One of Your Own (36 page)

Detective Constable Dennis Barrow of the British Transport Police located the suitcases when the regional crime squad failed to follow up Carr’s inquiry. Barrow’s son-in-law happened to be reporter Clive Entwistle: ‘Dennis rang me when he got home from duty. He said he’d been asked by the sergeant at Hyde, Alex Carr, to look for a suitcase belonging to Ian Brady. He’d been through all five stations and at the last one, Central Station, he found them. He said, “I opened one. There were all sorts of things inside: German books, pornographic magazines, a gun, a knife, a cosh. And there was a tape, a reel-to-reel tape. We played a bit of it . . . Clive, I don’t know what it was, but there was a little girl, crying for her mum. We switched it off. It was terrible . . .”’
¹

Carr, Fairley and their colleague Bill Edwards drove back to Hyde station. Fairley recalls: ‘Jock said, “Right, the situation is this: the suitcases are in Manchester, but I don’t trust Benfield and that lot to deal with this properly, so stay here and answer the phone if it rings.” He went off and came back with these huge suitcases and heaved them onto the desk. They were packed full, so we didn’t go through everything systematically, but we rummaged through and found some photographs. Pictures of a little girl with a scarf pulled tight around her face, wearing nothing but her shoes and socks, lying on a bed with her head to one side, one of her praying, and another of her stood with her back to the camera, her arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. I’ve got to confess we didn’t recognise her. But the nature of the photographs was enough. Jock said, “Right, OK, put them away. We’re not going through it all now. At least we’ve got them.” So I locked them in the property cupboard and Jock told me to keep the key. On the way home, after we’d dropped Bill off, Jock invited me in for supper with him and his wife, June. We were sat eating and watching telly when a Granada programme called
Scene
came on. This particular edition linked in with the inquiry. And up on the screen flashed a photograph of Lesley Ann Downey. Jock and I looked at each other. We knew then that the girl in the photos was her.’
²

The following morning, on Carr’s orders, Fairley took the suitcases to another office in Stalybridge and deposited them in a cupboard there. He remembers: ‘When I got back to Hyde, I found senior policemen from every area packed into the chief inspector’s office because they’d got wind of the suitcases. They were arguing over who was going to run the inquiry. Benfield came back from Cheshire, Eric Cunningham – head of the Number One Regional Crime Squad and a detective chief superintendent who carried the authority of an assistant chief constable – turned up and there were any number of others, including Joe Mounsey. All demanding access to the suitcases. Cunningham was trying to use his rank to get hold of them and a big row was going on. Then Benfield spoke over the lot of them: “Look, the situation is this:
I’m
the only one with a substantive murder inquiry and
I
have the prisoners. The suitcases have been found as a result of
my
officers, therefore
I
will lead the murder inquiry and this will be a
Cheshire
inquiry. Of course I’ll welcome any assistance.” And that was why it became a Cheshire murder inquiry. It should have gone to Mounsey. He deserved it.’
³
The suitcases were brought in from Stalybridge. ‘I wasn’t there when they were opened and inspected,’ he admits, ‘but I heard that the office was full that day. Mounsey and everyone else crowded round to see what was in those cases.’
⁴

Inside the blue suitcase was a stack of books:
The Anti-Sex
,
Sexual Anomalies and Perversions
,
Cradle of Erotica
,
The Sex Jungle
,
The Jewel in the Lotus
,
Confessions of a Mask
,
Death Rides a Camel
,
Werewolf in Paris
,
The
Perfumed Garden
,
Sexus
,
Paris Vision 28
,
Satin Legs and Stilettos
,
High Heels and Stockings
,
The Life and Ideals of the Marquis de Sade
wrapped in the
Daily Mirror
,
The Kiss of the Whip
,
The Tropic of Cancer
, and a copy of
Mein Kampf
wrapped in the
News of the World
. There were several soft porn magazines –
Men’s Digest
,
Penthouse
,
Swank
,
Cavalier
,
Wildcat
– and various other items: a 1965 pocketbook diary belonging to Ian, notes, papers and photographs, an insurance form and a tax form belonging to Ian, two library tickets in the name of Jack Smith (David’s father), string, Sellotape, a bandolier belt for holding ammunition, bullets and a black wig.

Inside the brown suitcase were more pornographic books, including one called
Jailbait
, and a study of Jack the Ripper, fifty-four negatives and fifty-five photographic prints, key rings, a pamphlet on family planning addressed to Mrs A. Hope of 7 Bannock Street, a notebook belonging to Ian, his 1962 pocketbook diary, some papers, Myra’s 1964 pocketbook diary, correspondence, an SS knife, a key on a shoelace, a sheaf knife, a key wrapped in cloth, Ian’s birth certificate, small truncheons, pieces of soap, a cutlery box containing a cosh and a black mask, another cosh with ‘EUREKA’ on it, some pieces of cloth, a Halibut oil tin – and two tapes.

The red leader on one of the tapes was damaged; Talbot found a technician to replace it. Then a reel-to-reel machine was brought into the office and the first tape was loaded onto the spindle. An impenetrable silence fell as the detectives leaned forward to listen. ‘
Sieg Heil
,
Sieg Heil
,
Sieg Heil
 . . .’ Ian Brady’s voice chanted as the tape segued into German marching music, then a
Goons
sketch, and Freddie Grisewood, presenter of the BBC’s
Any Questions?
talking about the rise of Hitler. The last track hissed into play, and the silence in the office was rent apart by a little girl’s scream.

‘People wept when they heard that tape,’ Fairley recalls quietly. ‘I heard it a week or so later and I cannot describe how horrific it is. Not just the content, but the preparation that had gone into its creation. I wouldn’t like to hear it again.’
⁵
Pat Clayton remembered, ‘I heard the tape many, many times. And it was probably more horrendous the more you heard it . . . the more you could understand what was being said . . . It got worse. The horror of it.’
⁶
When Jock Carr returned home that night, his wife June was shocked to see him sit down and cry. Their own daughter was three years old at the time and Carr recalled, ‘I thought about this little girl’s voice on the tape and about how I would feel if that had been my daughter . . . Hindley was a willing partner in the atrocities that were taking place.’
⁷

The search started early that day: Saturday, 16 October 1965. Young Scots Police Constable Robert Spiers was among the men moving in a slow line along the roadside at Hollin Brown Knoll. He recalls: ‘All the forces had given in except for Mounsey. He said, “My boy’s up there”, and he got the bosses to organise a small group from Ashton division, about a dozen of us, and a few lads from Droylsden. I’d rolled up for the early shift but was told to go home, get some breakfast and get changed. About an hour later I was on the moor in a pair of wellies and a “submarine” sweater. We were armed with picks, shovels and rods. It was dry but cold. I was working not far off the road.’
⁸

Probing around the protruding rocks, Spiers felt himself inexplicably drawn to the hill. He continues: ‘I kept looking up there. It was the strangest thing. But I went on as I’d been told, prodding the peat, fumbling my way along. It was so quiet, grey and cold. All I could hear was the wind. It got to lunchtime. Mounsey and Mattin went back to Ashton. We went down to the Clarence for pie and chips and a pint. Then back in the Black Marias to the moor. The boss, Detective Sergeant Leslie Eckersley, said we’d give it till three. After that, the search was off.’

The light drizzle died out, the breeze dropped and a mist began to roll in from across the valley. ‘We started wrapping up about half past two, bringing all the gear down,’ Spiers recalls. ‘I decided I was going over the hilltop before we left, so I climbed up and looked about. It was getting really cold by then and the mist had thickened. But I couldn’t see anything, so I started heading back. And then I saw it: a sunken pool in the peat and what looked like a short length of white, withered stick. I peered at it, at this white thing pointing upward from the black water, and I found myself a proper stick and poked about in the hole. It was too dirty to see – just thick, peaty water that stank. But beneath the water, I could feel something.’

Not wanting to admit that he’d felt drawn to the hill, Spiers told his colleagues that he’d been for a pee and had found something over the rocks worth investigating. Detective Sergeant Leslie Eckersley was in charge; he looked quizzically at Spiers, who reached for a metal rod and went back up the hill. ‘I wasn’t going to leave it,’ Spiers explains. ‘There was something lying there, beneath the murky surface. The sky was getting darker now, and by this time everyone was shouting at me, but Eckersley started up the hill and they piled up after him, grumbling. I showed him the white withered thing poking out of the water and he nodded for it to be inspected.’

The ‘white withered stick’ was the mutilated forearm of a child, wasted to bare bone by the weather conditions on the moor. ‘It was nothing like the media made out,’ Spiers remembers. ‘They described it as a beckoning arm:
find me, find me
. It was actually far more eerie than that. We drained the water by digging a trench, then began moving the peaty soil, bit by bit. I was getting a load of earache at this point from a certain Scots sergeant, who was telling me I was an idiot and we should have been on our way home, not standing there in the cold and dark next to this black mess. He said, “It’s just a bloody sheep, that’s all, just a bloody sheep.” We stood there, arguing back and forth while the others kept carefully digging away, and then all at once I looked down and said, “Well, if it is a sheep it was wearing a dress.” And he shut up straight away because there at our feet was a little tartan skirt and a pair of buckled shoes.’

The press presence on the moor had dwindled to a lone
News of the World
photographer. ‘He came over to ask if we’d found something,’ Spiers recalls. ‘I told him no, I said it
was
a sheep. But he wouldn’t leave and we had to give him the slip by heading down to Greenfield and splitting into two groups. Eckersley rang Mounsey from the phone box by the Clarence, then we hid in the van by some old gasworks and the photographer followed the other van back to Ashton.’

When they returned to the now pitch-black moor, where Mounsey and Mattin were waiting for them, Spiers remembers: ‘Mounsey said, “Right. You, me, Mattin and nobody else. Take me back up to what you found. What did you see?” I told him I’d seen bones and a plaid skirt. And a skull. Once I’d explained everything to him, he got hold of the circus. They came up with lights, tents, pathologists and all that. I left at five, before they brought the body off the moor.’

Figures crowded onto the misty Knoll as canvas screens were placed around the grave and the huge, hissing arc lamps were switched on. The sodden peat was dug away to reveal the body of a small girl. Piled at her feet were her clothes: a blue coat, pink cardigan, tartan skirt, socks, shoes and the white plastic beads won at the fair by her brother. After Inspector Chaddock witnessed the remains, the pathologists – Professor Cyril Polson, head of forensic medicine at Leeds University, and his colleague, lecturer Dr Dave Gee – took over. Gee testified that the child lay in a shallow grave on her right side: ‘The skeletal remains of the left arm were extended above the head, and the hand was missing. The right arm was beneath the body, the hand being near the right knee. Both legs were doubled up towards the abdomen, flexed at hips and knees. The head was in normal position. The body was naked. A number of articles of clothing were present in the soil near to the feet . . .’
⁹
Animals had caused two injuries to her chest and groin, and ‘disappearance of the abdominal organs’.
¹⁰
Detective Constable Tom McVittie, part of Mounsey’s team and husband of Pat Clayton, recalls, ‘We could see that it was the body of a little girl, but where she had lain against the mud, that half of her was gone. It was destroyed, no features, nothing. But the other half had been perfectly preserved by the peat. Half of her face was intact.’
¹¹

Clive Entwistle was tipped off by the Granada newsroom and raced up to the moor: ‘I blew the engine because I was going so fast. When I arrived, it was just like a scene from a Hitchcock film. It was pitch black, no moon. I parked the car and walked up to the Knoll. The arc lights were burning, there were shadowy figures standing about and there was thick, low cloud. The only other light came from the odd car passing by on the road below. I saw four officers lifting a tarpaulin sheet off the ground and start carrying it down to the van. I stood on the bumper of a black Maria, not realising that they were actually going to put the bundle into it. And as they came along, they drew back to lift it in and I saw the remains of Lesley Ann Downey. It was awful. Just awful.’
¹²

Lesley’s body was driven to the tiny mortuary at Uppermill. The screens were left on the Knoll, but the arc lamps were switched off. Two policemen were stationed on the moor for the night.