Martin Brunt, crime correspondent

Private papers Myra Hindley kept to her death have revealed the extraordinary hatred that grew between her and former lover Ian Brady.

The Moors murderers stopped communicating directly a few years after they were jailed, but kept up a bitter war of words through others, the documents show.

In a synopsis of her unpublished memoirs, Hindley wrote that she was indoctrinated by Brady telling her how they could commit the perfect murder.

She wrote: "It began as a joke, but slowly grew more serious. Ian would tell me how he was 'special', he was moved to do this because he was meant to do it.


"He was a fanatical Nazi, but despite that I loved him, well more of an infatuation than love. I was completely besotted with him, which is why I put up with him and why his beliefs eventually rubbed off on me and caused me to accept and do things no-one should ever do."

Brady hit back in a letter to his solicitors, copied to Home Secretary Jack Straw, designed it was thought to scupper Hindley's latest attempt to get parole.

Image: Brady appeared to want to scupper Hindley's attempt to get parole in 1997

He wrote: "Myra Hindley and I once loved each other. We were a unified force, not two conflicting entities. The relationship was not based on the delusional concept of folie a deux, but on a conscious/subconscious emotional and psychological affinity.

"She regarded periodic homicides as rituals of reciprocal innervation, marriage ceremonies theoretically binding us ever closer."

In the same letter Brady described Hindley as Messalina, the Ancient Roman empress, whose legend describes her as a murderer, a symbol of vanity and immorality.

In a tit-for-tat response Hindley detailed Brady's sex abuse of her in a letter to her solicitor.

Image: Hindley wrote about the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of Brady

Image: Extreme graphic details of the alleged abuse have been redacted by Sky News

Image: Hindley wrote that Brady took pornographic pictures of her

Image: Hindley claimed Brady beat her with a gun

She wrote: "When everyone had gone home, and gran had gone to bed, he stripped me, gagged me and beat me with a cane, raped me anally, which he often did because he knew I cried with pain and hated him doing that to me.

"Before leaving, he warned me that if I ever tried to get away again I'd be the sorriest person alive."

The collection of papers were given by Hindley to a prison officer during her final days at Highpoint prison in Suffolk. She died in 2002, aged 60.

Brady died last year after many years in a secure hospital, aged 79.

The papers have been bought by Andy Jones, owner and curator of the Crime Through Time museum in Littledean, Gloucestershire, where they are now on display.

Image: Police search for the bodies of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett in 1986

Tom Clark, professor of sociology at Sheffield University, said the papers were an important discovery and a valuable new part of the Myra Hindley archive.

He said: "The documents show that the relationship had completely disintegrated. Hate is a strong word, but it's probably appropriate. They developed immense dislike for each other.

"Hindley is very quick to complain, to write letters, to cut off relationships if they are not going in a way that suits her. The documents add weight to the description of someone who is absolutely not a wall flower."

Image: Hindley describes her childhood growing up in east Manchester

Image: Excerpts from a childhood memoir written by Myra Hindley

Hindley and Brady were jailed for life in 1966 for the murders of John Kilbride, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17.

They later admitted the murders of Pauline Reade, 16, and Keith Bennett, 12. Keith Bennett's body was never found and among the papers are letters his brother Alan wrote to Hindley, urging her to reveal where the youngster was buried.

Image: The body of 12-year-old Keith Bennett was never found

In a measure of his desperation Mr Bennett asks after Hindley's health and says: "If there is anything I can do to help in regard to your mum, please let me know."

Among the papers are handwritten and typed pages of an early attempted autobiography, in which Hindley considers confusion over the day on which she was born.

She asked whether she was a child full of woe or full of grace. "I hope," she wrote, "I'm at least a little of both."

That will be disputed by the families of the victims of Britain's most notorious child killer.