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Myra Hindley asked to be hypnotised to help police find victim's missing body
Last updated at 08:52am on 11.06.08
Moors Murderer Myra Hindley begged to be hypnotised in the hope that she would disclose where victim Keith Bennett lay buried, official files have revealed.
She said she hoped it would relieve Keith's mother of 'some of her grief' and allow police to close their file on the case.
But the request was turned down by the then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd because he did not believe it would help.
Myra Hindley and Ian Brady both asked for hypnotism to help them remember where Keith Bennett's body was buried
Twelve-year-old Keith was one of five youngsters tortured and killed by Hindley and her lover Ian Brady.
The remains of the boy who vanished off the streets of Manchester in 1964 have never been recovered from Saddleworth Moor, north-east of Manchester.
Now, previously unseen official files have been released covering Hindley's time in prison. Standing fully 35ft high, and dating from her arrest in 1965 to 2003, the year after her death, a total of 593 documents provide a dramatic insight into the nation's most notorious female killer.
They can be read at the National Archives in Kew, West London, and have been released in an 'open government' policy of making items of historical interest available to researchers.
But 27 files remain completely closed and all documents released were scrutinised to ensure their release would not cause distress to relatives of Hindley and Brady's victims.
The documents just released detail Hindley's request for hypnotism to help find Keith Bennett (right). He vanished in 1964, aged 12. His body has never been found
They reveal that Hindley was reduced to tears by a letter from Mrs Johnson describing her 'living hell'.
The handwritten message was sent in 1986 begging Hindley, as one woman to another, to say what happened to Keith.
Harrowing: A letter from Winnie Johnson the mother of moors murder victim Keith Bennett, to Myra Hindley asking for information to find his body
'My heart tells me you know and I am on bended knees begging you to end this torture and finally put my mind to rest,' she wrote.
'Not knowing whether my son is alive or dead, whether he ran away or was taken away, is literally a living hell, something which you no doubt have experienced during your many years locked in prison.'
A memo from staff at Cookham Wood prison in Rochester, Kent, described Hindley's reaction on receiving the letter.
Saddleworth Moors, near Manchester, where the bodies of Hindley and Brady's other victims were found
It said: 'She became extremely upset and tearful whilst reading it and it took a long time for her to compose herself sufficiently to talk (this is most unusual as Myra is normally very controlled).'
The following year, Hindley and Brady confessed to killing the boy but his body has yet to be found.
Hindley pleaded with Home Secretary Hurd to be allowed to be hypnotised to help find Keith's body. On June 24, 1988, Mr Hurd wrote to Manchester MP Gerald Kaufman explaining why he refused Hindley's request because hypnotism does not act like a truth drug' and experts told him it should be treated with great caution.
He added: 'I have already taken the unusual step of allowing the two murderers to visit the Moors on four occasions between them.
'Saddleworth Moor is a featureless place and from what Myra Hindley has told the police about her part in the murder it appears extremely unlikely she would be able to improve on the information the police already have about the supposed position of the grave.'
Winifred Johnson also asked Mr Hurd to allow Hindley to be hypnotised but his refusal was backed by the Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher wrote to Keith's mother on April 6, 1988: 'I am truly sorry, after so much effort has been expended on the search, that your son has not been found.
'But I hope you will be able to accept that everything which would be likely to help has been tried.'
Hindley also volunteered to take the 'truth drug' sodium pentothal and a lie detector test if it would help find Keith's body but the offer was rejected.
Permission to hypnotise Hindley was finally given by the authorities in 1995 but her ill-health prevented it being carried out.
She and Brady were jailed in 1966 for the murders of ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, 12-year-old John Kilbride and Edward Evans, 17. Two decades later it emerged that they had also killed Keith Bennett and 16-year-old Pauline Reade.
Reader views (2)
Myra Hindley Buried Keith. From the mouth of Ian Brady from Giovanni de Stefano to me in August this year. He said this as I am in a place that he knows after he admitted falsely helping when he thought in July that Keith's remains had been found. He admitted killing 11 others and more as a stupid way of making himself a US style serial killer that he writes of in his book.
Yet no one has yet taken down the cairn that is inset in a wall near the lightening struck tree that has sent him into reclusive descent.
I will myself see if that transect and feature is where Ian and Myra indicate in their accounts that does not fit anywhere else. Giovanni de Stefano's words on my telephone and emails were sent to GMP and Winnie's lawyer. I am told by Giovanni to leave Ian alone for the 'short time he has left', he cannot read my letters, or see the photos. He is in retreat and I plague him as a new twist after I said of the location and my findings as a random, and unseen chance photo I took as a landowner of eight carved piled stones inset near the tree. My tree surgeons here identified the tree and the feature in collaboration after I downloaded my geological pictures of that treck like all the others over the past 7 years. This is why Ian now does a third person and says ' Myra Hindley and ...................... buried him, so he cannot help me' in a reply. What does the nation think of that as no newspaper will print it and challenge Mr Brady.
So Mr Brady I will dig ...soon.
- Pauline Anne Badger Bsc(Hons) Msc., Kendal
Please don't discard out of hand completely, I m a psychic with 25yrs + experience and have helped the police on numerous cases with much success,
I would therefore like to offer my help to bring closure and comfort to the mother of the missing boy Kieth.
- Tracy Chilton, Andover, Hants , Uk
