nothing.

And it grew out of consistent denial and evasion. She put the blame on her companion, and portrayed herself as manipulated and framed, even though the tapes of little Lesley Ann screaming for dear life clearly had Hindley deeply involved.

The parents of ten year old Keith Bennett and teenage Pauline Reid had to live with the cold fact that their children were gone, and although everyone knew these two were responsible there was no proof. And no resting place.

Brady and Hindley were convicted and continued to correspond with each other. No remorse. No sorrow. No shame.

The country had only just passed the Murder Act 1965 that abolished the death penalty and was taking a step toards a more civilized way. Suddenly the decision seemed horribly ill-advised. We were suddenly going to have to live with these people, albeit locked up in a cell somewhere. THe door slammed shut and life went on.

Then twenty years later, after decades of denial, Hindley suddenly confessed to involvement in all five killings, and led a macabre search for the remaining bodies on Saddleworth Moor. The body of Pauline Ried was uncovered and the family got to lay her to rest. Soon after this Brady confirmed the whole thing - although the body of Keith Bennett still eluded the search, and does to this day.

Front page news again, the attempts to rehabilitate Hindley and secure a release began, led by clueless political figures including Lord Longford. They were trying to get the Home Secretary to cut her some slack. But the public had no intention of forgiving her, and it became clear to everyone that to release her would be a move the country just wouldn't tolerate.

And last night she died in a West Suffolk hospital, a few weeks after a heart attack. She was 60.

And there are a few who think she was a victim of her own bizarre celebrity, and would have been forgiven and forgotten were it not for her notoriety. Others, they say, committed worse crimes and were given a much fairer treatment by the justice system. But they forget just what cold blooded horrors these two unleashed.

Myra Hindley taught us that ordinary people who might live right next door are capable of torture, abuse, and murder of innocent children and would rather spend twenty years denying it, rather than show any kind of remorse. This was and still is, a thing we can't forget.

Today we saw the back of Myra Hindley. The world's a better place for it.

Blogga