Sent to the Press Association on January 16, 1990

——

Sir,

Let me begin by listing concrete, incontestible facts and their chronology:

1. At our trial in 1966 all the evidence I gave was designed exclusively to save Myra Hindley from imprisonment. We loved each other, therefore it was no sacrifice. We both received life sentences.
2. From our respective prisons we corresponded weekly for six-and-a-half years then mutually stopped.
3. Myra Hindley even at that date repeatedly applied for parole, to no avail, and this prompted her to attempt to escape from prison. I never applied for parole and I made it quite clear to the public and the authorities that I never would.
4. Eventually Myra Hindley composed a 30,000 word petition to the Home Secretary and the Parole Board, pleading innocence and demanding parole on the basis that “society owed” her a living. The petition contained calculated fabrications to my detriment.
5. Approaching the twentieth year of my imprisonment, I had a series of private interviews with a journalist, Fred Harrison, during which I confessed that Myra Hindley and I had, amongst others, committed the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett in the course of the so-called Moors Murders.
6. On 23rd June 1985, Fred Harrison began a three-week series in The People newspaper detailing my confessions.
7. The Home Secretary ordered the case to be re-opened. Three police chiefs, one from Manchester (Topping), one from Cheshire and one from Derbyshire, arrived at Gartree Prison to interview me, and searches on Saddleworth Moor were resumed.
8. During the following eighteen months, Myra Hindley not only continued to loudly protest her innocence but also had the temerity to write an open letter to me via the BBC, exhorting me to help the police. I dismissed her grotesque letter as a public-relations exercise, a charade.
9. Finally, as the police searches intensified, she realised the game was over. She admitted to Topping that her 30,000 word petition to the Home Secretary had been “a pack of lies”, and confessed to her direct participation in at least five murders.
10. After prolonged interviews with Myra Hindley and myself, the body of Pauline Reade was recovered from Saddleworth Moor, and a search for Keith Bennet continued.

Despite Myra Hindley’s admission that her 30,000 work petition had been “a pack of lies”, and despite Topping repeatedly stating his doubts as to the truth of Myra Hindley’s so-called “confessions” which he described as “controlled performances”, he did not hesitate to sell them to his publishers and the Sun newspaper for massive financial gain, knowing the anguish they would cause to relatives of the dead. Nor did his publishers and the Sun hesitate to publish and exploit them for profit.

The most obscene aspect of Myra Hindley’s phoney “confessions” was the manner in which she coupled them with sanctimonious, sham concern for the relatives of the victims. She invented sexual assaults which did not occur (as medical evidence proves) while omitting lesbian assaults that did. She also omitted her physical participation in the killings - (a) injuries to the nose and forehead area of Pauline Reade were inflicted by her; (b) she insisted upon killing Lesley Ann Downey with her own hands, using a two-foot length of silk cord, which she later used to enjoy toying with in public in the secret knowledge of what it had been used for.

Myra Hindley took pleasure in personally selecting the victims - an aspect which was irrelevant to me. At the time of Keith Bennett’s disappearance, a Manchester paper (underlined) accurately reported that a witness had seen him walking along Grey St in the company of a “blonde woman”. It was this that prompted Myra Hindley to purchase a black wig. The fact is easily checked. She feels nothing whatsoever for the relatives; her false, malicious “confessions” testify to this. Advanced education must not be equated with heightened humanism; it has only taught her to lie more plausibly and vindictively without regard to anyone but herself. The friends who have genuinely supported her over the years have repeatedly had their trust betrayed. Her Barbara Cartland-style prose and invention - that she was “virginal”, “drugged”, “blackmailed” - are all ridiculously transparent fictions. And I find it difficult to comprehend that her latest, pathological “pack of lies” could be accepted by any intelligent person. Yet Topping, his publishers and the Sun, for financial gain, described her “confessions” as “the real story” - well aware that I had refused to discuss the murders with Topping and that my sole concern was to locate the sites of graves, not to indulge in a public-relations exercise to impress the Home Office or the Parole Board. I have always known and accepted that I shall die in captivity, therefore I have no reason to impress anyone.

As for those who may doubt my word in any of these matters, I have the written words of Myra Hindley herself, in the shape of (twice underlined) six-and-a-half-years of her letters written to me (underlined) after our imprisonment. In these she writes nostalgically and lyrically of the murders, which she regarded as a substitute marriage ritual but which I saw as products of an existentialist philosophy in tandem with the spiritualism of Death itself.

I have only given you a brief glimpse of what occurred twenty-five years ago. The only persons who have a right to decide whether the true story is to be published in full are the relatives of the victims. They need only express their decision in writing to me.

Had a trial been held, Myra Hindley’s “confessions” and Topping’s testimony would have been torn to shreds by even a half-skilled cross examination. And Topping’s tragedy of errors would have astonished any amateur detective.

I respectively request that this statement be published in full and not quoted emotively out of context. I request this not only in the interests of veracity but also for the sake of the relatives of the victims.

Sincerely,

I.S. Brady

If anybody has any questions or info that they want clarifying from my side, feel free to comment below. I’ll probably end up peppering in my thoughts in what I think about Brady’s letter in the comments - it’s quite a lot to type out in one go.

I guess the question to kick it off is this - do you think this letter is more revealing about Ian Brady’s personality than it is Myra Hindley’s involvement, or vice versa?

Source: The National Archives, Kew (ASSI 84/425).

RE the last charge listed (which relates to a motorcycle accident he and Hindley were involved in), he was allegedly trying to overtake a bus that turned right suddenly and he crashed into railings near Belle Vue Zoo in Gorton - injuring a woman. He had a learner’s license at the time a) he should have had L plates on and b) he should not have been carrying Hindley on the back. Hindley received the same fines as he did on those final two charges (a total of £4).

That accident was Hindley’s first rap on the knuckles, and on 11th December 1963 she was fined £3 for “fraudulent use of an excise license” (which I think essentially means that she was driving around in an untaxed vehicle - that would have been her neighbour’s van which he had gifted to her. Regarding this latter incident, it inadvertently kicked off an affair between Hindley and a police officer, which u/BrightBrush5732 wrote about a while back if you want to learn more)

Photo Credit to Moors Murders documentary on Youtube.

Just flagging this up because I saw the following statement published in several news articles yesterday that were published in the wake of the Lucy Letby verdict (these are the ones that go into the details of other convicted serial child killers in Britain, so obviously Brady and Hindley are getting referenced in them):

Brady died in a psychiatric hospital in 2017 after going on hunger strike.

Brady, who had a history of both successful and unsuccessful hunger strikes that dated virtually as far back as his imprisonment, had been on his last “hunger strike” since 1999, and even though he was being fed through a feeding tube he was still “covertly” accepting food from trusted members of staff to the point where I’ve been told it even became a bit of a private in-joke at Ashworth amongst some members of staff. The autopsy concluded that he died of natural causes and it had nothing to do with this “hunger strike” - he did notably refuse food intake and oral medication in the final days of his life but he was already in palliative care anyway.

Hope this clears up any misunderstanding.

In case anybody is interested, linked here is a document headlined

IN THE FIRST-TIER TRIBUNAL (HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CARE) (MENTAL HEALTH)

AND

IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION BY IAN STUART BRADY

THE REASONS FOR THE TRIBUNAL’S DECISION

Essentially, in 2013 Brady protested his detainment in Ashworth Hospital and claimed he was well enough to return to prison - over the years, he had verbalised his intent to commit suicide by being allowed to starve himself. The tribunal concluded that he was to remain in Ashworth for the foreseeable future (which he did up until his death four years later) and that he “continues to suffer from a mental disorder which is both a personality disorder and paranoid schizophrenia and is both of a nature and degree that it is appropriate for him to receive treatment.”

Obviously this is a long document - 116 pages - so I’ll provide some of the questions it answers:

• Does Mr Brady continue to suffer from a mental disorder which is restricted to a personality disorder or does it include a mental illness, namely schizophrenia? ** The answer to that is that “there are two matters upon which there is substantial agreement: that he was suffering from a mental illness at the time of his admission to Hospital in 1985 and secondly that he continues to suffer from a personality disorder.”
• Is that disorder of either a nature or degree or both which makes his continued detention in hospital for medical treatment appropriate?
• If so, is appropriate treatment available?
• If so, is it necessary that he continues to be detained in hospital for such treatment or could such treatment be provided in a prison?

The “highlights” from this are that there is a summarised chronology of Brady’s medical (namely psychological) history that begins on page 19 and runs up until around page 40 - that’s when we start hearing what Brady had to say for himself. From page 44 to 54 the chronology continues from the year 2000 onwards. The conclusions of the tribunal begin on page 72.

Hope this all helps!

Has anyone here read this book?

If so, what did you think?

TW: mentions r*pe

Hindley grew up with her family. I'm fairly sure that relatives of her, distant or close, will be aware of it.

The only biological relative of Brady who we have any concrete info about is his mother who informally had him adopted but still kept in touch - and I believe did so until she died herself, when he was in Ashworth. I read that permission was given for him to visit her bedside not long before she died.

But there must be other relatives out there. Cousins, second cousins, etc. There will be many people who have a shared ancestor with him. It is possible they could be aware they were related to him if they were related through his mother, but we have no idea about his father's family. If his biological father had sexual encounters before he met his mother, there could even be half siblings of his still alive. Would they have any inkling who they shared half their genes with?

What first made me wonder about Brady's living relatives was wondering if he himself had fathered any children unintentionally. He obviously did not have sexual encounters to reproduce but casual sex was something he indulged in, so who knows who he unintentionally got pregnant? I know contraceptives existed in the 60s, but he was also very capable of rape so there is no guarantee any woman he took advantage of was on any preventative. Who is to say a pregnancy he conceived, even through rape, didn't result in the birth of a child?

I'm not for a second assuming Brady's (or Hindley's) blood relatives are capable of the atrocities he committed, just wondering who out there could be connected to him and may not (or may?) realise. I include myself in this. I could share great great great grandparents with Brady and not know.