15/11/02 - Notorious "Moors
Murderer" dies
By BETH GARDINER
CNews
Myra Hindley, one of Britain's most hated women for her
involvement in a string of child killings in the 1960s
that gave her the nickname the "Moors Murderer,"
died Friday. She was 60. She died at West Suffolk hospital
in Bury St. Edmunds in eastern England from respiratory
failure, the Prison Service said. She had been taken to
the hospital from her prison cell on Tuesday.
In a trial that riveted Britain, Hindley and her boyfriend,
Ian Brady, were sentenced to life in prison in 1966 for
the murders of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and 17-year-old
Edward Evans. Brady was also found guilty of killing John
Kilbride, 12, and Hindley for sheltering her lover after
that murder.
The pair confessed in 1987 to murdering Pauline Reade,
16, and Keith Bennett, 12. Bennett's mother, Winnie Johnson,
said she'd always hoped Hindley would eventually help
find her son's body. "I have no sympathy for her
even in death," Johnson told Sky News.
"The pair of them have made my heart very hard."
Hindley's lawyers, the London firm Taylor Nichol, said
in a statement that their client had repented but knew
many would never forgive her. The serial killings from
July 1963 to October 1965 horrified Britain.
The victims simply vanished -- Reade was abducted on her
way to a disco, and Downey, the pair's youngest victim,
was lured from a fairground. Some of the victims were
beaten, tortured and sexually abused before being killed
and buried on a desolate moor in northwestern England,
earning their killers the nickname, the "Moors Murderers."
Hindley always claimed that her role was to abduct the
children and that she did not take part in the killings
or sex attacks. Once in jail, she said Brady had beaten
and blackmailed her, threatening to kill her relatives
if she didn't help him. Hindley became a hated figure
for Britain's tabloid newspapers, which splashed her glowering
mug shot on front pages every time she came up for parole.
Her gender seemed to make her even more of a target, with
many expressing shock that a woman could be involved in
such grisly violence against children. The murder of Lesley
Ann Downey was perhaps the pair's most notorious. Hindley
lured the 10-year-old away from a fairground the day after
Christmas 1964.
The girl was sexually abused, tortured and forced to pose
for pornographic photos. Hindley recorded the abuse on
an audio tape, which was played in court. Jurors listened
to Lesley calling out for her mother and asking God to
help her before she was killed.
"Nothing in criminal behavior before or since has
penetrated my heart with quite the same paralyzing intensity,"
John Stalker, then a detective sergeant in nearby Greater
Manchester, said later. Hindley and Brady were caught
in 1965, after they forced Hindley's brother-in-law, David
Smith, to watch as they killed Evans. Smith fled and called
the police.
The trial judge, Fenton Atkinson, said more of the blame
lay with Brady than Hindley. "Though I believe that
Brady is wicked beyond belief without hope of redemption,
I cannot feel the same is necessarily true of Hindley
once she is removed from his influence," he said.
Hindley, who became a devout Roman Catholic and received
a humanities degree while in prison, admitted that "my
conscience will follow me to my dying day." But she
insisted that she had paid her debt to society and yearned
to be released.
"I know I could be out one week before someone assassinated
me," she said. "But at least I would have had
a week of freedom." Brady remains in prison serving
a life sentence. |
