Hindley remorse is not repentance

A year or two earlier, and Myra Hindley might have been hanged. Instead she was incarcerated for life, with Brady; he, manifestly several coupons short of a pop-up toaster, was subsequently removed to a secure mental hospital and is today quite forgotten. Myra Hindley has never been forgotten. That photograph is one of the most recognisable in our archives. That infamy puts her way up there with Sawney Bean and the Black Douglas. To this day, mention of her name provokes violent debate.

No, she is not forgotten, and she herself has made sure of it. Lord Longford, of course, famously visits her. For many years he has protested that she is a changed woman, no menace to anybody, and what a cruelty it is to keep her wasting behind prison walls. Now and again there have been tales of lesbian affairs. One, with a prison officer, led to an escape plot.

Nine years ago, Hindley suddenly decided she remembered a great deal more than she had previously admitted, of where the crimes happened and where their small victims were buried. So a hunt was launched, on Saddleworth Moor, and she herself got a day-pass or two, under heavy guard, to direct diggers and dogs. One wee body was recovered. The press, of course, were kept well away; the best they won was a helicopter shot. Apart from one or two bad colour snapshots taken by other inmates since released, we have little idea of how she looks today.

So the image abides. The Moors murderess. The Face of Evil.

Well, for 30 years poor Myra Hindley has strove for release - toiled, day and night, to be free - and has resorted to every means to convince the Home Secretary and society at large that she is a changed person, a reformed character, full of liberal intent and worthy guilt. And now she has done what well-intended guilty liberals do best; she has written for the Guardian. A letter, published yesterday, oozing penitence. No fewer than 5000 words.

Hindley declares she now realises that she was ``corrupt, wicked, and evil . . . I wasn't mad, so I must have been bad. I take full responsibility for the part I played and I will not attempt to justify the unjustifiable''. She admits that, really, she was more to blame than Brady; she played the vital role of procuring the children, who were more willing to go with a strange woman.

The effect of this, however, is rather spoiled when Hindley insists that, but for Brady, she would never have hurt anyone. ``If we had not met, there would have been no murders at all, no crimes. I would probably have got married, had children, would now be a grandmother.''

Her resentment of the media is palpable. Primly, Hindley objects to being labelled an ``evil monster''. And she has little time for popular opinion. ``The truth is that most people will not accept that people like me change.''

Immediate reaction to Myra's musings has been predictable. Her lawyer, Andrew McCooey, says she has ``come to terms'' with the fact that she will never be released; she wants merely to ``put the record straight''. Moors murders detective, Peter Topping, says the letter is a plain bid for parole. And Winnie Johnson - mother of one of the murdered children - has no doubts at all. Hindley is trying to make people feel sorry for her. She should ``rot in prison for the rest of her life.''

What should we make of this, at a time of year when we traditionally think of God's Christ, of redemption, of peace and goodwill?

Myra Hindley's case does invite some sympathy. There is little doubt she has suffered much infamy and loathing on account of her sex. It is because of these abominable crimes so violated our concepts of womanhood, of maternity, that her part in them is recalled with particular, if perhaps irrational, horror.

She may well be right, too, in declaring that only her fatal association with Brady made her a murderess. The history of homicides abounds with couples whose atrocities arose from some deadly chemistry of association.

Yet Hindley must never be released.

For one, the day she walks free she is a dead woman. Relatives of her victims have sworn for many a year, that they would kill her with their bare hands. And there are plenty nutters and vigilantes to save them the trouble.

For another, murder is a particularly vile crime. Its work is irreversible, its arrogance blasphemous, its consequences resounding. And these murders were particularly ghastly.

Has Hindley changed? She is older, I dare say, wiser. She is genuinely appalled by what she once was and what she once did. But remorse is not repentance. There is no real hint here of a saving change. Ego lies behind murder; ego behind all crime and sin. Ego still thrives here. Myra Hindley's quest for freedom - for publicity - for a further, hysterical, self-validating bid to show the world she is still alive - comes first of all. Never mind the incalculable distress caused to the families of her victims. Never mind the further reminder to us of an atrocity we would rather forget. Is the festive season - perhaps the worst time of all for those who have buried a child - the better, for those ruined people, when the killer pops up in the press and pleads for her character?

I am sorry, indeed, that Myra Hindley did not lead a normal life; that she is not, today, a mother and grandmother. But she had the chance once, a generation ago, as a grown young woman. Lesley Anne Downey never had that chance. And, this Christmastide, for the thirtieth time and more, a broken woman will hear the cold wind, and wonder where her little Keith is buried.