Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (5 page)

Edward Evans was Myra and Ian’s last victim simply because Ian became arrogant and decided to involve a third party. Like most serial killers he had increased in
confidence as his killing spree progressed and may have started to feel above the law, invincible. The
unwilling
voyeur was Myra’s brother-in-law, seventeen-
year-old
David Smith.

David was enamoured of Ian’s talk about robbing banks - and loved to drink and smoke all night with him. He too had been starved of love and education so was hugely interested in the daytrips to the moors offered by his new friend and by the books by the Marquis de Sade that Ian lent him. The two men became close and Ian clearly thought that David could become another Myra, helping him lure more victims to their deaths.

Myra was totally against bringing David Smith in. She didn’t like him and didn’t particularly trust him. And she hadn’t wanted her little sister Maureen to marry him.

Maureen, for her part, was noticing that her adoring older sister Myra had changed. Outwardly she’d grown harder, agreeing with Ian that marriage was
meaningless
and that motherhood was for fools. But Myra had also become nervous and insisted on sleeping with the lights on when it got too late to go home and she had to share her sister’s bed. She also anxiously told a
neighbour
not to talk about pregnancy in front of Ian as he’d become enraged.

Ian’s rage was about to intensify for the very last time. He and Myra went out looking for a victim and eventually met seventeen-year-old Edward Evans
outside a bar. The couple asked him back to their house, saying that they were brother and sister. Back home, they found that Myra’s gran was in bed so Ian began to ply the boy with drink. Edward was a slim young man who was all dressed up for the evening, an apprentice engineer who was shy with girls.

It’s apparent that the three of them had sex - for David Smith had seen Myra dressed up earlier that day, yet when he saw her that night she had on very old clothes so she must have changed sometime after luring Edward back to her gran’s house. It would never be known if she was the sexual bait that lured the youth to the house or if Ian was. The bar that Edward had been to was a homosexual haunt and most newspapers
automatically
assumed that he was homosexual. But when his body was found there was an old letter from a girl in his trouser pocket that clearly meant a great deal to him.

That some sexual acts occurred is not in question. When the teenager’s body was discovered his flies were undone and there were dog hairs around his anus and in his underwear. The hairs were believed to have come from the couch where Myra’s dogs liked to lie and where the sex presumably took place.

After the threesome, Ian sent Myra away, telling her to collect David Smith by promising him alcohol. When she arrived at his house he was in bed reading with his wife but he dutifully got up and agreed to walk her home.

David Smith entered the lounge to find Ian swinging an axe at Edward’s skull. Myra shouted ‘Dave, help him. Help him.’ Dave froze as Ian battered at the youth’s head again and again. When David Smith still didn’t help kill the teenager, who continued to gurgle, Ian grabbed an electric flex and tied it tightly around the dying boy’s neck.

When Edward Evans was dead, Brady commented to Myra that this particular death was the messiest yet. She had possibly watched her lover bring the axe down on the teenager’s skull fourteen times - David Smith would later admit that she might have been in the kitchen when the bulk of the attack took place. Nevertheless, she was not totally immune to the horror of the
situation
, retching when confronted by a piece of brain
tissue
on the carpet and refusing to pick it up.

Ian had tired himself out from the night’s events and had also hurt one of his ankles during the struggle. The couple said goodnight to the white faced David Smith and he left their house, trying to look nonchalant. Locking the trussed body into a chest in the spare room, Ian and Myra went to bed.

At dawn the next day a terrified Smith, and his wife, Maureen, contacted the police and told them he thought the body was still in the house. A policeman knocked and when Myra opened the door he thought she was thirty-five or older rather than her actual twenty-three. She was already in full makeup and getting
ready to go to work. She tried to keep them out of the locked room, explaining that she kept her guns there and that the key was at work. But the police were insistent so Ian gave her permission to unlock the door.

The trussed-up body was found and he was
arrested
. Myra wasn’t, because David Smith had explained to the police that it was Ian who had battered the boy to death with the axe. But Myra insisted on coming down to the station to be near Ian and she stayed there for most of the next five days, mainly talking to a
police-woman
in the canteen. She talked about her dogs at length, and it was clear that, next to Ian, they received all her love.

Finally the police phoned her mother and insisted that they take her home. At last she realised that Ian wasn’t coming back and she went into shock. At his behest, she destroyed some envelopes that may have contained plans for bank robberies or other
incriminating
evidence. But later the house was sealed off and she had to stay with her mother. As a result, she wasn’t able to get the key that would open the left luggage locker at the station which held the incriminating Lesley Ann Downey tape.

The police found the key, opened the locker and soon sifted through its hellish contents. Myra’s
fingerprints
were found on the photographs of the gagged Lesley Ann Downey and Myra’s voice was heard
telling her to be quiet on the tape. Most of the orders being given came from Ian, and obviously only he could have committed the rape.

Myra was desperate to protect her lover at all costs. Unlike six of the other cases in this book - where after their arrest the Team Killers swiftly turned against each other - she firmly stood by her man.

When Ian was first arrested, she told the police that she had been everywhere that he had been and that he had done nothing on his own.

By the time of the trial the already older-looking Myra had aged visibly. She now denied everything, suggesting they were both innocent. Both entered a plea of not guilty to all three of the murders they were being charged with - those of John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Their responsibility for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett wasn’t yet known. Myra was determined to remain twinned to her beloved Ian, yet if she’d turned against him and become a witness for the prosecution, she would have been released years ago.

The charges were answered at Chester in the spring of 1966. After much debate, it was agreed that the two of them would be tried together. This wasn’t in Myra’s best interests, as a female Team Killer who is tried
separately from her male co-conspirator tends to get a lesser sentence. Moreover, she had played a lesser part in the murders than her lover did. Both parties
representatives
had objected to the potential female jurors so they were heard before an all male jury - though the members of the public who queued to see the trial were mainly women.

The court had to erect bullet-proof glass to screen the murderers as so many members of the public expressed a desire to kill them. It was billed as the trial of the
century
.

The charges related to Edward Evans whose body had been found in their home, to Lesley Ann Downey, because they were implicated on the tape which the police had found at a left luggage locker, and to John Kilbride, whose body had been discovered as had a notebook in Ian’s writing with John’s name in it. The police had also uncovered photos of Myra posing on John Kilbride’s moorside grave.

Both denied killing the children and lied about their involvement with Lesley Ann Downey, saying that they had just taken pornographic pictures and the tape of her then watched her leave with two men. They had promised each other that they’d show no emotion at the trial, that they wouldn’t give society that
satisfaction
. Nevertheless, as part of the transcript of the tapes was read out, Myra buried her head in her hands and a vein pulsed strongly in her neck.

The seventeen minute tape of Lesley being stripped and sexually abused was played in court, so Myra had to admit to being present. Incredibly she asked the court to believe that she had been listening to the radio or looking out of the window whilst the child was abused in the same room, so hadn’t seen most of the abuse. Brady, however, had slipped up earlier using the statement ‘we all got dressed’ which suggests that Myra took part in the sexual acts. The photographs were all of the child on her own so there was no visible proof of exactly what took place.

The court said that Myra had taken the child upstairs and stripped her and gagged her then brought her back to the downstairs lounge where Brady was waiting with the camera. They verbally tormented the girl and physically fondled her then they took her upstairs to Myra’s bedroom, pulled the curtains closed and set up the tripod again.

Ian’s testimony played down Myra’s part in Lesley’s ordeal - and there was no concrete proof that she
witnessed
the other murders. She stared at him
throughout
most of the trial and was clearly in love.

The prosecution said that ‘the same pairs of hands killed all three of these victims.’ In other words, they held the couple to be equally responsible. The defence disagreed, stating that Myra was the servant and Ian the master. After all, she had loved children and
animals
before meeting him and had been desolate at
the death of her young friend Michael. She’d been a puritanical virgin rather than a sexual satyr. Nevertheless, the jury took a mere two hours and fourteen minutes to make up their minds.

The Moors Murderers were both found guilty on 6th May 1966 of the murder of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey. Brady was also convicted of murdering John Kilbride, whilst Myra was convicted of being an accessory to this killing. She’d driven the boy to the moor then driven home without him, so was clearly implicated as an accessory. She swayed as her sentence was read out.

She was jailed for life for the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Anne Downey, with an additional seven year sentence for her part in John Kilbride’s killing. Ian got life for each of the three murders. The death penalty had been abolished earlier that year but if it had still been in use they would most probably have been hanged.

Myra’s main concern, other than for Ian, was for the welfare of her remaining dog. One dog, Poppet, had been inadvertently killed whilst in police custody. The police had sent the dog to a vet to have its age
determined
and this involved examining its teeth under an anaesthetic. Unfortunately it had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic and died, prompting Myra to remark that the police were murderers. She was genuinely
concerned
about her other dog and continued to send a neighbour money to care for it.

In prison Myra continued to perceive Ian as the love of her life and lived for his weekly letters. It seems that she still wanted to show herself as heartless for she wrote ‘they call us the Moors Murderers. I didn’t
murder
any moors, did you?’ Though Brady had been
anti-marriage
and had talked Myra around to this view, she now hoped that they would be allowed to marry in jail as married prisoners are allowed more access to each other than those who are single. She wrote to him ‘Freedom without you means nothing. I’ve got one interest in life, and that’s you.’

In letters to a journalist she would say it was six years before his hold over her weakened and she told him to stop writing to her. Thereafter she reverted to her pre-Brady normal frame of mind.

For the next twenty years, Myra kept quiet about her and Ian’s part in the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, though the police were convinced she and Ian were responsible. Then she received a letter from Keith Bennett’s mother which clearly touched her. Keith’s mother wanted to know where her son was buried so that she could put her mind at rest and give her son a regular funeral.

In the same time frame, Myra was receiving
counselling from the Reverend Peter Timms, the man whom she would finally confess to. I interviewed Peter Timms in May 2000 whilst researching the case.

Peter Timms trained as a marriage guidance
councillor
in 1963. When he was twenty-two he joined the prison service and later helped run a young offenders establishment. He was Governor of Maidstone Prison between 1975 and 1981. During his last three years there he was also training to be a Methodist minister, a position he still holds. He had extensive experience of counselling outside prisons prior to Myra and has worked with vulnerable groups within the community.

He also has comprehensive experience of lifers, as when he was governor of Maidstone over a hundred of the prisoners were serving a life sentence. In total he has spent twenty-nine years in the prison service and is a kind and altruistic man.

He started to take an interest in Myra’s case in the autumn of 1983 and later went to visit her in Cookham Wood prison at the suggestion of her chaplain. Peter lived near the prison at this time so visited her often and slowly she began to open up. Between 1985 and 1986 he counselled her extensively - and finally she admitted that she’d procured Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett for Ian Brady to rape and kill. For twenty years she and Ian had denied playing any part in these deaths but now she told Peter Timms that she wanted to go on the record and make a public confession.

Many books on the Moors Murders report that Myra initially confessed to Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping - but this isn’t true. She confessed to Peter Timms and then instructed her solicitor, Michael Fisher, to bring in the police. At this stage Detective Topping was called in and several days of talks took place. The three men listened to Myra’s confession, and Peter Timms held her hand whilst she cried. Detective Topping admitted in his frank book on the subject that Myra became deeply distraught at remembering the children’s deaths and that at times she had to be
tranquillised
.

The Reverend Timms says Ian Brady’s power over Myra was absolute. ‘He had authority, was articulate. She’d grown up in a home where education wasn’t important yet was suddenly being noticed by this knowledgeable assured man.’ For the first time there was a world outside local dances and bingo halls. He was also very good looking, similar to James Dean who most young girls were infatuated with at that time.

Peter Timms adds that ‘there was a competitive
element
with the other women in the office,’ and ‘she became special for the first time in her life because he asked her out.’ Ian read Dostoevsky as his daily diet and she had probably been challenged by nothing more taxing than a beauty magazine before.

Peter is honest enough to admit that there must have
been a ‘psycho-sexual element’ in the murders for her, that it appealed to something latent in her personality. Nevertheless, he adds that when she saw Pauline’s body she became hysterical and Brady slapped her twice and told her to calm down or ‘you’ll go into the grave with her.’ He was clearly terrified that she’d go to the police and stayed by her side watching her closely for the two days after the girl’s death. They lived together, went to work together and spent their days together, so he had many hours in which to influence her. During this time she allegedly convinced herself that Pauline’s murder was an aberration, that it would never happen again.

Myra admitted to Peter Timms that she was terrified that Ian would finish with her. After one argument he’d roared away on his motorbike leaving her miles from home on a lonely roadside, and she’d been desolate.

The Sloans, Ian’s foster family, also witnessed how lost she was without him. Ian had taken her to Glasgow to meet them all and they thought that she looked hard and awkward. Yet at the same time it was clear that she was desperate to be liked. At night she and Ian went to the cinema and when they returned it was obvious that they’d been arguing. Myra was shaking and red in the face. Ian went out again on his own, and the family felt sorry for the sad-eyed young girl who was so totally in his thrall and so completely in love with him.

For Ian gave her status, a kind of love, grandiose
dreams beyond the dull repetitiveness of a typing job. Without this, Peter Timms believes Myra saw herself as ‘a non person.’ She had wanted marriage - but due to Ian’s influence she had now renounced marriage. She had wanted children - but had given her heart to a man who clearly wasn’t capable of showing compassion to kids. The first man in her life, her father, had alternately rejected and beat her - and now she was desperate to hold on to this long term relationship with Ian, this kind of love.

It seems that her desire to help find Pauline and Keith’s bodies was now genuine. ‘Myra was prepared to be hypnotised… anything to help. That’s why she visited the moors,’ Peter Timms says. There, despite becoming very distraught and at times disorientated, she was able to remember geographical landmarks that helped the police locate Pauline’s body, but Keith’s body has never been found.

Asked if there was torture involved in the murders, Peter Timms says no, adding that the tape recording of Lesley’s ordeal was indistinct because the tape was
hidden
under the bed. Myra claims she didn’t know it was there. Lesley screams when asked to strip and again when Ian Brady grabs her by the neck to make her take her coat off. The abuse is verbal and sexual. Someone incarcerated with Ian Brady would later say that the girl’s fingers had been cut off with lawn shears - and this also fuelled the rumours of gross abuses. But none
of the bodies showed signs of torture and all of the fingers were intact.

Peter Timms explains that after their arrests Ian and Myra made a pact to look coldly at the police camera, to show no sign of emotion. It was important to Ian that they seem to be above society, filled with disdain. Later, when he was photographed without his knowledge looking thoughtful in the back of a police car, he was furious and wanted to kill the photographer.

Asked about his initial impression of Myra, Peter says he was surprised at ‘how normal she was.’ He had also met her mother ‘a nice old lady, worn down by the burden of what happened.’ Everyone who knows Myra’s mother has referred to her as a hard worker. Unlike most people involved in the case, Hettie Hindley has never gone to the press and sold her story. She could have made a great deal of money but instead resides in an old folks home in relative penury.

Myra has remained close to her mother and Peter Timms says Myra sees her as ‘an anchor to her selfhood - to her being.’ Her mother has supported her since the trial and has often visited her in prison. Her sister Maureen visited a couple of times, divorced David Smith and remarried, but ultimately died young of a brain haemorrhage. Myra’s parents divorced shortly after the trial. Her father never once visited her and is now dead.