How kid killer Myra Hindley hid a secret lesbian love affair with an ex-nun prison officer who tried to break her free
SHE was known as the most wicked woman in Britain for her part in the Moors murders.
But Myra Hindley was a complex, clever woman who charmed powerful people into believing she was innocent.
Despite her evil image, people who met Hindley in prison were impressed by how calm and reasonable she seemed, and by her interest in education and religion.
Jail governors, prison reformer Lord Longford and the millionaire former editor of The Observer, David Astor, all believed Hindley when she said she regretted her part in the murders, though insisting she hadn’t actually killed anyone herself.
Others saw a devious liar who twisted well-meaning but gullible people around her fingers, just as she fooled the children she lured to their deaths in the 1960s.
Hindley and lover Ian Brady murdered five children aged ten to 17 in the Manchester area between 1963 and 1965 and buried them on the moors outside the city.
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At least four had been sexually assaulted.
Hindley was 23 and Brady 28 when they were jailed for life in 1966.
She died in custody in 2002, aged 60.
Brady was diagnosed in 1985 as a psychopath and confined to high-security Ashworth Hospital where he died in 2017, aged 79.
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In my new book, This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair And Escape Attempt, I tell how during her decades behind bars, Hindley charmed people in authority who might be able to help free her.
One prison officer wrote in her files: “She is an arch manipulator. She often appears to be a scheming woman building contacts with anyone she thinks has influence.”
Another warder, ex-nun Trisha Cairns, was so SMITTEN with the child killer that she broke the law to try to spring her — and the pair’s story lays bare the complex character of Hindley
Cairns was 26 and Hindley 28 when they fell for each other over games of ping-pong in North London’s Holloway prison in 1970.
They also listened together to records by Seventies US pop duo The Carpenters.
Although lesbian relationships were commonplace in HMP Holloway, staff were of course forbidden from getting personally involved with inmates for security reasons.
Despite the ban, Cairns fell for Hindley, who told her she loved her back.
When Hindley despaired of being granted parole, she persuaded Cairns to try to break her out of jail so the pair could run away together to Brazil.
She is an arch manipulator. She often appears to be a scheming woman building up contacts with anyone she thinks has influence.
Holloway Warder
In one of the police statements that I have drawn on for my book, Cairns admits: “I suggested my taking Myra to Sao Paulo, where we could do missionary work.”
Despite refusing to swear on the Bible at her trial, because she said she didn’t believe in God, Hindley made a show of attending chapel at HMP Holloway.
This helped her win over Cairns who was a trainee nun before joining the Prison Service.
Cairns said: ‘We were first drawn together by the fact we are of the same age, from the same part of Manchester and share a deep love of the same Catholic faith.
“I became convinced that she had finally freed herself from the yoke of Brady, amended her ways and desires only to do good.”
Enlisting a young lag as their helper, she plotted an escape for Hindley that involved making copies of prison keys so the killer could let herself out of her cell at night and climb over the jail’s perimeter wall into Cairns’ arms.
Cairns confessed: “I suggested going at about 9pm. Myra and I would have all night to reach our destination, before she was missed.
“I have tried to be a source of consolation and encouragement to her, for just being Myra Hindley is penance enough without the added rigours of long years in prison which this deeply sensitive person has endured.”
I suggested my taking Myra to Sao Paulo, where we could do missionary work.
Trisha Cairns
Cairns paid a high price for her infatuation.
After the escape plot was foiled, in 1973, she was jailed for six years.
Yet she remained devoted to Hindley until the killer’s death.
Now in her late seventies, Cairns lives near where Hindley’s ashes were scattered at Stalybridge Country Park, outside Manchester within sight of the moors where Hindley and Brady buried some of their victims.
But describing Hindley as deeply sensitive was an insult to the Moors victims and their grieving families.
Two of the victims were aged 12. The youngest, Lesley Ann Downey, was ten — and Brady even tape-recorded her ordeal.
The tape horrified the world when played at Brady and Hindley’s trial.
Although the judge believed Brady was the killings’ instigator, it was Hindley, as a woman, who seemed to behave with a particular, unnatural cruelty to children.
I became convinced that she had finally freed herself from the yoke of Brady, amended her ways and desires only to do good.
Trisha Cairns
Yet many people who got to know her in prison liked, trusted and believed her when she said she was innocent.
One of the first important people to place trust in Hindley was Dorothy Wing, who while governor of HMP Holloway took Hindley for a walk on North London’s Hampstead Heath in 1972, believing that she had changed for the better.
Mrs Wing told colleagues: “There is little likelihood of Myra attempting to escape.”
The walk on the heath caused such a row that Mrs Wing had to resign.
But she remained fond of Hindley, who was skilled at getting people on her side by telling them what they wanted to hear.
Hindley won over wealthy newspaperman David Astor, who sent her pocket money in prison and even paid for her lawyers.
Religion is promoted in prison as a way to rehabilitation and Hindley used her faith to also impress Catholic convert and penal reformer Lord Longford.
He campaigned tirelessly for her release, insisting Hindley was now “a good religious woman”.
I knew (Myra) very well, and for a long time. As far as I was concerned I felt she was highly manipulative.
Judy Gibbons
Visiting prisoners is known to Catholics as an act of mercy, and nuns also wrote to Hindley asking to visit her in HMP Holloway, where Cairns had become besotted with the murderer.
Although Cairns had abandoned her life as a trainee nun, she remained devoutly religious and convinced it was their shared faith that bonded her and Hindley.
Her brother-in-law Stan Ball told me: ‘Trisha, she loved Myra Hindley [and] she would do anything for Myra Hindley. We all told her, ‘You are going down the wrong road here’.”
Cairns believed Hindley when she said she had not killed anyone but had gone along with what Brady wanted, to some extent, because she feared that he would kill her if she rebelled.
Not everyone was convinced. Judy Gibbons, a Catholic senior staff member at HMP Holloway, says: “I knew (Myra) very well, and for a long time. As far as I was concerned I felt she was highly manipulative.”
The remains of the Moors killers’ third victim, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, have never been found, despite repeated searches of Saddleworth Moor.
Hindley denied her guilt at trial, and for the next two decades, during which she tried every means of getting free — from appeals to the jailbreak bid.
After everything failed, she offered the police a qualified confession, in the 1980s, hoping that this might go some way toward improving her public image.
She was a manipulator, and she did nothing except for her own ends.
Kath Moores
She admitted she and Brady had been involved in the murders of five victims, but insisted she was not at the scene when any of the murders took place.
Despite the evidence of the Lesley Ann Downey tape, some people believed her, including another sympathetic governor.
Chris Duffin, Hindley’s governor at HMP Cookham Wood in Kent in the 1990s, said: “She didn’t actually commit any murders . . . she didn’t actually strike the blow.
"There were so many other female prisoners who had committed really bad offences who the media had never heard of, and they got paroled and went trotting off into the blue yonder.”
But one former prison officer, who knew Hindley and Cairns at HMP Holloway in the 1970s, speaks for many when she says she never believed Hindley.
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Kath Moores said: “She was a manipulator, and she did nothing except for her own ends.
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“As soon as she got out of those gates, and got wherever she wanted (to be), she would have ditched (Cairns). I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind . . . because it was all about her.’
- This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair And Escape Attempt, by Howard Sounes (Seven Dials) is out now, priced £16.99.
