Hindley happy to kill, says Brady

THE MOORS murderer Ian Brady yesterday launched a vicious attack on his former accomplice, Myra Hindley, following her claims in The Independent that he forced her into taking part in the killings. Describing Hindley as mentally ill, with a fragmented personality, he said she happily took part in the killing of five children and needed no coercion from him.

In an open letter to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, released through a Liverpool press agency, Brady said he had read the interview with Hindley in The Independent two weeks ago and was horrified by her claims that he beat, whipped and bit her and threatened to kill her family if she refused to take part in the killings.

He confirmed the revelation that he had coded letters from her and said he would sell them to the highest bidder and give the proceeds to the families of his victims.

Furthermore, he said new evidence which Hindley hopes to present to an appeal in October was fabricated. That features several nude photographs of Hindley which she claims show her bearing whip marks. But he says he drew on the marks with lipstick.

He said that in The Independent articles "Hindley, in her usual Barbara Cartland prose, has created a Victorian melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially, by being drugged, blackmailed, whipped, raped, battered, having her family threatened with slaughter, bitten, strangled, etc, etc.

"At first I was staggered and appalled, then, as the catalogue of feverish crimes mounted to suffocation levels, I slowly realised that desperation had finally driven her over the top into a surrealistic landscape of hyperbolic fiction in which all the concrete evidence against her was conveniently ditched and forgotten. A rag-bag of transparent lies and evidential amnesia.

"It appears that the neurosis bred by her own pathological recrimination machinations has developed into psychosis.

"The 33 years of duplicity, taking advantage of others to achieve her impossible aims, has apparently exacted its toll, compelling her to sacrifice all moral and intellectual credibility and integrity, driving her into the realms of psychotic delusion and absurdity."

He said Hindley appeared to have repented of her part in the killings when, in 1985, she confessed to two hitherto unsolved murders. However, he claims she admitted her role only because he and the police tricked her.

"By use of auto-suggestion I set out to falsely convince Hindley that the police knew everything, and thus persuade her to inform against herself, as the public discrediting of my word was hampering police searches and investigations," he said.

"In numerous interviews with the police, I supplied them with key words, phrases, songs, etc connected with the murders, the significance of which were known only to Myra Hindley and myself. I instructed Supt [Peter] Topping simply to drop those coded references into the middle of interviews with Myra Hindley without warning and observe her reactions.

"This he did without knowing the meanings or goal. It was essential that Myra Hindley herself provide the meanings to the police; had I provided them, she would simply have denied knowledge of their significance."