UK DARK TOURIST VISITOR ATTRACTION HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN , GLOUCESTERSHIRE . THE INFAMOUS LINDA CALVEY aka …”THE BLACK WIDOW”… NOTORIOUS FORMER ARMED ROBBER, GANGSTER & ALLEGED MURDERER WHO SERVED 18 YEARS IN PRISON FOR A CRIME SHE HAS ALWAYS DENIED COMMITTING … YOU AS VISITORS TO THE JAIL DECIDE FOR YOURSELVES ???

 

ABOVE AND BELOW : Here’s a couple of pics of Linda Calvey during one of her private visits to view her exhibition here on display at Littledean Jail .

BELOW: SIGNED COLLAGE PRINT OF LINDA CALVEY, BLACK WIDOW, PERSONALLY SIGNED BY HER. THIS BEING A PRINT OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING BY PAUL BRIDGMAN , GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST WHICH IS HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL .

ABOVE: ORIGINAL PERSONALLY SIGNED OIL PAINTING ENTITLED ‘TRANQUILITY’ BY LINDA CALVEY. THIS WAS PAINTED FOR LINDA’S MOTHER  WHILST INCARCERATED IN HIGHPOINT PRISON, SUFFOLK  IN NOVEMBER 2002 AS CAN BE SEEN ABOVE.  

Above : “DEADLY WOMEN” … Here is an intriguing short American produced documentary based on the UK’s infamous  Linda Calvey- “The Black Widow”

ABOVE: A PERSONALISED HANDWRITTED AND SIGNED DOODLE SKETCH FROM LINDA INCLUDING HER PRISON NUMBER, HERE ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL.

Linda Calvey is a Londoner with stunning good looks and an attraction to gangsters . Her first husband, gangster Mickey Calvey, died in a Police shoot out after a botched armed robbery, and her second husband, Ronnie Cook, received a 16-year prison sentence for armed robbery in 1981.

While Ronnie is incarcerated, Linda fritters away his stash. Fearing her lover’s reaction on his release, she pays a hitman £10,000 to take care of Cook, but “allegedly ” ends up firing the fatal shot herself ???

Linda Calvey has always vehemently denied this claim !!!!!

ABOVE: A RATHER STRIKINGLY PERSONALLY HAND SIGNED  SEXY IMAGE OF LINDA CALVEY.  PICTURED HERE IN HER PRIME AGED 22 AND PRIOR TO HER ARREST . WOW WHAT A STUNNER !!!(AND STILL A REAL STUNNER TODAY )

 

ABOVE  & BELOW … LINDA CALVEY -THE BLACK WIDOW LEAVES COURT IN A HIGH SECURITY  POLICE VEHICLE DURING HER TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY , LONDON IN NOVEMBER 1991 . SHE SERVED 18 YEARS IN VARIOUS WOMEN’S HIGH SECURITY PRISONS FOR A MURDER THAT SHE HAS CONSISTENTLY DENIED COMMITTING

SHE WAS OFFERED A LESSER PRISON SENTENCE BY THE HOME OFFICE IF SHE CONFESSED TO THE MURDER AFTER BEING GIVEN A LIFE SENTENCE. .SHE SUBSEQUENTLY  REFUSED THIS OFFER OUTRIGHT AS SHE HAS ALWAYS MAINTAINED HER INNOCENCE AND THAT SHE HAD BEEN SET-UP ….. HENCE AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE SERVED THE FULL 18 YEAR PRISON TERM . 

Original painting by Gloucestershire Artist Paul Bridgman for and on display here at Littledean Jail

ABOVE: LINDA’S WEDDING DAY WORN BASQUE, WHICH SHE WORE WHEN MARRYING CO-ACCUSED MURDERER – DANNY REECE. THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE AT HMP DURHAM, AS CONFIRMED WITH HER HANDWRITTEN LETTER ABOVE, WHICH IS ON DISPLAY HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL   

BELOW:  TABLOID SENSATIONALISM…. THE SUNDAY PEOPLE IN DECEMBER 2006 AIM TO RIDICULE LINDA CALVEY WHILST SHE IS STILL IN PRISON .

BELOW : LINDA CALVEY (THE BLACK WIDOW) …BRITAIN’S NOTORIOUS FORMER FEMALE ARMED ROBBER, GANGSTER AND ALLEGED MURDERESS….WHO SERVED OVER 20 YEARS IN PRISON (18 YEARS OF THESE FOR A MURDER SHE STILL VEHEMENTLY CLAIMS TO THIS DAY SHE DID NOT COMMIT ) ….. SEEN FILMED HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAVING A HEAD AND HANDS CAST FOR DISPLAY ( FOR THE LINDA CALVEY – BLACK WIDOW EXHIBITION ) NOW ON PERMANENT DISPLAY AS PART OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION .
THESE CASTS HAVING BEEN MADE BY NICK REYNOLDS , SON OF THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY MASTERMIND – BRUCE REYNOLDS

BELOW: LINDA CALVEY WITH ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION  PRESENTING A HANDMADE CUSHION ACQUIRED FROM NOTORIOUS BRITISH SERIAL KILLER ROSE WEST WHILST IMPRISONED TOGETHER AT HMP DURHAM IN 1994 …. NOW ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL ALONG WITH VARIOUS OTHER MEMORABILIA ITEMS KINDLY DONATED FOR HISTORICAL DISPLAY AT THE JAIL .

ABOVE & BELOW : IMAGES OF BOTH SIDES OF THIS CARD AS PERSONALLY DISCRIBED BY LINDA HERSELF IN THE HANDWRITEN AND SIGNED PIECE BELOW

ABOVE AND BELOW : A CHRISTMAS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO LINDA CALVEY WHILST THEY WERE BOTH IN PRISON, ALONG WITH A HANDWRITTEN AND SIGNED LETTER FROM LINDA CONFIRMING THE ABOVE.

BELOW: A FEW IMAGES TAKEN IN FEBRUARY 2018, OF A RECENT CATCH UP WITH LINDA CALVEY AND ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION DURING A PRIVATE VISIT TO HER HOME.  WHEREUPON SHE ALSO KINDLY ADDED SOME PERSONALLY HAND SIGNED ANNOTATIONS TO VARIOUS EXHIBIT FEATURES FOR DISPLAY IN HER EXHIBITION AREA HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL .

NEWSPAPER FEATURE ON LINDA CALVEY’S MARRIAGE TO GEORGE CEASAR IN 2009 .

SHE VEHEMENTLY DENIES KILLING HER FORMER LOVER RON COOK WHO WAS SHOT AT POINT BLANK RANGE WITH A SHOTGUN AT THE HOME OF LINDA CALVEY, THE CRIME FOR WHICH SHE SERVED A TOTAL OF 18 YEARS IN PRISON .

 SHE CLAIMS SHE WAS AFFORDED THE OPPORTUNITY BY THE HOME OFFICE AUTHORITIES  TO SERVE A LESSER SENTENCE OF 7 YEARS IF SHE CONFESSED TO THIS CRIME .

SHE REFUSED THIS OFFER CLAIMING THAT…. WHY SHOULD SHE CONFESS TO A CRIME SHE NEVER COMMITTED?

 INSTEAD THE HOME OFFICE INCREASED THE TARIFF ON TWO OCCASIONS  TO A TOTAL  18 YEAR LIFE SENTENCE WHICH SHE SERVED IN FULL AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE .

COME VISIT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION AND SEE FOR YOURSELVES WHAT LINDA CALVEY HAS TO SAY IN HER OWN WORDS …

Linda Calvey

Linda Calvey is a female murderer and armed robber jailed for killing her lover Ronnie Cook in 1990. She was known as the “Black Widow” because all of her lovers ended up either dead or in prison.^[1]

Previous criminal career

Calvey began her criminal career as a lookout, later becoming a getaway driver and eventually wielding guns herself during robberies.^[2]

Murder of Cook

She paid a hitman Daniel Reece £10,000 to kill Cook. However he lost his nerve at the last minute and Calvey picked up the gun herself shooting the victim at point blank range whilst he kneeled in front of her.^[3]

At the time of her release Calvey was Britain‘s longest serving female prisoner. She spent 18 and a half years in prison for the murder of Cook and had also previously served three and a half years for an earlier robbery.^[4]

In 2002 a book by Kate Kray detailing Calvey’s life and crimes was published

BELOW ARE A NUMBER OF IMAGES OF SOME OF THE PERSONAL EXHIBIT ITEMS BELONGING TO LINDA CALVEY ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , IMAGES OF LINDA PICTURED HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL AND AT VARIOUS EVENTS ETC ETC 

Black Widow in freedom bid

ABOVE: Linda Calvey pictured here during a private visit to The Crime Through Time Collection at Littledean Jail in the Forest of Dean , Gloucestershire.

A woman known as the Black Widow who was jailed for life for shooting dead her lover at point-blank range launched a new High Court bid for freedom today.

Lawyers for Linda Calvey asked a judge for permission to challenge Home Secretary David Blunkett’s failure to refer her case to the Parole Board.

Her counsel Alan Newman QC accused Mr Blunkett of acting unlawfully and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Calvey, 53, who was in court to hear her case argued, has served 12 years of her life sentence and is currently held at Highpoint Prison, Suffolk.

She was convicted in November 1991 of the murder of Ronald Cook.

At her Old Bailey trial the jury was told that Calvey originally hired a hit man, Daniel Reece, for £10,000 to carry out the murder in November 1990.

But he had lost his nerve at the last minute, and she forced Cook to kneel in front of her before carrying out the killing.

Both Calvey and Reece, who was also jailed for life, denied murdering Cook at Calvey’s home in Plaistow, east London, in November 1990.

The trial jury was told Calvey was nicknamed the Black Widow because of her habit of dressing in black after her husband Mickey was shot dead by police in 1978 as he was carrying out an armed robbery.

Today Mr Newman told the court that the trial judge set the minimum period she must serve for retribution and deterrence at seven years – but the then Home Secretary more than doubled the tariff to 15 years in 1993. The tariff was reviewed and reset in 1998.

In November last year, the House of Lords ruled in the case of Anderson that it was incompatible with human rights laws for the Home Secretary to set tariffs for mandatory lifers.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required minimum periods in custody to be set by “an independent and impartial tribunal”.

Following that ruling Ms Calvey asked the Home Office to refer her case to the Parole Board as a matter of urgency, but her request was turned down.

Mr Newman told Mr Justice Jackson, sitting in London, that the Home Secretary’s failure to do so was unreasonable and breached Article 5 of the convention, which guaranteed a prisoner’s right to have their case reassessed if the basis for his or her detention changed.

He said it was “irrelevant” that the Lord Chief Justice had also concluded that the tariff should be 15 years.

Mr Blunkett had taken the view that Ms Calvey would have to wait until she could take advantage of new legislation passing through Parliament dealing with the position of lifers’ tariffs.

But by then she would probably have served the full 15-year tariff, and this would amount to a “cruel punishment” contrary to the 1688 Bill of Rights, said Mr Newman.

He told the judge that the case could affect many other murderers serving life sentences.

Seeking leave to apply for judicial review, he said: “The present application raises important and difficult points of law. Whatever may be the eventual outcome, even if at the end of the day the Secretary of State’s view prevails, this case clearly should be allowed to proceed to a full hearing.”

Would you marry the black widow? Ex-gangster Linda Calvey finds a new fiance

She’s a notorious gangster’s moll and every man who’s fallen for her has ended up dead or in jail. Now she’s finished a 28-year stretch for murder – and found a rich fiance. Has he got more money than sense?

Potentially lethal things, cars. Linda Calvey had a close call with an exploding spark
plug the other day. It left her a little shaken.

‘Afterwards, the guy in the garage told me that I was very lucky the engine did not go up, because I’d have been a gonner,’ she explains, breezy as you like.

Taking a chance: Linda Calvey and husband-to-be George Ceasar, who trusts her implicitly

‘I was telling my friend and she said: “Oh goodness, Linda. It could have been even worse. What if George had been driving and he’d been blown to pieces? You’d have been back inside in no time.” She was right, too. I can see the headlines now: The Black Widow Strikes Again.’

For some reason she seems to find this funny. Even more curiously, George, the man she will marry next year, is rocking with laughter too, tears collecting in his eyes.

Why the hilarity? Surely no sane person — or, at the very least, no lawabiding person — would regard it as funny to be so closely associated with Linda Calvey, behind the wheel or not.

Linda is the stuff of legends

For Linda is the stuff of legends — East End gangster legends, mostly.

In notoriety terms, she is up there with the Krays (indeed, Reggie Kray once proposed to her, which kind of says it all). So did ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. In glamour terms, she is in a league of her own.

For most of her adult life she has gone by the name of the Black Widow, dubbed so ever since one police officer with whom she’d had dealings pondered the fact that ‘every man she has ever been involved with is either in prison or dead’.

When Myra Hindley died a few years back, Linda — her prison hairdresser, oddly enough — assumed the title of the longest-serving female prisoner in the country.

That 18-year stint was for blasting a former lover to death with a shotgun. Another lover was her co-defendant in the case, and was sent down, too.

They later married behind bars, although — as is so often the way with Linda — it didn’t last.

Her first husband Micky (the one who taught her to be a career criminal — armed robbery to be precise) met a violent end, too, although this was at the hands of the police, who confronted him mid hold-up. That is quite some history to be trailing up the aisle with poor George, who seems like ever such a nice man.

George’s past is squeaky clean

They will marry in the spring with seven — count them! — bridesmaids in tow. Isn’t that a tad excessive for a 60-year-old grandmother getting hitched for the third time? Perhaps.

But then nothing about Linda Calvey was ever understated.

Four months ago, she was released from prison and into the arms of her new love, whom she met while she was on day release.

George Ceasar is a businessman and a part-time ski instructor, and ‘the farthest thing in the world from a gangster’, according to his future wife, who seems almost surprised by this. He drives a red Rolls-Royce (‘bought rather than nicked,’ she grins). His past is squeaky clean, literally. He used to run a successful bleach factory.

‘We were the first people to put bleach in bottles,’ he tells me, proudly.

He should really be the sort of man who would run a mile from Linda Calvey and the criminal underworld she epitomises.

So why, then, is he gazing adoringly at her and bemoaning the peculiarities of the British parole system, in the way that most men of his background would tut-tut at how you can never find a Post Office when you need one.

Gangster Reggie Kray and “Mad” Frankie Fraser both proposed to Linda Calvey

‘Can’t you poison someone in daylight hours?’

George simply cannot believe that his bride-to-be is still subject to ‘barmy’ parole conditions, which mean she cannot spend the night at his — or their, as it is now — home.

‘They have this mad idea that I am in some danger because of her,’ he says, appalled.

‘The prison officers took me aside when I went to visit her, saying: “Be careful.”

‘They implied she might try to kill me, which is nonsense. Even if it were true, do the authorities really think that they are protecting me by allowing her to be here with me only during the day. Can’t you poison someone in daylight hours?

‘It’s just ludicrous, from all angles. Does she seem dangerous to you?’

Erm, well, no. But then, didn’t Harold Shipman’s patients think he was a darling? I pitch up at George’s sprawling 13-room period house in the Kent countryside, hoping to talk to Britain’s most notorious female gangster, and am taken aback by what I find.

Her demeanour — warm, sparky, surprisingly vulnerable, endlessly entertaining — sets the tone for what will be a truly surreal interview.

‘It is the first time I’ve had a Christmas tree in 18 years. Every year I had Christmas
inside, all I could think of was: “I want my own tree.” George wanted to get an artificial one. I said: “No, George — it has to be real. That’s what I’ve dreamed of.” He said: “Well, whatever you want, my dear, you will have.”’

George was smitten from the start

While I try to get the interview under way — remember that the subject matter is murder, armed robbery and organised crime — they bicker about who will make the tea and whether they are going to see Barry Manilow that evening. She wants to go, but he doesn’t.

I feel as though I have stepped into a rather uneasy cross between a Guy Ritchie film and an Ealing comedy. So, how clever is the woman who has been billed as Britain’s most notorious female gangster? On this evidence, extremely. The other inmates called her Ma in prison, and you can see why.

She is attractive. A little brassy, yes — the lead character in Lynda La Plante’s Widows was apparently based on her — but not overly so. She is tactile, engaging and endearing.

George was smitten from the very start. They met in a Medway town when she was on day release from prison two years ago.

‘I was in a restaurant and it was very busy, so she and her friend shared the table with me. We got chatting, and I thought to myself: “Well, this is a lovely lady here”,’ says George.

‘She said she was on a day out. I said: “Oh, an outing?”

‘She said: “No, a day out from prison.”

‘I said: “Blimey. What did you do? It obviously wasn’t something that bad if you’re in an
open prison.”

‘She said: “The thing I went down for was bad, but the point is I didn’t do it. I am innocent.”’

‘She said she didn’t do it, and I believe her’

George — in his mid-Seventies — has had troubles of his own. He tells me that he, too, has been married twice and that his second wife ‘robbed him blind’.

‘You don’t have to be murdered by a woman to be done over by her,’ he says at one
point. He has grown-up children who he never sees. It sounds as though he was lonely when this captivating creature came into his life. Despite the horrific charge list, he brushes over the gangster stuff — even the bits Linda has admitted to.

‘Yes, she was a naughty girl, but haven’t you done anything wrong?’ he asks disingenuously.

He also claims she is the kindest person he has ever met. They decide between themselves that she’s a much nicer person than he is on the grounds that she once gave a cold stranger her own gloves, while such a thing would never occur to George.

Linda was the longest serving female prisoner in the country

It almost seems churlish to bring up more bloody matters and he sighs when I do so.

‘We’ve talked about it all,’ says George. ‘She’s told me what she did do and what she didn’t do. Yes, she did make mistakes, but she told me that on the big one — killing Ron — she didn’t do it, and I believe her. She was stitched up.

‘She has been completely honest with me. After we’d been out on our first date, I sat her down in the living room and said: “I want the truth. I don’t care whether you did
it or not, but I want to know the truth.” She swore she didn’t, and I believe her.’

Linda has always maintained that she did not kill Ronald Cook. She points out that had she professed some guilt she would have been out of jail years ago.

‘They kept me in because I refused to say I did it. But I’ve always held my hands up to what I’ve done. Armed robbery, yes. I’ve done terrible things, things so bad I can hardly believe it myself. But I did not kill Ron, and I will go to my grave saying it.’

‘Men close to me end up dead or in prison… it’s not my fault’

However, in November 1991, a jury decided that she did, and the evidence presented in court was as chilling as Linda’s current set-up is cosy.

Ron had been her lover for several years, but when he went to prison, she turned to several of his friends — also gangsters — for comfort.

Things got complicated, in the sexual and financial sense.

The court heard that, on Ron’s release, Linda was terrified that he would discover she had been unfaithful and had spent the heist money he had stashed away. She allegedly asked another lover, Daniel Reece, to kill him.

An agreement was put in place. Linda collected Ron from prison and drove him to the home they shared. Reece was waiting, but lost his nerve at the crucial moment, leaving Linda to take the shotgun off him and finish the task herself.

Surreally enough, we find ourselves in George’s kitchen when this horrific chapter is broached.

Both are standing as Linda tells her version, effectively re-enacting aspects of that day as she describes how she cowered in a corner as a gunman — the real killer, she says — fired at pointblank range.

The pair of them talk, quite matter-of-factly, about it as Linda puts the kettle on, saying that the Black Widow tag is quite unfair.

‘OK, men close to me came a cropper, but that’s because I associated with gangsters. They end up dead or in prison. That’s life. It’s not my fault.’

‘I liked the lifestyle’

What she fails to do, however, is convey any real sense of remorse — even for the fact that a man she professed to love died in such a manner. Cold-blooded? Barking mad? Or has she just been removed from law-abiding society for so long that she finds such complete moral detachment easy?

What’s interesting is that the only man she talks about with genuine affection is her first husband, Micky — shot dead by armed officers in a botched robbery.

‘I was from a respectable family, no hint of trouble there,’ she says of their meeting.

‘Micky was trouble, but oh so charming with it. Even my mother said: “I can see why you have fallen for him.” He worshipped me, my Micky. He gave me the world. I
didn’t know — honest I didn’t — that most of it was nicked.’

Micky robbed at gunpoint. His team’s jobs were mostly planned in their kitchen, with her making tea and sandwiches, listening in. Learning. She maintains that she got involved in the hard stuff only when Micky died.

‘I kind of just slid in. I started doing some of the driving, then getting more involved. I had children to feed. I liked the lifestyle. Yes. I wasn’t evil, though. I wasn’t.’

She even insists, after a moment’s hesitation, that the guns she carried weren’t even loaded.

Linda Calvey poses for a photo at a Holloway prison party

Tougher than the rest

She clearly hates the police and blames The Establishment, whatever that is, for the death of Micky. But she isn’t nearly as bitter as you might expect about her time in prison.

Again she talks dispassionately about how she survived: it seems to have boiled down to being tougher than all the rest, but never appearing to be tough. Black humour stalks every sentence.

‘When I went to Durham, I said I wouldn’t talk to anyone who had killed a child. The wardens said: “Well, you’ll not be talking to many people here then. They are all
murderers.” ’

She struck up a bizarre relationship with Myra Hindley. She says they weren’t friends, but they were close enough that Linda dyed Hindley’s hair regularly. She clearly
doesn’t put herself in the same criminal, morally deficient class, though.

‘Myra never regretted what she had done. I was often shocked by her. I remember when I was working in the prison library she came in and asked to order a book, but she wanted me to put it in the name of another girl, who never came into the library. I asked what book. It was The Devil And His Works. She got it, too.

George looks on — fascinated rather than horrified — as she chats away about somehow finding herself in the same prison wing as one of the most notorious female killers of our time.

‘I missed seeing my grandchildren grow up’

Is there remorse on her part? Yes, undoubtedly so — although mostly for herself and her loved ones.

‘I did not kill Ron and should not have done that sentence, but I know full well that it was my lifestyle that put me in prison for that murder, and that is a terrible thing to live with.

‘All my grandchildren were born when I was inside. I haven’t seen any of them grow up, and they never had a granny.

‘One day, one of them had to write in school about what they did at the weekend. My granddaughter wrote: “We went to see Granny and I got tickled by the policeman and
then we went swimming.” She meant she’d been frisked coming to the prison to see me. That floors you, you know.’

‘Mate, she saw you coming’

She seems close to tears. George pats her arm and talks about how they could put another Christmas tree in the hallway, if she wants.

I wonder if her realizes that most people will look at him and conclude that George, with his red Rolls-Royce, his big empty house and his ability to see the best in people and conclude: ‘Mate, she saw you coming.’

Have they considered a prenuptial agreement?

‘I’ve said I would sign one,’ Linda says sharply, but George shakes his head in distaste.

‘You can’t go into a marriage thinking like that. You have to trust people. Life’s a gamble, but if you lose trust, what have you got? So, she might kill me. Well, hell, I’ll
take the chance.’

Next spring — “If I last that long,” quips George — those wedding bells will ring. Linda is already thinking about flowers and cakes.

As I leave, she skips off to fetch me some of the cake decorations she learned to make in prison.

They are truly remarkable: tiny flowers, berries and leaves, made out of icing, but impossible to tell from the real thing, even up close.

The woman has a rare, impressive — and deeply disturbing — talent for leaving you wondering what is real and what is fake.

 

DAILY MAIL NEWS REPORT 6 SEPTEMBER 2016 ….

Has the curse of the Black Widow struck again? Notorious gangster’s moll Linda Calvey is single once more after third husband, 84, dies in Spanish hospital

• George Ceasar passed away over the weekend, leaving Calvey a widow
• Policeman once mused all Calvey’s husbands end up dead or behind bars 
• But Ceasar was confident his younger wife was not going to ‘bump him off’
• Friend says Calvey is concerned people may not think she is a gold-digger 

A killer known as the Black Widow is single again following the death of her third husband – but a close friend has insisted it has nothing to do with her infamous track record for losing spouses.

Linda Calvey – who was given her nickname after after one police officer mused ‘every man she has ever been involved with is either in prison or dead’ – is mourning the passing of Goerge Ceasar, 84, in a Spanish hospital this weekend.

The couple had been married five years and, despite Ceasar’s advanced age and ill-health, Calvey is said to be bracing herself for an adverse reaction from critics

 

PICTURED HERE ABOVE IS LINDA’S FIRST HUSBAND MICKY WHO WAS SHOT DEAD BY A POLICE MARKSMAN

The friend said: ‘She dreads imagining the wrong conclusions people will now leap to, especially as cynics warned when she married him it was for his money, which wasn’t true.

 

‘The reality is that despite being a tough old boy, George simply passed away from a combination of illness and old age. Linda had nothing to do with his death.

‘It’s sad but that’s life.’

Calvey’s first husband was shot dead by police marksman, and the second, who she divorced, is serving life for murder, see below

Above: Second husband : marrying Danny Reece in Durham’s prison chapel in 1995 . He is still serving a life sentence

She served 18-and-a-half years in jail – the longest time behind bars by any woman in Britain – after shooting a former lover dead.

But Ceasar, who was 17 years her senior, seemed unworried by her reputation.

At his and Calvey’s lavish white wedding five years ago, the law abiding tycoon joked of his willingness to take a chance on ‘Linda not bumping me off’.

However, it is said he recently told friends that ‘marrying Linda was the worst mistake of my life’ – while Calvey hinted at a possible divorce.

‘Unlike George she wasn’t prepared to sit around at home in God’s waiting room day in day out. She spent a third of her life locked-up and when she was released she needed to be out and about,’ said the friend.

Ceasar, who left the UK to live in Spain for health reasons last winter, had spent a month in hospital near Benidorm, Costa Blanca, surrounded by Calvey’s family and friends.

The former ski instructor – who was given the last rites by a priest last week – left instructions for his ashes to be scattered on his favourite mountainside in Switzerland.

But Calvey was not at his side when he passed away as she is still subject to parole orders including travel restrictions, lives in Basildon, Essex.

Calvey, who rejected marriage proposals from villains Reggie Kray and ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser between husbands, was immortalised in the hit TV series, apltly named ‘Widows,’ by Lynda La Plante but she scoffed at claims she had made £1million from her crimes.

Her first husband Micky was shot dead by the Flying Squad in a bungled raid on a London supermarket in 1978.

She later wed hitman Danny Reece, who helped her kill her then boyfriend, Ronnie Cook in 1990.

Then, while Reece was still in jail for the murder, she asked him for a divorce to wed George.

They had first met by chance in a crowded pub in Canterbury, Kent, close to the prison where she was being prepared for release.

Ceaser asked her if she was enjoying a shopping trip in town, to which she replied: ‘Yes, but I’m from the jail down the road.’

Above: Linda with her boyfriend Ronnie Cook who she was alleged to have shot dead in cold blood .

As their friendship blossomed, he regularly visited her at HMP East Sutton Park and she confessed to him hat while she had ‘done many bad things in life’ she was not a murderer – despite the Old Bailey’s damning verdict.

Calvey has always maintained she was innocent, but jurors heard how she snatched the shotgun from Reece after he had bungled Cook’s killing, and finished him off herself.

On jail visit before her release in 2008, a concerned prison officer took besotted George aside and warned him: ‘Beware, she kills her men, you know..’

But the friend said this week: ‘Okay, the men close to Linda always came croppers but that’s because she associates with gangsters. Yes, they end up dead or in jail but it isn’t her fault.’

The friend said that she was braced for a backlash over George’s death from doubters who claimed she had only wed him for his bank balance.

Calvey had spent so long in jail that when she left her cell, her State pension amounted to only 11p a week.

‘Despite their differences, Linda greatly respected George, who was the kindest man she had ever known. She will miss him but she was never a gold digger.

 

 

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FASCISM IN BRITAIN DURING THE 1930’S-THROUGH TO THE 1960’S WITH SIR OSWALD MOSLEY’S, BLACKSHIRTS BUF MOVEMENT & UNION MOVEMENT ON DISPLAY HERE AT CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

DARK TOURIST VISITOR ATTRACTION LIKE NO OTHER. 

A HOPEFULLY HISTORICALLY AND EDUCATIONAL INSIGHT INTO FASCISM HERE IN THE UK, ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE JAIL .

British Fascist and Leader of the BUF Movement ( British Union of Fascist Movement ) , Oswald Mosley in his prime during the 1930’s

Below: Original oil painting of Oswald Mosley by Gloucestershire artist Paul Bridgman on display at The Crime Through Time Collection, Littledean jail , UK .

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAS NO AFFILIATION , CONNECTION OR INVOLVEMENT WITH ANY EXTREMIST , POLITICALLY MOTIVATED OR OTHERWISE MOVEMENTS WHATSOEVER …… WE SIMPLY EXHIBIT AND TOUCH UPON A GREAT MANY POLITICALLY INCORRECT AND TABOO SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTIONS DARE COVER IN THE WAY WE CHOOSE TO DO HERE. …. “IT’S ALL HISTORY FOR GOODNESS SAKE”

POLITICALLY INCORRECT IT MAY BE… SO WHAT…… IT HAPPENED HERE IN BRITAIN

BELOW: A BRIEF INSIGHT INTO A FEW OF OUR RARE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF BRITISH FASCIST MOVEMENT MEMORABILIA, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL

BELOW IS A VERY BRIEF PICTORIAL SLIDESHOW INSIGHT INTO JUST A FEW OF THE EXHIBIT ITEMS HERE ON DISPLAY IN OUR FASCISM IN BRITAIN EXHIBITION.TOUCHING UPON A TABOO SUBJECT MATTER THAT OUR UK GOVERNMENTS HAVE LONG SINCE WISHED TO BRUSH UNDER THE CARPETS AS NOT BEING WORTH REFLECTING UPON IN OUR BRITISH HISTORY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CURRICULUM’S 

Above and below: Rare images of Oswald Mosley’s BUF Movement parading with the original  BUF Standards/Banners…. one of which is here on display  at Littledean Jail in and amongst the Fascism in Britain Exhibition .

Below: A rare original Oswald Mosley British Union Standard/Rally Banner being one of the so say 60 number of them that were carried and used by the movement during the 1930’s, along with other BUF related memorabilia

Above and below: Oswald Mosley seen at various British Union rallies during the 1930’s …

SURELY IT IS A PART OF HISTORY THAT WE SHOULD ALL REFLECT UPON IN EDUCATIONAL TERMS AS TO OUR PAST CONFLICTS ?

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PLEASE DO TAKE THE TIME IF INTERESTED IN OUR FASCISM IN  BRITAIN  HISTORY DURING THE 1930’S-1940’S  TO LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY FOOTAGE BELOW 

Above : An exceptionally rare Arnold Leese (1878-1956) “Imperial Fascist League” banner which controversially depicted the Nazi Swastika emblem within the centre of the Untider Kingdom’s Union Jack  Flag.

Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 7 June 1929 – 19 May 1930
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Ronald John McNeill
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Member of Parliament for Harrow
In office 1918 – 1924
Preceded by	Harry Mallaby-Deeley
Succeeded by	Sir Isidore Salmon
Member of Parliament for Smethwick
In office 1926 – 1931
Preceded by	John Davison
Succeeded by	Roy Wise
Personal details
Born	Oswald Ernald Mosley 16 November 1896 Burton upon Trent, England
Died	3 December 1980 (aged 84) Orsay, France
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative (1918–1922) Independent (1922–1924) Labour / I.L.P (1924–1931) New Party (1931–1932) British Union (1932–1940) Union Movement (1948–1973) National Party of Europe(1962–1980)
Spouse(s)	Lady Cynthia Mosley (1920–1933) Diana Mitford (1936–1980)
Children	Vivien Mosley (deceased) Nicholas Mosley Michael Mosley (Oswald) Alexander Mosley Max Mosley
Alma mater	• Winchester • Sandhurst
Military service
Allegiance	British Empire
Service/branch	British Army • 16th The Queen’s Lancers • Royal Flying Corps
Years of service	1914–1918
Rank	Lieutenant
Battles/wars	World War I • Second Battle of Ypres • Battle of Loos
Awards	Victory Medal  British War Medal  1914–15 Star

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was a Member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924 and for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931, as well as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–1931.

[edit]Family and early life[edit]Biography

Mosley was the eldest of three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet, of Ancoats (29 December 1873 – 21 September 1928), and wife Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1874–1950), the second child of Captain Justinian Edwards-Heathcote of Market Drayton, Shropshire. Mosley’s family were Anglo-Irish. His branch were prosperous landowners in Staffordshire. Through the intermarriage common among the British upper classes, the 5th Baronet was the third cousin of the Earl of Strathmore, which would eventually make Oswald Mosley, the 6th baronet, fourth cousin to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was the Earl of Strathmore’s daughter, and fourth cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth II.

Mosley was born at Rolleston Hall, near Burton-on-Trent on November 16, 1896. When his parents separated he was brought up by his mother, who initially went to live at Betton Hall near Market Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet. Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called “Tom”. He lived for many years at Apedale Hall near Newcastle-under-Lyme.

[edit]Military service

He was educated at West Downs School and Winchester College. In January 1914 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst but was expelled in June for a “riotous act of retaliation” against a fellow student.^[1] During World War I he was commissioned in the 16th The Queen’s Lancers and fought on the Western Front. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer but while demonstrating in front of his mother and sister he crashed, which left him with a permanent limp. He returned to the trenches before the injury was fully healed and, at the Battle of Loos, he passed out at his post from the pain. He spent the remainder of the war at desk jobs in the Ministry of Munitions and in the Foreign Office.^[1]

[edit]Personal life

Oswald Mosley and Lady Cynthia Curzon on their wedding day, 11 May 1920

On 11 May 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as ‘Cimmie’), (1898 – 1933), second daughter ofGeorge Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, (1859 – 1925), Viceroy of India, 1899 – 1905, Foreign Secretary, 1919 – 1924, and Lord Curzon’s first wife, the American mercantile heiress, the former Mary Victoria Leiter.

Lord Curzon had to be persuaded that Mosley was a suitable husband, as he suspected Mosley was largely motivated by social advancement in Conservative Party politics and her inheritance. The 1920 wedding took place in the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London. It was the social event of the year. The hundreds of guests included European royalty, including King George V and Queen Mary; and Leopold III and Astrid of Sweden, King and Queen of Belgium.^[2]

He had three children by Cynthia: Vivien Elizabeth Mosley (25 February 1921 – 26 August 2002), who married on 15 January 1949 Desmond Francis Forbes Adam (27 January 1926 – 3 January 1958), educated at Eton College,Eton, Berkshire, and at King’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, by whom she had two daughters and one son; Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (born 25 June 1923), a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication; and Michael Mosley (born 25 April 1932), unmarried and without issue.

During this marriage he had an extended affair with his wife’s younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, and with their stepmother, Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the American-born, also, second wife and widow of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.

Cynthia died of peritonitis in 1933, after which Mosley married his mistress Diana Guinness, née Diana Mitford(1910 – 2003, one of the Mitford sisters). They married in secret in Germany on 6 October 1936, in the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests.

By Diana Mitford, he had two sons: Oswald Alexander Mosley (born 26 November 1938), married on 10 May 1975 to Charlotte Diana Marten (born 1952) and father of Louis Mosley (born 1983); and Max Rufus Mosley (born 13 April 1940), who was president of theFédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) for 16 years.

Part of a series on
Fascism

Mosley spent large amounts of his private fortune on the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and tried to establish it on a firm financial footing by negotiating, through Diana, with Adolf Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.

Mosley also reportedly struck a deal in 1937 with Francis William Lionel Collings Beaumont, the heir to the Seigneur of Sark, to set up a privately owned radio station on Sark.^[3][4]

[edit]Elected Member of Parliament

By the end of World War I Mosley decided to go into politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), although he was only 21 years old and had not fully developed his politics. He was driven by a passionate conviction to avoid any future war and this motivated his career. Largely because of his family background, he was considered by several constituencies; a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect.

Unexpectedly, he was selected for Harrow first. In the general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat (Joseph Sweeney, an abstentionist Sinn Féin MP was younger). He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence. He made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Crossing the floor

Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over Irish policy, objecting to the use of the Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population. Eventually he ‘crossed the floor‘ and sat as an Independent MP on the opposition side of the House of Commons. Having built up a following in his constituency, he retained it against a Conservative challenge in the 1922 and 1923 general elections.

The liberal Westminster Gazette wrote that he was “the most polished literary speaker in the Commons, words flow from him in graceful epigrammatic phrases that have a sting in them for the government and the conservatives. To listen to him is an education in the English language, also in the art of delicate but deadly repartee. He has human sympathies, courage and brains.”^[5] By 1924 he was growing increasingly attracted to the Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined. He immediately joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) as well and allied himself with the left.

When the government fell in October, Mosley had to choose a new seat as he believed that Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate. He therefore decided to oppose Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham Ladywood. An energetic campaign led to a knife-edge result but Mosley was defeated by 77 votes. His period outside Parliament was used to develop a new economic policy for the ILP, which eventually became known as the Birmingham Proposals; they continued to form the basis of Mosley’s economics until the end of his political career.

In 1926, the Labour-held seat of Smethwick fell vacant and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the resulting by-election on 21 December. Mosley felt the campaign was dominated by Conservative attacks on him for being too rich and claims he was covering up his wealth.^[6]

Mosley and his wife Cynthia were ardent Fabians in the 1920s and 1930s. Mosley appears in a list of names of Fabians from Fabian News and Fabian Society Annual Report 1929–31. He wasKingsway Hall lecturer in 1924 and Livingstone Hall lecturer in 1931.

[edit]Office

Mosley then made a bold bid for political advancement within the Labour Party. He was close to Ramsay MacDonald and hoped for one of the great offices of state, but when Labour won the 1929 general election he was appointed only to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, de facto Minister without Portfolio, outside the Cabinet. He was given responsibility for solving the unemployment problem, but found that his radical proposals were blocked either by his superior James Henry Thomas or by the Cabinet.^{[citation needed]}

Mosley was always impatient and eventually put forward a whole scheme in the ‘Mosley Memorandum’ to find it rejected by the Cabinet; he then resigned in May 1930. At the time, the weekly liberal paper The Nation described his move: “The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics… We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly—as he has certainly acted courageously—in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia.”^[5] He attempted to persuade the Labour Party Conference in October, but was defeated again.

The memorandum called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state nationalisation of industry and a programme of public works to solve unemployment. Thirty years later, in 1961, R. H. S. Crossman described the memorandum: “… this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking.”^[5]

[edit]New Party

Determined that the Labour Party was no longer suitable, Mosley quickly founded the New Party. Its early parliamentary contests, in the 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and subsequent by-elections, were successful only in splitting the vote and allowing the Conservative candidate to win. Despite this, the organisation gained support among many Labour and Conservative MPs, who agreed with his corporatist economic policy—among those who agreed were Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan. It also gained the endorsement of the Daily Mail newspaper, headed at the time byAlfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe.^{[citation needed]}

The New Party increasingly inclined to fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when the 1931 election was suddenly called. All its candidates, including Mosley, lost their seats. As the New Party gradually became more radical and authoritarian, many previous supporters defected from it. Shortly after the election, he was described by the Manchester Guardian:

When Sir Oswald Mosley sat down after his Free Trade Hall speech in Manchester and the audience, stirred as an audience rarely is, rose and swept a storm of applause towards the platform—who could doubt that here was one of those root-and-branch men who have been thrown up from time to time in the religious, political and business story of England. First that gripping audience is arrested, then stirred and finally, as we have said, swept off its feet by a tornado of peroration yelled at the defiant high pitch of a tremendous voice.^[5]

Flag of the British Union of Fascists

[edit]Fascism

After his failure in 1931 Mosley went on a study tour of the ‘new movements’ of Italy’s Benito Mussolini and other fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for him and for Britain. He determined to unite the existing fascist movements and created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. The BUF was anti-communist and protectionist. It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail^[7] and Daily Mirror^[8] among its earliest (if, in the case of theMail, short-lived) supporters.^[9]

Among his followers were the novelist Henry Williamson, military theorist J. F. C. Fuller and the future “Lord Haw Haw“, William Joyce.

Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings, and instituted a corps of black-uniformed paramilitary stewards, nicknamed blackshirts. The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London.^[10] At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934 mass brawling broke out when hecklers were removed by blackshirts, resulting in bad publicity. This and the Night of the Long Knives in Germany led to the loss of most of the BUF’s mass support. The party was unable to fight the 1935 general election.

Plaque commemorating the Battle of Cable Street

In October 1936 Mosley and the BUF attempted to march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents, and violence resulted between local and nationally organised protesters trying to block the march and police trying to force it through, since called the Battle of Cable Street. At length Sir Philip Gamethe Police Commissioner disallowed the march from going ahead and the BUF abandoned it.

Mosley continued to organise marches policed by the blackshirts, and the government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which, amongst other things, banned political uniforms and quasi-military style organisations and came into effect on 1 January 1937.

In the London County Council elections in 1937 the BUF stood in three of its East London strongholds, polling up to a quarter of the vote. Mosley then made most of the employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with William Joyce. As the European situation moved towards war, the BUF began nominating Parliamentary candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of Mind Britain’s Business. After the outbreak of war he led the campaign for a negotiated peace. He was at first received well but, after the invasion of Norway, public opinion of him gave way to hostility and Mosley was nearly assaulted. ^[11]

[edit]Internment

On 23 May 1940 Mosley, who had continued his peace campaign, was interned under Defence Regulation 18B, along with most active fascists in Britain, and the BUF was later proscribed. His wife Diana Mitford was also interned,^[12] shortly after the birth of their son Max; they lived together for most of the war in a house in the grounds of Holloway prison.

Mosley used the time to read extensively on classical civilisations. Mosley refused visits from most BUF members, but on 18 March 1943 Dudley and Norah Elam (who had been released by then) accompanied Unity Mitford to see her sister Diana. Mosley agreed to be present because he mistakenly believed Diana and Unity’s mother Lady Redesdale was accompanying Unity.^[13]

The Mosleys were released in November 1943, when Mosley was suffering with phlebitis, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest. On his release from prison he stayed with his sister-in-lawPamela Mitford, followed shortly by a stay at the Shaven Crown Hotel in Shipton-under-Wychwood. He then purchased Crux Easton, near Newbury, with Diana. He and his wife were the subject of much media attention.^[14] The war ended what remained of his political reputation.

[edit]Post-war politics

After the war Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded to rejoin active politics. He formed the Union Movement, calling for a single nation-state covering the continent of Europe (known as Europe a Nation), and later attempted to launch a National Party of Europe to this end. The Union Movement’s meetings were often physically disrupted, as Mosley’s meetings had been before the war, and largely by the same opponents.

This led to Mosley’s decision, in 1951, to leave Britain and live in Ireland. He later moved to Paris. Of his decision to leave, he said, “You don’t clear up a dungheap from underneath it.”^{[citation needed]}

Mosley briefly returned to Britain in order to fight the 1959 general election at Kensington North, shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Concerns over immigration were beginning to come into the spotlight for the first time and Mosley led his campaign on this issue. When Mosley’s final share of the vote was less than he expected, he launched a legal challenge to the election on the basis that the result had been rigged. The result was upheld.

In 1961 he took part in a debate at University College London about Commonwealth immigration, seconded by a young David Irving.^[15] He contested the 1966 general election at Shoreditch and Finsbury, where he fared even worse than he had in 1959. He wrote his autobiography, My Life (1968), and made a number of television appearances before retiring. In 1977, by which time he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he was nominated for the post of Rector of the University of Glasgow. In the subsequent election he polled over 100 votes but finished bottom of the poll.

[edit]Death

Mosley died of natural causes on 3 December 1980 in his Orsay home, aged 84. He was cremated in Paris and his ashes were scattered on the pond at Orsay. His papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

[edit]In popular culture

This “In popular culture” section may contain minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject’s impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivial references. (October 2011)

Mosley’s rising influence before the Second World War provoked alarm and reaction against would-be populist dictators by major cultural figures of the time:

• Aldous Huxley‘s Point Counter Point features Everard Webley, a character modelled on Mosley.

• A character in the novel The Holy Terror (1939) by H. G. Wells is a bombastic British fascist with an aristocratic background, strikingly similar to Mosley.

• “Sir Roderick Spode” in P.G. Wodehouse‘s novels parodies Mosley. Spode, a blustering bully who is described as an “amateur dictator”, heads a British fascist “Black Shorts” organization.

Mosley’s attempts to promote his views after the war resulted in continued critical reaction:

• In 2006 he was selected by the BBC History Magazine as the 20th century’s worst Briton.^[16]

• In 1997 Channel Four Television produced a mini-series about him called Mosley, starring Jonathan Cake.

• In the 1986 film version of Colin MacInnes‘s book Absolute Beginners, Steven Berkoff appears as a Mosley-esque character billed as “The Fanatic”, who delivers a (rhyming) hate speech at a fascist election rally; it is generally assumed this is meant to be Mosley during his brief resurgence in 1958.

• The indulgent tone of Mosley’s newspaper obituaries was lampooned by the satirical television programme Not The Nine O’Clock News in the song “Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley” by Peter Brewis, which featured Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys Jones all dressed as Nazi Skinheads, singing his eulogy and reading some of the more positive remarks of newspapers from all sides of the political spectrum, including The Times and The Guardian.^[17]

• A semi-fictionalized depiction of Mosley, the BUF, and Battle of Cable Street appears in the 2010 BBC Wales revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, which is set in 1936.

• The original version of the Elvis Costello song “Less Than Zero” is an attack on Mosley and his politics, but US listeners assumed that the “Mr Oswald” referred to was Lee Harvey Oswald and Costello obligingly wrote an alternative lyric in which it was.^[18]:74,84

• In Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Remains of the Day and James Ivory‘s film adaptation Mosley is portrayed as the fictional “Sir Geoffrey Wren”.

• In the popular BBC science fiction sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, 1990s time traveller Gary Sparrow attempts to educate 1940s East End barmaid Phoebe Bamford on the subject of racism, only to have Phoebe rebut him by saying: “You can be a right twit sometimes Gary. Me and dad were down Cable Street in ’36 standing up to Mosley and his Blackshirts. I know all about Fascists, thank you very much!” (Series 3, Episode 25, “The Yanks are Coming“).

• Mosley and the black shirts are referenced in the song “The Ghosts of Cable Street” by folk punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang.

Mosley appears in alternative history stories:

• In Harry Turtledove‘s Southern Victory Series of alternative history novels, Mosley and Winston Churchill lead a fascist Britain after the Allies lose the First World War. Mosley is also referred to in Turtledove’s Colonization trilogy, where MP Mosley introduces legislation to revoke the citizenship of the country’s Jews; and in Turtledove’s novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, where he was given control of Britain after the Nazis won World War II.

• In the film It Happened Here, Mosley is implied to be the puppet leader of German-occupied Britain.

• In Guy Walters‘s alternative history novel The Leader, Mosley has taken power as “The Leader” of Great Britain in 1937. King Edward VIII is still on the throne, Winston Churchill is a prisoner on theIsle of Man, and Prime Minister Mosley is conspiring with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Britain’s Jewish population.

• In Philip Roth‘s alternative history novel The Plot Against America, a secret pact between President Charles Lindbergh and Hitler is said to include an agreement to impose Mosley as the ruler of a German-occupied Britain with America’s blessing after a sham attempt by Lindbergh to convince Churchill to negotiate peace with Hitler would fail.

• In Kim Newman‘s alternative history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Mosley is shot down and killed in 1918 by Erich von Stalhein (from the Biggles series by W. E. Johns), with a character later commenting that “a career has been ended before it was begun.”

• Mosley becomes Leader of Britain after the alien invasion is defeated in Superman: War of the Worlds.

DARK TOURIST VISITOR ATTRACTION AS FEATURED ON NETFLIX DARK TOURIST SERIES, HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK …. THE MOORS MURDERERS… SATANIC & SADISTIC EVIL CHILD KILLING MONSTERS…..IAN BRADY & MYRA HINDLEY.

DARK TOURISM HERE IN THE UK ………..

TRUE CRIME, MURDERABILIA , MAIMERABILIA , WITCHCRAFT,SATANISM, THE OCCULT,THE ILLUMINATI, SECRET SOCIETIES  …. AND MUCH MORE HERE AT THE UK’S CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL . 

TOUCHING UPON A GREAT MANY SAD, DISTURBING AND MACABRE SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTION DARE COVER . CERTAINLY NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE EASILY OFFENDED OR OF A SENSITIVE NATURE .

 IAN BRADY AND MYRA HINDLEY 

‘ MAY THEY ROT IN HELL !’ 

ABOVE: ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING BY GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST  PAUL BRIDGMAN OF IAN BRADY AND MYRA  HINDLEY ALONG WITH THE BAPHOMET SATANIC SYMBOLISM.

THIS PAINTING IS ON PERMANENT DISPLAY WITHIN THE BRADY & HINDLEY EXHIBITION AREA HERE AT THE JAIL .

ABOVE: ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH OF BRADY AND HINDLEY LOVED UP PRIOR TO THEIR ARREST FOR THE CHILD MURDERS .

HERE BELOW IS  SOME INTRIGUING  INTERACTIVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION  AND VARIOUS VIDEO FOOTAGE RELATING TO THESE  HIDEOUS MURDERS  COMMITTED BY THESE SATANIC DRIVEN KILLERS. BOTH OF WHOM  HAD A FASCINATION IN WITCHCRAFT AND THE OCCULT .

WE ALSO FEATURE VARIOUS PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND HANDWRITTEN MEMORABILIA ITEMS FROM BOTH BRADY AND HINDLEY .

ABOVE AND BELOW: ORIGINAL OIL PAINTINGS BY GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST PAUL BRIDGMAN OF EVIL CHILD KILLERS BRADY AND HINDLEY, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL

 

ABOVE IS AN EDITORIAL PIECE DONE BY THE SUNDAY PEOPLE ON VARIOUS EXHIBIT ITEMS KINDLY DONATED TO THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION BY LINDA CALVEY – THE BLACK WIDOW , WHO HAD SERVED TIME WITH MYRA HINDLEY …. WHOM SHE HAD HATED BUT HAD  TO TOLERATE  WITHIN THE PENAL SYSTEM . THESE ITEMS WERE FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON LEFT TO LINDA PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF HINDLEY. AND FOR OBVIOUS REASONS NOT WANTED BY HER. … HENCE NOW THEY ARE IN OUR POSSESSION  FOR DISPLAY HERE AT THE JAIL

BELOW IS A HANDWRITTEN  AND SIGNED CHRISTMAS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY GIVEN TO HER FELLOW INMATE AND HER THEN PERSONAL HAIRDRESSER …. LINDA CALVEY – “THE BLACK WIDOW”

BELOW : A SIMPLE HAND SIGNED GREETINGS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO ONE OF THE PRISON GUARDS

BIZARRE GIFT FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO LINDA CALVEY “BLACK WIDOW” , WHILST INCARERATED IN THE SAME PRISON AT HMP HIGHPOINT .

BELOW: FROM THE HANDS OF EVIL SERIAL KILLER IAN BRADY . HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF HIS VARIOUS HANDWRITTEN AND SIGNED LETTERS ON DISPLAY AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLCTION LITTLEDEAN JAIL

PROBABLY THE LAST CLOTHING WORN BY MYRA HINDLEY DURING HER LAST DAYS IN HIGHPOINT PRISON BEFORE SHE DIED IN 2002 AT A NEARBY HOSPITAL AGED 60. THESE CLOTHES AND OTHER PERSONAL ITEMS WHICH HAD BEEN GIVEN TO LINDA CALVEY “THE BLACK WIDOW ” TO LOOK AFTER ON HER BEHALF.

ON LINDA’S RELEASE FROM PRISON IN 2008, SHE LATER DONATED THESE ITEMS TO THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , UK .

BELOW ARE VARIOUS IMAGES RELATING TO SOME OF THE EXHIBIT MATERIAL WE HAVE ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL

Few have attracted such notoriety or public loathing as the Moors murderers, so-named after they kidnapped and murdered five children over 18 months, between July 1963 and October 1965.

The pair were jailed for life in 1966 for murdering five children – Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17, all from the Manchester area.

Brady and Hindley, who were both in their 20s, lured the youngsters to their deaths, sexually torturing their victims before burying them on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines above Manchester.

Pauline disappeared on her way to a disco on July 12 1963 and John was snatched in November the same year.

Moors murders

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
Brady (left) and Hindley, October 1965
Background information
Birth name	Ian Duncan Stewart Myra Hindley
Also known as	The Moors murderers
Born	Brady: 2 January 1938 (age 74) Hindley: 23 July 1942
Died	Hindley: 15 November 2002 (aged 60)
Cause of death	Bronchial pneumonia caused byheart disease
Conviction	Murder
Sentence	Life imprisonment
Killings
Number of victims	5
Country	England
Date apprehended	Brady: 7 October 1965 Hindley: 11 October 1965

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug onSaddleworth Moor, with a third grave also being discovered there in 1987, over 20 years after Brady and Hindley’s trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.

The police were initially aware of only three killings, those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, both by then having confessed to the additional murders.

Characterised by the press as “the most evil woman in Britain”,^[1] Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but she was never released. She died in 2002, aged 60. Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985, since when he has been confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He has made it clear that he never wants to be released, and has repeatedly asked that he be allowed to die.

The murders, reported in almost every English-language newspaper in the world,^[2] were the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a “concatenation of circumstances”, which brought together a “young woman with a tough personality, taught to hand out and receive violence from an early age” and a “sexually sadistic psychopath”.^[3]

Victims

Saddleworth Moor, viewed from Hollin Brown Knoll. The bodies of three of the victims were found in this area.

The full extent of Brady and Hindley’s killing spree did not come to light until their confessions in 1985, as both had until then maintained their innocence.^[4] Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley’s who disappeared on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton on 12 July 1963.^[5] That evening, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to “commit his perfect murder”. He told her to drive her van around the local area while he followed behind on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight, and Hindley was to stop and offer that person a lift.^[4]

Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a young girl walking towards them, and signalled Hindley to stop, which she did not do until she had passed the girl. Brady drew up alongside on his motorbike, demanding to know why she had not offered the girl a lift, to which Hindley replied that she recognised her as Marie Ruck, a near neighbour of her mother. Shortly after 8:00 pm, continuing down Froxmer Street,^[6] Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high-heeled shoes walking away from them, and once again signalled for the van to stop.^[4] Hindley recognised the girl as Pauline Reade, a friend of her younger sister, Maureen.^[7] Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a child of seven or eight. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about 30 minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying, her throat cut. He told her to stay with Reade while he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby on a previous visit to the moor, to bury the body. Hindley noticed that “Pauline’s coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray … She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her.”^[4] Returning home from the moor in the van—they had loaded the motorcycle into the back—Brady and Hindley passed Reade’s mother, Joan, accompanied by her son, Paul, searching the streets for Pauline.^[8]

Accompanied by Brady, Hindley approached 12-year-old John Kilbride in the early evening of 23 November 1963 at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and offered him a lift home on the pretext that his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the added inducement of a proffered bottle of sherry, Kilbride readily agreed to get into the Ford Anglia car that Hindley had hired. Brady told Kilbride that the sherry was at their home, and they would have to make a detour to collect it. On the way he suggested that they take another detour, to search for a glove he said that Hindley had lost on the moor.^[9] When they reached the moor Brady took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before fatally strangling him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace.^[10]

Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett vanished on his way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight during the early evening of 16 June 1964,^[11] four days after his birthday. Hindley lured him into her Mini pick-up—which Brady was sitting in the back of—by asking for the boy’s help in loading some boxes, after which she said she would drive him home. She drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor as she and Brady had previously arranged, and Brady went off with Bennett, supposedly looking for a lost glove. Hindley kept watch, and after about 30 minutes or so Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade that he had hidden there earlier. When Hindley asked how he had killed Bennett, Brady said that he had sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him with a piece of string.^[12]

Brady and Hindley visited a fairground on 26 December 1964 in search of another victim, and noticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey standing beside one of the rides. When it became apparent that she was on her own, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of the shopping they were carrying close to her, before asking for the girl’s help to carry some of the packages to their car, and then to their home. Once inside the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed, perhaps strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned. In Dr. Chris Cowley’s book Face to Face with Evil: Conversations with Ian Brady, Brady states that it was Hindley who killed Lesley Ann Downey. The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey’s body to Saddleworth Moor,^[13] where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.^[14]

On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, where Brady beat him to death with an axe.^[15]

Initial report

The empty plot where 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, once stood. The house was demolished in the 1980s by the local council.

The attack on Edward Evans was witnessed by Hindley’s 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith, the husband of her younger sister Maureen. The Hindley family had not approved of Maureen’s marriage to Smith, who had several criminal convictions, including actual bodily harm and housebreaking, the first of which, wounding with intent, occurred when he was aged eleven.^[16] Throughout the previous year Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith, who had become “in awe” of the older man, something that increasingly worried Hindley, as she felt it compromised their safety.^[17]

On the evening of 6 October 1965 Hindley drove Brady to Manchester Central Station, where she waited outside in the car while he selected their victim; after a few minutes Brady reappeared in the company of Edward Evans, to whom he introduced Hindley as his sister. After they had driven back home and relaxed over a bottle of wine, Brady sent Hindley to fetch her brother-in-law. When they got back to the house Hindley told Smith to wait outside for her signal, a flashing light. When the signal came Smith knocked on the door and was met by Brady, who asked if he had come for “the miniature wine bottles”.^[15] Brady led Smith into the kitchen and left him there, saying that he was going to collect the wine. A few minutes later Smith heard a scream, followed by Hindley shouting loudly for him to come and help.^[18] Smith entered the living room to find Brady repeatedly striking Evans with the flat of an axe, and watched as he then throttled Evans with a length of electrical cord.^[19] Evans’ body was too heavy for Smith to carry to the car on his own—Brady had sprained his ankle in the struggle—so they wrapped it in plastic sheeting and put it in the spare bedroom.^[20]

Smith agreed to meet Brady the following evening to dispose of Evans’ body,^[20] but after returning home he woke his wife and told her what he had seen. Maureen told him that he must call the police. Three hours later the couple cautiously made their way to a public phone box in the street below their flat, Smith taking the precaution of arming himself with a screwdriver and a kitchen knife to defend them in the event that Brady suddenly appeared and confronted them. At 6:07 am Smith made an emergency services call to the police station in nearbyHyde and told his story to the officer on duty.^[21] In his statement to the police Smith claimed that:

[Brady] opened the door and he said in a very loud voice for him … “Do you want those miniatures?” I nodded my head to say yes and he led me into the kitchen … and he gave me three miniature bottles of spirits and said: “Do you want the rest?” When I first walked into the house, the door to the living room … was closed. … Ian went into the living room and I waited in the kitchen. I waited about a minute or two then suddenly I heard a hell of a scream; it sounded like a woman, really high-pitched. Then the screams carried on, one after another really loud. Then I heard Myra shout, “Dave, help him,” very loud. When I ran in I just stood inside the living room and I saw a young lad. He was lying with his head and shoulders on the couch and his legs were on the floor. He was facing upwards. Ian was standing over him, facing him, with his legs on either side of the young lad’s legs. The lad was still screaming. … Ian had a hatchet in his hand … he was holding it above his head and he hit the lad on the left side of his head with the hatchet. I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible.”^[22]

Arrest

Early on the morning of 7 October, shortly after Smith’s call, Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Cheshire Police arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, wearing a borrowed baker’s overall to cover his uniform. Talbot identified himself to Hindley as a police officer when she opened the door, and told her that he wanted to speak to her boyfriend. Hindley led him into the living room, where Brady was sitting up in a divan writing a note to his employer explaining that he would not be able to get into work because of his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns” that was reported to have taken place the previous evening.^[23] Hindley denied that there had been any violence, and allowed police to look around the house. When they came to the upstairs room in which Evans’ body was stored the police found the door locked, and asked Brady for the key. Hindley claimed that the key was at work, but after the police offered to drive her to her employer’s premises to retrieve it, Brady told her to hand the key over. When they returned to the living room the police told Brady that they had discovered a trussed up body, and that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder.^[24] As Brady was getting dressed, he said “Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand.”^[25]

Hindley was not arrested with Brady, but she demanded to go with him to the police station, accompanied by her dog Puppet, to which the police agreed.^[26] Hindley was questioned about the events surrounding Evans’ death, but she refused to make any statement beyond claiming that it had been an accident. As the police had no evidence that Hindley was involved in Evans’ murder she was allowed to go home, on condition that she return the next day for further questioning. Hindley was at liberty for four days following Brady’s arrest, during which time she went to her employer’s premises and asked to be dismissed, so that she would be eligible for unemployment benefits. While in the office where Brady worked she found some papers belonging to him in an envelope that she claimed she did not open, which she burned in an ashtray. She believed that they were plans for bank robberies, nothing to do with the murders. On 11 October Hindley was charged as an accessory to the murder of Edward Evans and was remanded at Risley.^[27]

Initial investigation

Brady admitted under police questioning that he and Evans had fought, but insisted that he and Smith had murdered Evans between them; Hindley, he said, had “only done what she had been told”.^[28]Smith told police that Brady had asked him to return anything incriminating, such as “dodgy books”, which Brady then packed into suitcases. Smith had no idea what else the suitcases contained or where they might be, but he mentioned in passing that Brady “had a thing about railway stations”. The police consequently requested a search of all Manchester’s left-luggage offices for any suitcases belonging to Brady, and on 15 October British Transport Police found what they were looking for at Manchester Central railway station^[29]—the left-luggage ticket was found several days later in the back of Hindley’s prayer book.^[30] Inside one of the suitcases were nine pornographic photographs taken of a young girl, naked and with a scarf tied across her mouth, and a 13-minute tape recording of her screaming and pleading for help.^[31] Ann Downey, Lesley Ann Downey’s mother, later listened to the tape after police had discovered the body of her missing 10-year-old daughter, and confirmed that it was a recording of her daughter’s voice.^[32]

Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue also found an old exercise book in which the name “John Kilbride” had been scribbled, which made them suspicious that Brady and Hindley might have been involved in the unsolved disappearances of other youngsters.^[33] A large collection of photographs was discovered in the house, many of which seemed to have been taken on Saddleworth Moor. One hundred and fifty officers were drafted to search the moor, looking for locations that matched the photographs. Initially the search was concentrated along the A628 road near Woodhead, but a close neighbour, 11-year-old Pat Hodges, had on several occasions been taken to the moor by Brady and Hindley and she was able to point out their favourite sites along the A635 road.^[34] On 16 October police found an arm bone sticking out of the peat; officers presumed that they’d found the body of John Kilbride, but soon discovered that the body was that of Lesley Ann Downey. Her mother (later Ann West after her marriage to Alan West) had been on the moor watching as the police conducted their search, but was not present when the body was found.^[35] She was shown clothing recovered from the grave, and identified it as belonging to her missing daughter.^[36]

A photograph taken by Ian Brady of Myra Hindley with her dog, Puppet, crouching over John Kilbride’s grave on Saddleworth Moor in November 1963.

Detectives were able to locate another site on the opposite side of the A635 from where Downey’s body was discovered, and five days later they found the “badly decomposed” body of John Kilbride, whom they identified by his clothing.^[37] That same day, already being held for the murder of Evans, Brady and Hindley appeared at Hyde Magistrate’s Court charged with Lesley Ann Downey’s murder. Each was brought before the court separately and remanded into custody for a week.^[38] They made a two-minute appearance on 28 October, and were again remanded into custody.^[39]

The search for bodies continued, but with winter setting in it was called off in November.^[37] Presented with the evidence of the tape recording Brady admitted to taking the photographs of Lesley Ann Downey, but insisted that she had been brought to Wardle Brook Avenue by two men who had subsequently taken her away again, alive. Brady was further charged with the murder of John Kilbride, and Hindley with the murder of Edward Evans, on 2 December.^[40] At the committal hearing on 6 December Brady was charged with the murders of Edward Evans, John Kilbride, and Lesley Ann Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey, as well as with harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride. The prosecution’s opening statement was held in camera,^[41] and the defence asked for a similar stipulation, but was refused.^[42] The proceedings continued in front of three magistrates in Hyde over an 11-day period during December, at the end of which the pair were committed for trial at Chester Assizes.^[43]

Many of the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley on the moor featured Hindley’s dog Puppet, sometimes as a puppy. Detectives arranged for the animal to be examined by a veterinary surgeon to determine its age, from which they could date when the pictures were taken. The examination involved an analysis of the dog’s teeth, which required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover, as he suffered from an undiagnosed kidney complaint. On hearing the news of her dog’s death Hindley became furious, and accused the police of murdering Puppet, one of the few occasions detectives witnessed any emotional response from her.^[37] In a letter to her mother shortly afterwards Hindley wrote:

I feel as though my heart’s been torn to pieces. I don’t think anything could hurt me more than this has. The only consolation is that some moron might have got hold of Puppet and hurt him.^[44]

Trial

The trial was held over 14 days beginning on 19 April 1966, in front of Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson.^[43] Such was the public interest that the courtroom was fitted with security screens to protect Brady and Hindley.^[45] The pair were each charged with three murders, those of Evans, Downey, and Kilbride, as it was considered that there was by then sufficient evidence to implicate Hindley in Kilbride’s death. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General, Frederick Elwyn Jones.^[43] Brady was defended by the Liberal Member of Parliament Emlyn Hooson,^[46] and Hindley was defended by Godfrey Heilpern, recorder of Salford from 1964—both experienced QCs.^[47][48] David Smith was the chief prosecution witness, but during the trial it was revealed that he had entered into an agreement with a newspaper that he initially refused to name—even under intense questioning—guaranteeing him £1,000 (equivalent to about £10,000 as of 2012) for the syndication rights to his story if Brady and Hindley were convicted, something the trial judge described as a “gross interference with the course of justice”.^[49][50] Smith finally admitted in court that the newspaper was the News of the World,^[51]which had already paid for a holiday in France for him and his wife and was paying him a regular income of £20 per week, as well as accommodating him in a five-star hotel for the duration of the trial.^[52]

Brady and Hindley pleaded not guilty to the charges against them; both were called to give evidence, Brady for over eight hours and Hindley for six.^[53] Although Brady admitted to hitting Evans with an axe, he did not admit to killing him, arguing that the pathologist in his report had stated that Evans’ death was “accelerated by strangulation”. Under cross-examination by the prosecuting counsel, all Brady would admit was that “I hit Evans with the axe. If he died from axe blows, I killed him.”^[54] Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims.^[55]

The tape recording of Lesley Anne Downey, on which the voices of Brady and Hindley were clearly audible, was played in open court. Hindley admitted that her attitude towards the child was “brusque and cruel”, but claimed that was only because she was afraid that someone might hear Downey screaming. Hindley claimed that when Downey was being undressed she herself was “downstairs”; when the pornographic photographs were taken she was “looking out the window”; and that when the child was being strangled she “was running a bath”.^[55]

On 6 May, after having deliberated for a little over two hours,^[56] the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans. The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act had come into force during the time that Brady and Hindley were held in prison, abolishing the death penalty for murder, and therefore the judge passed the only sentence that the law allowed: life imprisonment. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered John Kilbride.^[43] Brady was taken to Durham Prison and Hindley was sent to Holloway Prison.^[55]

In his closing remarks Mr Justice Atkinson described the murders as a “truly horrible case” and condemned the accused as “two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity”.^[57] He recommended that both Brady and Hindley spend “a very long time” in prison before being considered for parole but did not stipulate a tariff. He stated that Brady was “wicked beyond belief” and that he saw no reasonable possibility of reform. He did not consider that the same was necessarily true of Hindley, “once she is removed from [Brady’s] influence”.^[58] Throughout the trial Brady and Hindley “stuck rigidly to their strategy of lying”,^[59] and Hindley was later described as “a quiet, controlled, impassive witness who lied remorselessly”.^[43]

Later investigation

Keith Bennett

In 1985 Brady allegedly confessed to Fred Harrison, a journalist working for The Sunday People, that he had also been responsible for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett,^[60] something that the police already suspected, as both children lived in the same area as Brady and Hindley and had disappeared at about the same time as their other victims. The subsequent newspaper reports prompted the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to reopen the case, in an investigation headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, who had been appointed Head of GMP’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) the previous year.^[61]

On 3 July 1985 Topping visited Brady, then being held at Gartree Prison, but found him “scornful of any suggestion that he had confessed to more murders”.^[62] Police nevertheless decided to resume their search of Saddleworth Moor, once more using the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley to help them identify possible burial sites. Meanwhile, in November 1986 Winnie Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother, wrote a letter to Hindley begging to know what had happened to her son, a letter that Hindley seemed to be “genuinely moved” by.^[63] It ended:

I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie’s Hospital. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. Please, Miss Hindley, help me.^[64]

Police visited Hindley, then being held in Cookham Wood, a few days after she had received the letter, and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help by looking at photographs and maps to try to identify spots that she had visited with Brady.^[65] She showed particular interest in photographs of the area around Hollin Brown Knoll and Shiny Brook, but said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor.^[66] The security considerations for such a visit were significant; there were threats made against her should she visit the moors, but Home Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed with Topping that it would be worth the risk.^[67] Writing in 1989, Topping said that he felt “quite cynical” about Hindley’s motivation in helping the police. Although the letter from Winnie Johnson may have played a part, he believed that Hindley’s real concern was that, knowing of Brady’s “precarious” mental state, she was afraid that he might decide to co-operate with the police, and wanted to make certain that she, and not Brady, was the one to gain whatever benefit there may have been in terms of public approval.^[68]

Hindley made the first of two visits to assist the police search of Saddleworth Moor on 16 December 1986.^[69] Four police cars left Cookham Wood at 4.30 am. At about the same time, police closed all roads onto the moor, which was patrolled by 200 officers, 40 of them armed. Hindley and her solicitor arrived by helicopter from an airfield near Maidstone, touching down at 8:30 am. Wearing a donkey jacket and balaclava, she was driven, and walked around the area. It was difficult for Hindley to make a connection between her memories of the area and what she saw on the day, and she was apparently nervous of the helicopters flying overhead. At 3:00 pm she was returned to the helicopter, and taken back to Cookham Wood.^[67] Topping was criticised by the press, who described the visit as a “fiasco”, a “publicity stunt”, and a “mindless waste of money”.^[70] He was forced to defend the visit, pointing out its benefits:

We had taken the view that we needed a thorough systematic search of the moor […] It would never have been possible to carry out such a search in private.^[70]

Topping continued to visit Hindley in prison, along with her solicitor Michael Fisher and her spiritual counsellor, the Reverend Peter Timms, who had been a prison governor before resigning to become a minister in the Methodist Church.^[70] She made a formal confession to police on 10 February 1987, admitting her involvement in all five murders,^[71] but news of her confession was not made public for more than a month.^[72] The tape recording of her statement was over 17 hours long; Topping described it as a “very well worked out performance in which, I believe, she told me just as much as she wanted me to know, and no more”.^[73] He also commented that he “was struck by the fact that she was never there when the killings took place. She was in the car, over the brow of the hill, in the bathroom and even, in the case of the Evans murder, in the kitchen.”^[74] Topping concluded that he felt he “had witnessed a great performance rather than a genuine confession”.^[75]

During the 1987 search for Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, Hindley recalled that she had seen the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.

Police visited Brady in prison again and told him of Hindley’s confession, which at first he refused to believe. Once presented with some of the details that Hindley had provided of Pauline Reade’s abduction, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but on one condition: that immediately afterwards he be given the means to commit suicide, a request that was impossible for the authorities to comply with.^[76]

At about the same time, Winnie Johnson sent Hindley another letter, again pleading with her to assist the police in finding the body of her son Keith. In the letter, Johnson was sympathetic to Hindley over the criticism surrounding her first visit. Hindley, who had not replied to the first letter, responded by thanking Johnson for both letters, explaining that her decision not to reply to the first resulted from the negative publicity that surrounded it. She claimed that, had Johnson written to her 14 years earlier, she would have confessed and helped the police. She also paid tribute to Topping, and thanked Johnson for her sincerity.^[77] Hindley made her second visit to the moor in March 1987. This time, the level of security surrounding her visit was considerably higher. She stayed overnight in Manchester, at the flat of the police chief in charge of GMP training at Sedgley Park, and visited the moor twice.^[77] She confirmed to police that the two areas in which they were concentrating their search—Hollin Brown Knoll and Hoe Grain—were correct, although she was unable to locate either of the graves.^[78] She did later remember, though, that as Pauline Reade was being buried she had been sitting next to her on a patch of grass and could see the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.^[79]

In April 1987 news of Hindley’s confession became public. Amidst strong media interest Lord Longford pleaded for her release, writing that her continuing detention to satisfy “mob emotion” was not right. Fisher persuaded Hindley to release a public statement, in which she explained her reasons for denying her complicity in the murders, her religious experiences in prison, the letter from Johnson, and that she saw no possibility of release. She also exonerated David Smith from any part in the murders, except that of Edward Evans.^[80]

A map of Saddleworth Moor, showing the areas in which the bodies of three of the children were found, and the general area in which police searched for the body of Keith Bennett

Over the next few months interest in the search waned, but Hindley’s clue had directed the police to focus their efforts on a specific area. On the afternoon of 1 July 1987, after more than 100 days of searching, they found a body lying in a shallow grave 3 feet (0.9 m) below the surface, only 100 yards (90 m) from the place where Lesley Ann Downey had been found.^[79][81]Brady had been co-operating with the police for some time, and when news reached him that Reade’s body had been discovered he made a formal confession to Topping.^[82] He also issued a statement to the press, through his solicitor, saying that he too was prepared to help the police in their search. Brady was taken to the moor on 3 July, but he seemed to lose his bearings, blaming changes that had taken place in the intervening years, and the search was called off at 3:00 pm, by which time a large crowd of press and television reporters had gathered on the moor.^[83]

Topping refused to allow Brady a second visit to the moors,^[82] and a few days after his visit Brady wrote a letter to BBC television reporter Peter Gould, giving some sketchy details of five additional murders that he claimed to have carried out.^[84]Brady refused to identify his alleged victims, and the police failed to discover any unsolved crimes matching the few details that he supplied.^[85] Hindley told Topping that she knew nothing of these killings.^[82]

Hoe Grain leading to Shiny Brook, the area in which police believe Bennett’s undiscovered body is buried^[86]

On 24 August 1987 police called off their search of Saddleworth Moor, despite not having found Keith Bennett’s body.^[87] Brady was taken to the moor for a second time on 1 December, but he was once again unable to locate the burial site. Keith Bennett’s body remains undiscovered as of 2012, although his family continues to search the moor, over 40 years after his disappearance.^[88]

Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted, and a second trial might even have helped Hindley’s case for parole by giving her a platform from which to make a public confession.^[89]

In 2003 the police launched Operation Maida, and again searched the moor for the body of Keith Bennett. They read statements from Brady and Hindley, and also studied photographs taken by the pair. Their search was aided by the use of sophisticated modern equipment, including a US satellite used to look for evidence of soil movement.^[90] The BBC reported on 1 July 2009 that Greater Manchester Police had officially given up the search for Keith Bennett, saying that “only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart”.^[91] Detectives were also reported as saying that they would never again give Brady the attention or the thrill of leading another fruitless search on the moor where they believe Keith Bennett’s remains are buried.^[92] Donations from members of the public funded a search of the moor for Bennett’s body by volunteers from a Welsh search and rescue team that began in March 2010.^[93]

Perpetrators’ backgrounds

Ian Brady

Ian Brady was born in Glasgow as Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 to Maggie Stewart, an unmarried 28-year-old tea room waitress. The identity of Brady’s father has never been reliably ascertained, although his mother claimed he was a reporter working for a Glasgow newspaper, who died three months before Brady was born. Stewart had little support, and after a few months was forced to give her son into the care of Mary and John Sloan, a local couple with four children of their own. Brady took their name, and became known as Ian Sloan. His mother continued to visit him throughout his childhood.^[94] As a young child he took pleasure in torturing animals; he broke the hind legs of one dog, set fire to another, and decapitated a cat.^[95] Aged nine, Brady visited Loch Lomond with his family, where he reportedly discovered an affinity for the outdoors, and a few months later the family moved to a new council house on an overspill estate at Pollok. He was accepted forShawlands Academy, a school for above average pupils.^[96] As he grew older Brady’s “brutality escalated”, and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself.^[95] At Shawlands his behaviour worsened; as a teenager he twice appeared before a juvenile court for housebreaking. He left the academy aged 15, and took a job as a tea boy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. Nine months later he began working as a butcher’s messenger boy. He had a girlfriend, Evelyn Grant, but their relationship ended when he threatened her with a flick knife after she visited a dance with another boy. He again appeared before the court, this time with nine charges against him,^[97] and shortly before his 17th birthday a court put him on probation on the condition that he went to live with his mother,^[98]who had by then moved to Manchester and married an Irish fruit merchant named Patrick Brady, who got him a job as a fruit porter at Smithfield Market.^[99]

Within a year of moving to Manchester, Brady was caught with a sack full of lead seals he had stolen and was trying to smuggle out of the market. Because he was still under 18, he was sentenced to two years in borstal for “training”.^[100] He was initially sent to Hatfield but after being discovered drunk on alcohol he had brewed he was moved to the much tougher unit at Hull.^[98] Released on 14 November 1957 Brady returned to Manchester, where he took a labouring job, which he hated, and was dismissed from another job in a brewery. Deciding to “better himself”, Brady obtained a set of instruction manuals on book-keeping from a local public library, with which he “astonished” his parents by studying alone in his room for hours.^[101] In January 1959, Brady applied for and was offered a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton. He was regarded by his work colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. He read books such as Teach Yourself German, and Mein Kampf, as well as works on Nazi atrocities. He rode a Tiger Cub motorcycle, which he used to visit the Pennines.^[102]

Myra Hindley

Myra Hindley was born on 23 July 1942^[103] and raised in Gorton, then a working class area of Manchester. Her parents, Nellie and Bob Hindley (the latter an alcoholic), beat her regularly as a young child. The small house the family lived in was in such poor condition that Hindley and her parents had to sleep in the only available bedroom, she in a single bed next to her parents’ double. The family’s living conditions deteriorated further when Hindley’s sister, Maureen, was born in 1946. Shortly after the birth, Hindley, then aged five, was sent by her parents to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby.^[104]

Hindley’s father had fought in North Africa, Cyprus, and Italy during the Second World War, and had served with the Parachute Regiment.^[105] He had been known in the army as a “hard man” and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her how to fight, and insisted that she “stick up for herself”. When Hindley was aged 8, a local boy approached her in the street and scratched both of her cheeks with his fingernails, drawing blood. She burst into tears and ran into her parents’ house, to be met by her father, who demanded that she “Go and punch him [the boy], because if you don’t I’ll leather you!” Hindley found the boy and succeeded in knocking him down with a sequence of punches, as her father had taught her. As she wrote later, “at eight years old I’d scored my first victory”.^[106]

Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has suggested that the fight, and the part that Hindley’s father played in it, may be “key pieces of evidence” in trying to understand Hindley’s role in the Moors murders:

The relationship with her father brutalised her […] She was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age it can distort a person’s reaction to such situations for life.^[107]

One of her closest friends was 13-year-old Michael Higgins, who lived in a nearby street. In June 1957 he invited her to go swimming with friends at a local disused reservoir. A good swimmer, Hindley chose not to go and instead went out with a friend, Pat Jepson. Higgins drowned in the reservoir, and upon learning of his fate Hindley was deeply upset, and blamed herself for his death. She collected for a funeral wreath, and his funeral at St Francis’s Monastery in Gorton Lane—the church where Hindley had been baptised a Catholic on 16 August 1942—had a lasting effect on her.^[108] Hindley’s mother had only agreed to her father’s insistence that she be baptised a Catholic on the condition that she was not sent to a Catholic school, as her mother believed that “all the monks taught was thecatechism“.^[109] Hindley was increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church after she started at Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception into the Church soon after Higgins’s funeral. She took the confirmation name of Veronica, and received her first communion in November 1958. She also became a godparent to Michael’s nephew, Anthony John.^[110][111] It was also at about this time that Hindley first began bleaching her hair.^[112]

Hindley’s first job was as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm. She ran errands, made tea, and typed. She was well liked at the firm, enough so that when she lost her first week’s wage packet, the other girls had a collection to replace it.^[113] She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas 1958, and became engaged aged 17. The engagement was called off several months later; Hindley apparently thought Sinclair immature, and unable to provide her with the life she envisaged for herself.^[114]

Shortly after her 17th birthday she changed her hair colour, with a pink rinse. She took judo lessons once a week at a local school, but found partners reluctant to train with her, as she was often slow to release her grip. She took a job at Bratby and Hinchliffe, an engineering company in Gorton, but was dismissed for absenteeism after six months.^[115]

As a couple

In 1961, the 18-year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards as a typist. She soon became infatuated with Brady, despite learning that he had a criminal record.^[116] She began a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady, whom she eventually spoke to for the first time on 27 July 1961.^[117] Over the next few months she continued to make entries, and grew increasingly disillusioned with him, until 22 December when Brady asked her on a date to the cinema,^[118] where they watched the biblical epic King of Kings.^{[119][nb 1]} Their dates together followed a regular pattern; a trip to the cinema, usually to watch an X-rated film, and then back to Hindley’s house to drink German wine.^[120] Brady then gave her reading material, and the pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities. Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, bleaching her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick.^[43] She expressed concern at some aspects of Brady’s character; in a letter to a childhood friend, she mentioned an incident where she had been drugged by Brady, but also wrote of her obsession with him. A few months later she asked her friend to destroy the letter.^[121] In her 30,000-word plea for parole, written in 1978 and 1979 and submitted to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Hindley said:

Within months he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.^[122]

Hindley began to change her appearance further, wearing clothing considered risqué such as high boots, short skirts, and leather jackets, and the two became less sociable to their work colleagues.^[123] The couple were regulars at the library, borrowing books on philosophy, as well as crime and torture. They also read works by the Marquis de Sade, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s Crime and Punishment.^[43][124] Although she was not a qualified driver (she passed her test on the third attempt, late in 1963), Hindley often hired a van, in which the two planned bank robberies. Hindley befriended George Clitheroe, the President of the Cheadle Rifle Club, and on several occasions visited two local shooting ranges. Clitheroe, although puzzled by her interest, arranged for her to buy a .22 rifle from a gun merchant in Manchester. She also asked to join a pistol club, but she was a poor shot and allegedly often bad-tempered, so Clitheroe told her that she was unsuitable; she did, though, manage to purchase a Webley .45 and a Smith and Wesson .38 from other members of the club.^[125] Brady and Hindley’s plans for robbery came to nothing, but they became interested in photography. Brady already owned a Box Brownie, which he used to take photographs of Hindley and her dog, Puppet, but he upgraded to a more sophisticated model, and also purchased lights anddarkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other that, for the time, would have been considered explicit. For Hindley, this demonstrated a marked change from her earlier, more shy and prudish nature.^[126]

As murderers

Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about “committing the perfect murder” in July 1963,^[127] and often spoke to her about Meyer Levin‘s Compulsion, published as a novel in 1956 and adapted for the cinema in 1959. The story tells a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case, two young men from well-to-do families who attempt to commit the perfect murder of a 12-year-old boy, and escape the death penalty because of their age.^[128]

By June 1963, Brady had moved in with Hindley at her grandmother’s house in Bannock Street, and on 12 July 1963 the two murdered their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade. Reade had attended school with Hindley’s younger sister, Maureen, and had also been in a short relationship with David Smith, a local boy with three criminal convictions for minor crimes. Police could find nobody who had seen Reade before her disappearance, and although the 15-year-old Smith was questioned by police he was cleared of any involvement in her death.^[129] Their next victim, John Kilbride, was killed on 23 November 1963. A huge search was undertaken, with over 700 statements taken, and 500 “missing” posters printed. Eight days after he failed to return home, 2,000 volunteers scoured waste ground and derelict buildings.^[130]

Hindley hired a vehicle a week after Kilbride went missing, and again on 21 December 1963, apparently to make sure the burial sites had not been disturbed. In February 1964, she bought a second-hand Austin Traveller, but soon after traded it for a Mini van. On 16 June 1964, 12-year-old Keith Bennett disappeared. His stepfather, Jimmy Johnson, became a suspect; in the two years following Bennett’s disappearance, Johnson was taken for questioning on four occasions. Detectives searched under the floorboards of the Johnsons’ house, and on discovering that the houses in the row were connected, extended the search to the entire street.^[131]

David and Maureen Smith, pictured around the time of the murders. David Smith’s statement to the police led to Brady’s arrest.

Maureen Hindley married David Smith on 15 August 1964. The marriage was hastily arranged and performed at a register office. None of Hindley’s relatives attended; Myra did not approve of the marriage, and her mother was too embarrassed—Maureen was seven months pregnant. The newlyweds moved into Smith’s father’s house. The next day, Brady suggested that the four take a day-trip to Windermere. This was the first time Brady and Smith had met properly, and Brady was apparently impressed by Smith’s demeanour. The two talked about society, the distribution of wealth, and the possibility of robbing a bank. The young Smith was similarly impressed by Brady, who throughout the day had paid for his food and wine. The trip to the Lake District was the first of many outings. Hindley was apparently jealous of their relationship, but became closer to her sister.^[132]

In 1964 Hindley, her grandmother, and Brady were rehoused as part of the post-war slum clearances in Manchester, to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in the new overspill estate of Hattersley. Brady and Hindley became friendly with Patricia Hodges, an 11-year-old girl who lived at 12 Wardle Brook Avenue. Hodges accompanied the two on their trips to Saddleworth Moor to collect peat, something that many householders on the new estate did to improve the soil in their gardens, which was full of clay and builder’s rubble.^[133] She remained unharmed; living only a few doors away, her disappearance would have been easily solved.^[134]

Early on Boxing Day 1964, Hindley left her grandmother at a relative’s house and refused to allow her back to Wardle Brook Avenue that night.^[135] On the same day, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a funfair in Ancoats.^[136] Despite a huge search she was not found. The following day Hindley brought her grandmother back home.^[137] By February 1965 Patricia Hodges had stopped visiting 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, but David Smith was still a regular visitor. Brady gave Smith books to read, and the two discussed robbery and murder.^[138] On Hindley’s 23rd birthday, her sister and brother-in-law, who had until then been living with relatives, were rehoused in Underwood Court, a block of flats not far from Wardle Brook Avenue. The two couples began to see each other more regularly, but usually only on Brady’s terms.^[139][140]

During the 1990s, Hindley claimed that she took part in the killings only because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic pictures he had taken of her, and had threatened to kill her younger sister, Maureen.^[116] In a 2008 television documentary series on female serial killers broadcast on ITV3, Hindley’s solicitor, Andrew McCooey, reported that she had said to him:

I ought to have been hanged. I deserved it. My crime was worse than Brady’s because I enticed the children and they would never have entered the car without my role … I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady.^[141]

Incarceration

Brady

Ashworth Hospital, where Ian Brady is incarcerated as of 2012

Following his conviction, Brady was moved to Durham prison, where he asked to live in solitary confinement.^[142] He spent 19 years in mainstream prisons before he was declared criminally insane in November 1985 and sent to the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital;^[143] he has since made it clear that he never wants to be released.^[144] The trial judge had recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision. In 1982, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane said of Brady: “this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies”.^[145]

In contrast to the common belief that serial killers often continue with their crimes until they are caught, Brady claimed in 2005 that the Moors murders were “merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964″. By then, he went on to claim, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles.^[146] In 2001 Brady wrote The Gates of Janus, which was published by Feral House, an underground US publisher. The book, Brady’s analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in Britain.^[147]

Winnie Johnson, the mother of undiscovered victim, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within 20 yards (18 m) of her son’s body but the authorities would not allow it. Brady did not refer directly to Keith by name and did not claim he could take investigators directly to the grave, but spoke of the “clarity” of his recollections.^[148] In early 2006, prison authorities intercepted a package addressed to Brady from a female friend, containing 50 paracetamol pills, a potentially lethal dose, hidden inside a hollowed-out crime novel.^[149]

The death, in November 2007, of John Straffen, who had spent 55 years in prison for murdering three children meant that Brady became the longest serving prisoner in England and Wales.^[150] As of 2012, he remains incarcerated in Ashworth. After Brady began a hunger strike in 1999