MOORS MURDERER IAN BRADY

Moors Murderer Ian Brady - Sky News interviews TNC over sick letter

Published on 21 February 2006 Author MORRIS, Steven.

"This 'man' [Brady] should have died years ago. They should have driven a wooden stake through his heart and buried him. Within months they should have exhumed his rotting flesh and driven yet another stake through his heart to make damned sure he was well and truly dead." Christopher Berry-Dee, TNC Group Publisher on Sky News.

"It's a human life that's gone 41 years ago, and I have had hell since he's been gone."

When Moors Murderer Ian Brady wrote, in December 2005, to the mother of one of his victims, complaining about his treatment at the high-security hospital where he is imprisoned, inevitability saw to it that it would hit the headlines sometime thereafter. Sky News today approached The New Criminologist for expert advice on what this twisted killer was thinking of when he put pen to paper.

What is Brady`s true motivation in writing? (©2005 New Criminologist.)

Brady, who is now 68, wrote to Winnie Johnson, whose 12-year-old son Keith Bennett, disappeared back in the 1960’s, and is buried, along with four other victims of the serial killer and his then girlfriend, Myra Hindley, on lonely Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester.

The Sun newspaper reports that Brady claimed in the two-page letter to Ms Johnson, who is 72, that he was the victim of "corrupt" staff at Ashworth hospital, Merseyside, where the serial murderer is detained.

The Sun says he made no apology for the murder of Keith and would not respond to her repeated appeals for information as to where where her son's body lies buried.

The letter, dated December 21 2005, is addressed: "Dear Mrs Bennett".

Brady writes that he is being kept alive via force-feeding and explains the reasoning behind this as politically motivated. He also conveys that at the present time he is "perfectly rational".

In describing the letter from her son’s slayer, Ms Johnson says: "It nearly killed me when I saw who the letter was from. It frightened the life out of me. She adds: "I've written to him four or five times over the years trying to get him to help me find Keith's body - but I've never heard back off him."

Observing that Brady’s note did not mention Keith by name, further objectifying what was once a living, breathing human being, Winnie astutely notes:

"He's just trying to further his own means. It's all about him - Brady. He's just playing games. I've written back and told him what I think of him. But I can't get over this."

Apparently Brady complains in the letter of cataracts and contracting tendons on both hands.

Ian Brady is a highly intelligent man. As a young person, adrift in a world he could never truly feel a part of, his natural creativity was instead channelled into destruction. A frustrated loner who could never belong, he has related how he would walk through dark streets late at night, passing by the warm glow of a window here or there. He says he was comforted by being alone and outside as other people went about their evenings, completely oblivious to his presence just beyond their sanctuary. Personally, I cannot think of a more isolated scenario and a stark indicator of just how detached this man had become from the rest of us.

As well as being obsessed with Hitler and his SS and the abominable practices of the Nazi’s, a brutal dedication to the writings of Dosteyevsky [he built his life around the man’s philosophies], Brady was a staunch atheist, still capable of openly voicing his disdain for God. On one occasion he actually screamed obscenities skyward whilst standing over the body of a murdered child.

My business partner, and co-owner of The New Criminologist, Christopher Berry-Dee, is a man who has interviewed more than thirty of the worlds worst serial killers. When it comes down to getting inside the heads of these arch-fiends, he is second to none, because what these serial killers are all about is manipulation, and more importantly, Chris knows it, and in an utterly ironic way, exploits it.

He has gained confessions, where the police have been unsuccessful, he has solved homicides, where they have failed. He is not only a man who talks to serial killers, but a man who walks with them, through their innermost fantasies, there most despicable secrets, their terrible crimes.

When Chris and me finished consulting for the Sky TV smash series ‘Born To Kill?’ we already had an intimate understanding of the monster that is Moors Murderer Ian Brady. An intellectual giant, ruthless political commentator, and serial murderer of children and young adults, this man is truly an enigma.

SKY works with TNC. (©Sky News)

Chris says of Brady and his ilk:

"He is not unlike dozens of other sado-sexual serial killers the world over. Cunning, manipulative, and devoid of any human compassion. From his early years, he has been a user, some say an intelligent man, however, it is highly unlikely that Brady, a man who has been on hunger strike for the past six years, at Ashworth Hospital, would have the mental wherewithal to be able to locate the lad’s grave after 40 years have passed."

"In the past there are many serial killers who have made claims that they can assist police in locating the remains of their victims. Texas’s most notorious serial murderer, Kenneth McDuff only gave up his private burial ground shortly before his execution in a futile attempt to buy more time. Ted Bundy attempted a similar tactic."


Killers on the Web
“ Evil roams the Internet just as it does even the most quiet of streets in the real world. An unflinching look into the darkest recesses of the web.”"While one has every sympathy for Winnie Johnson, I hate to say that this is a horse that will not run. And, if Mr Brady is so keen to kill himself by hunger strike, no doubt that there will be thousands of people out there who would queue up to pull out his feeding tube."

Brady and his notorious accomplice, Myra Hindley, began their homicidal odyssey in July of 1963. Five horrific murders later, the pair were jailed for life in 1966. In 2002 Hindley died in Holloway prison at the age of 60. She had since waged a long, convoluted, and in the end, unsuccessful campaign to be released.

When Ian Brady met Myra Hindley, who it must be said, at nineteen was little more than a young girl, he had found the one who would help him achieve his dark destiny.

Where Myra had continually utilised the media as a tool to secure her eventual release from prison, with her repeated admonitions of redemption and offers to help parents of her victims find their missing loved ones, Brady had resigned himself early on, to a life behind bars, away from the society he simply could not function as part of. Both had offered to help locate the graves of missing victims they had murdered, both did so for very different reasons.

Taking a look back in time, and despite the sadistic killers that they ultimately became, there is no evidence of abuse in these killers' backgrounds, and both seem to have had relatively normal family-orientated lives.

Myra was part of a large clan and was a mostly unremarkable child. There are no recorded incidents of deviation on her part. Brady however, had some conflict, and spent time in a borstal. He also exhibited sadistic tendencies very early on, manifestly towards animals. Many serial killers display cruelty toward small animals. Ed Kemper, the California Co-Ed killer decapitated a number of cats, and chopped the family pet into many pieces. He would later graduate to beheading young girls. Ian Brady did some nasty things to cats as well. One of his favourite pursuits was throwing them from tall buildings. He was an intelligent child who was an avid reader, spending huge volumes of time alone.

Brady would wander, discovering the most remote locations and lose himself in his own mind. Though essentially a loner, he craved notoriety, always harbouring a desire to one day become a big-time criminal. He indulged in many acts of petty crime and grew to nurture a deep animosity toward society, believing himself to be one of life’s outsiders. Which he undoubtedly was.

Hindley became a somewhat aloof yet pliable young woman who fell instantly for the outwardly confident, smooth operator, that was the projected image of Ian Brady. Seething below the surface was an angry psychopath, who had been that way for many years. He had cultivated an air of superiority, fuelled by his entrenched bitterness at society, which was a neon light for the impressionable Hindley. She was drawn to his dark charm as a moth to the flame.

When they were a couple, Brady’s sexually deviant tendencies, rather than reviled, were embraced by Hindley. He was a classic sexual sadist, immersing himself in the works of the master: The Marquis de Sade. The couple played bondage games, with Brady as the aggressor and Hindley as his willing subjugate. She would be whipped and flagellated, tied up, and consent to having a hood placed over her head during sex. The more in awe she was of her overpowering partner, the more receptive she became to his extreme ideas and perversions. When Brady had corrupted her as much as he felt necessary he was ready to murder alongside her.

This unscrupulous pair would torture and photograph their child victims and even tape recorded little Lesley Ann Downey’s final moments on earth.

Brady would rape and sexually assault the kidnapped children while Hindley aided in the abductions and disposal of their bodies in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor.

I am confident that Myra Hindley was no more than an empty vessel for Brady’s extreme psychopathy to flood. Without him, it is highly unlikely she would ever have killed. As with Rose West and her deranged monster of a husband, Brady and West would have been killers anyway.

And it is this very male monster, Ian Brady, who remains while Hindley is gone, that dominates our collective consciousness to this day.

Coming within days - the shocking truth of Brady and Hindley as never before. Extracted from the TV series 'Born to Kill' now showing on SKY, and the book, by the same name, written by Chris Berry-Dee and Steve Morris, due for publication by John Blake, May 2006.

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