One of Your Own (53 page)

Astor was troubled by her conviction that she had written a saleable book. Having read the manuscript, he realised that it was nothing short of a calamity, and wrote to Peter Timms that she had failed to confront the ‘serious troubles in her life’; those sections were ‘wholly inadequate’, while the reams of pages about her childhood and teenage years made for ‘very wearisome and wordy reading’. He had no doubt that the manuscript gave ‘the impression of evasion . . . if it was offered as a book, it would be a disaster’.
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Among Astor’s papers is an undated, unsigned report on Myra’s first draft that criticises her childhood recollections as overly nostalgic and not dramatic enough; they should be ‘balanced by a franker treatment of whatever were the chief strains of her childhood. For instance, her father’s violence.’
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The report also warned Myra against making psychological interpretations about Lesley Ann Downey’s mother and the general public.

Unaware that her manuscript had received a critical mauling, Myra contacted journalist Yvonne Roberts via Chris Tchaikovsky, a former inmate of Holloway who, together with criminologist Pat Carlen, had established the organisation Women in Prison. Roberts had written several incisive articles on miscarriages of justice, helped by Tchaikovsky, with whom she was good friends. Roberts recalls: ‘Myra had invited me to meet her before. I worked in television and did a lot on the Cleveland affair and, of course, knew Chris very well. She was extremely ambivalent about Myra. She retained contact with her mainly because she felt sorry for Myra’s mother, whom she used to drive down to prison for visits. Chris was very good at spotting someone who was vulnerable from someone who wasn’t – there are lots of very vulnerable women in British prisons – and she was wary of Myra. Chris had counselling during the time she visited Myra because she knew Myra was highly manipulative and Chris didn’t want to get drawn in. She left it up to me to decide whether to visit Myra or not.’

The meeting didn’t go as Myra had planned. ‘It was like a game of chess,’ Roberts remembers. ‘She looked nothing like any of the images I had seen of her. She wore a smart lilac trouser suit, pink nail varnish and pink lipstick. She had brown hair and her eyebrows were heavily plucked. She was friendly at first, much cooler later in the visit. She shook my hand, sat down, and made small talk. Then she said, “I really feel that I’ve done my time.” She asked me what I’d like to know. I told her that I had a few questions, having read about the case. I asked her how she could take a ten year old off the streets. And she said, “She shouldn’t have been out so late at night.” I said – and she got quite cross – “It doesn’t matter if it was three o’clock in the morning.” She became less convivial after that, and I think she knew that both Chris and I thought that was a response that had revealed more about Myra than she would wish to reveal. I continued to question her – not about the case, but about why she had waited so long to divulge the second lot of murders. Her replies didn’t add up to much. I just wanted to leave.

‘I think she was a psychopath. She was a narcissist, too, and had very grandiose ideas about herself. I wrote to her and said I didn’t think I could help her. I didn’t want to help her because I felt instinctively that she had played a much stronger role in the murders, she had not fallen under Ian Brady’s spell and there was more she could have done in terms of setting the record straight for the victims’ families. I also suspect that she would rather have gone down in history as “Myra Hindley, Child Murderer” than not go down at all. As for the idea of remorse – first of all, you need to acknowledge the depth of your crimes, and the remorse that comes from that gives you a certain sincerity. Without it, you have to simulate sincerity and end up acting inappropriately, which is what Myra did. She was like a switchboard with the wires linked up all wrong.’
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At the end of September, David Astor’s instincts about Myra’s manuscript were confirmed when André Deutsch decided not to publish. Undeterred, Myra began work on another draft, using the guidelines in the reader’s report: amplifying the troubles in her childhood was easy, writing honestly about the murders far less so.

She was still in touch with Alan Bennett, but uncertain of how much she wanted to become involved in the search for Keith. In letters to Astor and Timms, she vowed to do ‘anything remotely possible . . . I’m not deliberately concealing anything, it’s just locked somewhere in my memory,’ then vacillated: ‘I really have done all I can and have nothing to add to what Ian Brady has told him, except that he was more likely to remember where the grave is or was, since I wasn’t present when he killed and buried his brother. So I hope I don’t receive any more letters now and will be glad when you’re able to see Mrs Johnson.’
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The 1980s ended on a disastrous note for Myra. Having been presented with her Open University degree in a special prison ceremony, she was dismayed by the uproar that greeted the publication of a photograph of her wearing the black graduation gown. ‘That was my idea,’ Timms admits ruefully. ‘Those photos were supposed to be for Myra and her family. But I went to the Camera Press in the hope that it would be seen for what it was. The OU were furious with me too, because they didn’t want to be “besmirched”. I said to them, “Let me understand what you’re saying: that it’s OK for her to study with you, as long as the public don’t find out?” And that
was
it. Myra was proud of herself and rightly so. I thought the photograph would demonstrate how far she had come. Myra knew the photograph was going to be published, but it backfired, horribly. That’s the power of the tabloid press in a nutshell.’
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By now, Tricia Cairns was again part of Myra’s life. Although she never really left it, gradually the two of them drew closer again, and Tricia became a regular visitor to Myra’s mother, helping her with practicalities such as shopping, and installing a telephone at her new home. In a letter to Timms, Myra admitted: ‘Jean Ritchie got at least one thing right when she referred to Tricia as the love of my life.’
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But her thoughts were focused on the loss of her sister, who had been dead for ten years: ‘Tricia is taking [Mam] to the crematorium to “visit” Maureen; her ashes are scattered near a cherry tree, from which Tricia sent me a leaf to put in my Bible . . .’
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As she sank into a miasma of depression, Ian Brady emerged again with a new and compelling threat to the parole she was certain would be hers in the near future.

Myra was deeply unnerved when Ian sent an open letter to the press in January 1990 warning her supporters that they were labouring under a severe misapprehension and that he could prove she had revelled in the murders: ‘I have the written words of Myra Hindley herself, in the shape of
six and a half years
of her letters written to me
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 . . .’
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The letters had never been alluded to publicly before, and Myra knew she could do nothing but hope that his threat to publish them remained no more than that. Her fears subsided temporarily with the news that a group of warders had barged into Ian’s cell to investigate claims that he was suicidal, strip-searched him, then removed him to a psychotic ward. In protest, Ian began an extensive hunger strike, which resulted in force-feeding and heavy supervision.

As her depression lifted, Myra focused on trying to win over journalists and broadcasters to her campaign for parole, which had failed again, although she wasn’t informed then that the Home Secretary had recommended she serve a whole life tariff. On 12 June 1991, Andrew McCooey informed David Astor that Myra had mooted the idea of being interviewed in some capacity by Sue Lawley, who refused, thinking it ‘unwise’. McCooey did say, however, that at the right time she would be pleased to visit Myra.
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Her former campaign leader, Lord Longford, yearned to speak out on her behalf, but there came a period when Myra asked him to refrain from visiting her, dreading that the press would find out.
³

Myra’s relationship with Tricia strengthened considerably, aided by the Astors’ support. Tricia resigned from her job in Manchester, hoping to be pensioned off due to illness, and moved to London, where she was given a room at the Astor home on Cavendish Avenue. She bought a liver and white spaniel, which she named Jake, ostensibly sharing ownership of the dog with Myra, and visited her regularly, planning their future. Myra’s prison therapist recalls: ‘Tricia thought David Astor might be able to do something to help Myra’s chances of parole. She would turn up at the prison with furniture catalogues and wallpaper samples, pictures of carpets, building up this idea that she and Myra would have this cosy little life. I don’t think Tricia really believed it would happen, but she got carried along with the fantasy.’
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Bridget Astor confirms: ‘Tricia came to us because she and Myra hoped to have a home together when she came out of prison. That was the idea.’
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Myra thanked the Astors repeatedly for their hospitality, adding in one letter: ‘[Tricia] said how different our lives would have been, or rather, what different people we would be if we had had someone like you, David, as a father.’
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The Astors fought the most effective campaign for Myra and provided her with the staunchest practical assistance. In April 1993,
The Sun
picked up on David Astor’s footing of Myra’s legal bills and giving occasional financial assistance to her mother, denouncing his support as ‘an insult to the children who wept and begged for mercy before they were butchered’.
⁷
The article coincided with another in
The Independent
, in which Geraldine Bedell wrote that ‘higher standards are expected of women when it comes to the care of children: Myra betrayed her sex and exploited her sex so that children could be sexually assaulted, tortured and killed. Her sex may also explain why she has become such an object of concern to ageing aristocrats . . .’
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The negative publicity caused her supporters to close ranks, determined that anyone recruited to Myra’s freedom campaign had to prove themselves trustworthy. One of the few people to gain admittance to Myra’s inner circle was Joe Chapman. Employed in the Prison Service since 1977 as a therapist for deeply disturbed, violent prisoners and sex offenders, he was invited to counsel Myra at Cookham Wood. He recalls: ‘I was brought in because Myra’s tariff was going to be announced at the end of 1994 and it was my job to support her through it. I got on well with Chris Ellis, the governor at Cookham Wood, but had to take on another six clients to draw attention away from the fact that I was there specifically for Myra. I remember Chris telling me, “You’ve bought a Myra ticket now”, and I soon realised what she meant. Myra set me a test to see if I could be trusted by getting me to send out a letter for her after the post had been and gone. Then I was summonsed to meet David and the campaign group in London. I found myself involved in something very calculated, run along the lines of a military campaign. I was introduced to television companies and very influential people. They were all focused on protecting Myra’s interests.’
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Every week for a year, Chapman counselled Myra for an hour in a private room: ‘I didn’t know much about her case, but she was astonishingly open. We talked about her childhood first. She’d sort of made her peace with her dad since his death. She talked about his service in the war and the injury he’d sustained. She used to attack him when she was old enough to do so without worrying he could beat her, and it was his war wound she went for, knowing it made him vulnerable – they were serious physical assaults. She was always much closer to her mum and spoke about the guilt she felt towards her because of what had happened. Nellie wasn’t stupid; when I met her she told me, “Myra would have ended up as she did no matter what. If it hadn’t been Brady, it would have been somebody else.” She didn’t believe that Myra went into it with her eyes shut, and said, “She could have told someone within the family what was going on, before the crimes. There was always someone for her to talk to.”

‘And Myra told me about her sister, Maureen, whom she still missed dreadfully. She hated Ann West for causing trouble at Maureen’s funeral, even though
she
had done far, far worse to Lesley. For all Myra’s intelligence, that was the one thing that she wasn’t able to grasp: that people grieve for years and years and had the right to feel the way they did. Nobody should be expected to put away their grief after a certain length of time when they lose their children to murder. But Myra just couldn’t understand that.’
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They discussed the murders in some depth as part of the therapy: ‘She showed the most emotion when she talked about Lesley, but again, I wasn’t sure where that emotion was coming from – pity for herself because that was the murder that sealed the case against her, or for the little girl herself. I think she did realise how horrific it was, but she had trapped herself in certain stories and didn’t want her supporters to discover the truth about it. She cried when she talked about Lesley, but there was no sign of any upset over Pauline – she spoke about her murder, and those of Keith and John, as if she was reading from a book. Edward, too. Some of Brady’s power and feeling of control over lives appealed to her as well. But I think until the night of Pauline’s murder she never really believed Brady was going to kill. One thing she and I argued about was the word “excitement” in relation to the crimes. When I wrote my report on her, she was very insistent that I should change that. I wouldn’t, because it was entirely relevant. I don’t think she was sexually interested in the children, but I know she got a kick out of the control element. It excited her to be involved in something that was so horrific and which was on everyone’s lips.’
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