This chapter will consider society’s ongoing fascination with violent crime, particularly sexual crimes against women and children. It will focus on the development of the true crime genre. The Moors Murders case has been the subject of a number of such treatments; this genre seeks to or makes the claim that it will provide the definitive story of a particular crime, usually a serial killer or rapist. The conventions of the genre raise a number of ethical, philosophical and moral issues. The narrative structure of true crime focuses on the perpetrator, whereas the victims and their families are marginalised. They become minor characters appearing briefly before disappearing from the narrative having been subjected to degradation and violent assault. Capote’s In Cold Blood (2000) is generally regarded as the modern progenitor of true crime. It is explored here not only because of its iconic status but also because the criticisms of Capote’s work can be applied across the genre. In Cold Blood (2000) claims to be journalism but has many of the features of the novel, including the invention of dialogue. In addition, we examine the relationship between true crime and its audience. Why is it such a popular genre? Within it why have there been so many books that use the Moors Murders as a basis? The chapter then considers the broader impact of confronting and researching the crimes of Brady and Hindley. In this section, we discuss some of the impact that working on the book had on us.
Crime and violent crime in particular, are key features of the news media. This has been the case since the development of the modern media. In one sense, this is not surprising in that violent crime is still a rare event and most of us have little, if any direct, connection with it. The focus on violent crime and particular types of crime has an important impact on cultural and social attitudes. For example, the level of media interest in serial killers and sexual predators is in stark contrast to the attention paid to women who are killed by their partners. Campaigners have used social media to challenge this dominant narrative that normalises the levels of domestic violence. For example, the website https://kareningalasmith.com/counting-dead-women/ and the twitter account @CountDeadWomen record the cases of UK women killed by men or where a man is the primary suspect. The gathering of this data not only means that the women are remembered but acts as a reminder of the extent of this level of violence. On 12 July 2018, @CountDeadWomen tweeted that so far in the year 73 women had been killed in cases where a man was the primary suspect, 73 women in 193 days or one every 2.6 days. The focus on the serial killer can obscure and minimise the significance of other areas of violent crime.
As noted above, serial killing is viewed as a phenomenon of modernity. Mass media and its symbiotic relationship with serial killing and serial killers is a key theme of this work. We have seen that there is a morbid fascination with the lives of serial killers and the sites of their crimes. This can be traced back to the Whitechapel murders. The Ripper tours are the most popular walking tours in London, drawing in around 100,000 people a year. Described variously as dark, thano-, and historical disaster tourism, the current tours are part of a legacy of Jack the Ripper tourism which can be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the murder of Annie Chapman. The crime scene and Annie Chapman’s body were commodified immediately through the charging of a penny to view it. Jack the Ripper tours are now the most popular walking tours in London, drawing in an estimated 100,000 people per year (Hansen and Wilbert 2006). In addition to these tours, there is a market in memorabilia related to killers. There is a Gothic element here in the attraction and repulsion of these figures and their deeds. At times, the lines between fiction and reality become blurred.
The explosion of interest in these high profile crimes is reflected in the popularity of the true crime genre. True crime is a flexible term that is used to describe a genre that uses real events as source material. True crime as a genre raises a number of complex moral and ethical issues. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences published in 1966 is usually regarded as the progenitor of the genre. Capote was intrigued by a short report of a murder in the New York Times in 1959. The headline for the report was ‘Wealthy Farmer, plus 3 of his Family Slain’. The case reported the murder of the Clutterbuck family at their farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutters ran a prosperous farm. They were murdered by two drifters Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock. Smith and Hickcock met in prison, they hatched a plan to rob the Clutterbucks who they believed were extremely wealthy. Capote visited Holcomb with his friend and fellow novelist Harper Lee. They spent time interviewing members of the community and getting to know key individuals. One of the intriguing features of the true crime genre is the way that the writer becomes a key figure in the narrative. Capote presents himself as an investigator or interrogator of the facts. Smith and Hickcock were arrested in January 1960. Capote visited them in prison regularly. When the book was published, Capote’s approach was heavily criticised. He did not take notes but claimed that he committed conversations to memory and wrote them up later. Capote claimed to have invented a new form. Capote invents conversation and events but defends the work as journalism.
Critics have argued that the work should be viewed as fiction. It is interesting that this is seen as a way of undermining it. It could, of course, be a work of fiction but still contain tremendous insight into the human condition or the justice system. The critic Kenneth Tynan was particularly scathing. He claimed that when Capote heard Smith and Hickcock were to be executed he exclaimed ‘I’m beside myself…with joy!’ The execution is the climax of the book. The implication of Tynan’s claim is that Capote welcomed the execution as it provided a dramatic ending to the work. There is also some suggestion that Capote had a sexual relationship with Smith. Whatever the truth or otherwise of these rumours, it is clear that Capote was sympathetic to the killers. Novels and drama have always used real events for inspiration. This is particularly true in the area of crime. Fagin in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist is believed to be based on the real-life criminal Ikey Solomon.
F. Tennyson Jesse’s novel (1934) A Pin to See the Peepshow is based on the controversial Thompson and Bywaters case of 1922. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were lovers . Bywaters murdered her husband Percy Thompson; he attacked as the couple were on their way home from the theatre. Edith Thompson had no knowledge of the attack but was arrested when the police discovered a cache of the pair’s love letters. Both were hanged. Meyer Levin wrote Compulsion (1956) based on the Leopold and Loeb case. Leopold and Loeb were wealthy students at the University of Chicago. They became convinced that their intellectual superiority would allow them to commit the perfect crime. In May 1924, they kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Robert Franks. The case was also the inspiration for the Hamilton (1929) play and the Hitchcock (1948) film both entitled Rope. Orson Welles directed a film version of Compulsion based on Levin’s novel. Brady also gave Hindley a copy of the novel. As we have seen, like Leopold and Loeb, Brady saw himself as certainly intellectually, if not morally superior, to the wider populace. Morally superior here is used in the Nietzsche sense of not being subject to common norms and values. He also planned to commit the perfect crime. Until David Smith phoned the police in October 1965, Brady and Hindley had been able to commit the abduction and murder of four local children without any suspicion falling upon them.
In writing, In Cold Blood (2000), Capote made the claim that he had produced journalism but in the form of the novel. Capote was an acclaimed and award winning novelist before the publication of his most famous work. In Cold Blood (2000) is widely recognised as a modern classic. Capote argued that his aim was to show that reporting can be made as interesting as fiction. In addition, he claimed that it could be done as artistically—he does not separate In Cold Blood from his novels and short stories. The impact of the work on Capote himself poses some interesting questions. It catapulted him into a level of fame that he had previously only dreamed of. Throughout the rest of his life, Capote struggled with alcohol and drug problems. He stated that he was always haunted by the work (Clark 2011).
In Cold Blood has proved to be hugely influential. The first and one of the most famous books about the Moors Murders case Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection (Williams 1967) can be viewed as an attempt to produce a British version of Capote’s masterpiece. Williams attended the trial. Beyond Belief (Williams 1967) was a best seller, a fact that confirms the power and attraction of the most gruesome of crimes. Reading it again as part of the research for this work, one is struck by how much of it is pure speculation and untestable hypothesis. Williams imagines conversations between Brady and Hindley. The work also, perhaps, reflecting the wider view at the time of their arrest, sees Hindley as in thrall to Brady. The title of the work comes from the trial judge’s description of Brady. Williams also indulges in flights of fancy in his attempt to explain Brady’s motivations. Williams also wrote a play based on the book that was never produced.
One of the claims of the mixture of reportage, interview and evocation of place that combine to produce the true crime genre is that such works provide a definitive account of the crimes analysed. There is a sub-genre of these works that are seeking to right an injustice—for example the campaigning journalist Paul Foot’s work on the Bridgewater Farm case (Foot 1986). The majority of true crime works do not seek to do so. There are some debates about the nature and scope of Hindley’s role in these murders (Wilde 2016). However, the majority of works about the crimes of Brady and Hindley are focused on providing new information about the case, their own connection with the case or the role of the protagonists in the investigations. These include autobiographies such as Topping: The Autobiography of the Police Chief in the Moors Murder Case (1989) or The Devil and Miss Jones: Twisted Mind of Myra Hindley (Jones and Clerk 1993) alongside works such as Brady and Hindley: Genesis of the Moors Murders (Harrison 1987).
Brady and Hindley, alongside other serial killers, have been subsumed into modern media celebrity culture. They are often viewed as the dark side of the swinging sixties. This theme can be seen in the work of Hansford Johnson (1967) that sees their crimes as the result of the changes in cultural and social attitudes that came to be seen as the permissive society. Schmid (2006) notes that there was something of a disdainful tone in commentators’ discussions of Brady’s reading of the works of de Sade. Much like Lawrence this is literature that is not safe for working class autodidacts such as Brady. These commentators also appear to take as a given that Brady’s motivation for these crimes is his reading of Sade, rather than the opposing view that he sought out such literature because of his already developed interest in sexual violence and pornography.
The fan then sums up the obsessive nature of fandom:I don’t see what the fuss is about … A few years anybody could buy a copy in Manchester. If you went to the right pub. You could buy pictures of the girl if you knew the right channels.
My only interest was you. The unavailability of those tracks anywhere else. The rarity value. (Burn 1991:201)
Burn wrote Alma Cogan before the explosion of social media. The work has a prophetic quality. Social media provides limitless opportunities for the discussion, analysis and the development of hypotheses. This can clearly be positive. For example, the Netflix documentary series The Keepers (White 2017) begins by exploring an investigation into the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a Baltimore nun and teacher, by two of her former pupils. Social media is a key tool as they contact former pupils and follow leads. The documentary moves on to reveal a catalogue of sexual abuse at the school and the role of the Catholic Church in covering it up. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer published in 2018 tells the story of the journalist Michelle Mcnamara’s investigation of a series of rapes and murders in California from the mid-1970s onwards. The book was developed from posting on a website that she ran TrueCrimeDiary. Mcnamara died in 2016 and the book was completed by crime writer Paul Haynes, investigative journalist Billy Jensen and McNamara’s husband Patton Oswalt. Two months after the publication of the book, 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo was arrested and charged with six counts of first-degree murder. These are just two examples where social media and interest in a case combine to produce a positive result.
There is, of course, a much darker side to this interest in notorious cases. Such cases also attract conspiracy theorists or wild speculation. For example, there are a number of claims that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper had an accomplice, also that it was Jimmy Savile. The continued search for the body of Keith Bennett has led to a great deal of speculation. Much of this relates to the significance of photographs taken by Brady and Hindley of themselves on the Moors. Gregory (2013) makes the claim that she has cracked a secret code and thus is able to pinpoint the spot where Keith Bennett is buried. The key to the case apparently lies in reading of the works of James Joyce. On occasions, it appears that those putting forward these theories seem to ignore the fact that these wild speculations do little to assist and have the potential to cause immense distress to the relatives of the victims. These speculations become a form of hyper-reality—they take the form of a detective fiction narrative. In the construction of the theory or conspiracy two true but unrelated facts become enmeshed in an implausible fashion. For example, Savile lived near Roundhay Park in Leeds where Sutcliffe’s third victim Irene Richardson’s body was found. These two facts have become the basis for a theory that Savile was an accomplice in some of the murders and used his links with the police and other political figures to prevent his unmasking.
One of the considerations here must be the passing of time. There is a whole genre where writers unmask the real Jack the Ripper. These works are inevitably speculative and salacious but they are not as intrusive as the way that true crime and other works can be. There is the potential for each work to make claims that are extremely distressing to the families and friends of victims. A macabre form of celebrity becomes attached to murder. This extends to the families in high profile cases. For example, The Sun hacked the phone of Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah Payne who was abducted and murdered by Roy Whiting in 2000. Obituaries for Winnie Johnson appeared in a number of national newspapers. These obituaries were unusual texts in that they provided some information about her life before Brady and Hindley abducted and murdered her son. From their conviction onwards, Mrs. Johnson was thrust into the media glare. As The Independent (22.08.2012) notes Winnie Johnson was an ordinary woman whose life became defined by the tragic death of her son. This was clearly the case. However, the concern here is that the media is contributing to a narrative that is ultimately shaped by Brady and Hindley. This is something they clearly enjoyed and exploited.
The ongoing fascination with the crimes of Brady and Hindley raises broader questions. This is not to deny that violent and serious crime is newsworthy. However, we do need to consider why there is the concentration on particular crimes or particular serial killers. Unfortunately, there appears to be some sort of hierarchy in the media or wider coverage of such crimes. Wilson et al. (2010) use the example of Trevor Hardy to illustrate this point. Trevor Hardy committed the murders of three young women, Janet Stewart (15), Wanda Skalia (18) and Sharon Mosoph (17) in Greater Manchester. All three of his victims were subjected to the most appalling and degrading violence. When sentencing him, Judge Caulfield described Hardy as hopelessly evil. Hardy was subsequently made subject to a whole life tariff and informed that he would never be released. He died in prison in September 2012. Gekoski et al. (2012) confirm that despite being the most newsworthy of crimes, not all homicides receive the same level of media coverage or interest. They conclude that media coverage is increased in homicides involving ‘perfect’ media victims. This coverage is contrasted with cases involving ‘undeserving’ victims—the murders of sex workers being an example. These factors that influence the balance of media coverage continue post sentencing. Some serial killers disappear from wider public view. In other cases, Hindley being a prime example, there is a stream of stories about their prison life.
In researching this work, we have clearly read numerous accounts of Brady and Hindley’s lives. These works pore over the details of their childhoods to try and find some possible explanation as to how and why they became serial killers. Their relationship is analysed in great depth in an attempt to either seek explanation or apportion blame; in particular there is a focus on debates about the exact nature of Hindley’s role. The abduction and murders themselves are further analysed and this is particularly the case since the development of psychological profiling. Finally, there are questions as to whether Brady and Hindley committed further murders or attempted abductions. For example Rhattigan (2017) who grew up in Gorton in the early 1960s gives an account of how Brady and Hindley attempted to abduct him. He wrote to Brady in Ashworth Special Hospital, who for what it is worth, replied denying this. What these accounts have in common are not only claims to authenticity but also the notion that this is a definitive telling. One feature is that the accounts of the murders themselves have become more detailed and horrific over time. There appears to be an almost insatiable desire for more and more specific information about exactly what happened. This, perhaps, reflects broader popular trends. The detailed gruesome crime scenes or postmortems have spread from programmes such as CSI or Silent Witness to become a feature or the TV cop drama. This allows for the showing of images of brutally assaulted and defiled women or children, overshadowing the victims in such programmes. This pornography of death and mutilation is used to feed into the idea that such scenes provide insights into the psychology of the killers (Cummins and King 2014).
Browder (2006) in her analysis of the readership of true crime notes that the overwhelming majority of the audience, 70 per cent, is female. In detective fiction, one of the attractions is the intellectual challenge of solving the crime. As noted above, there has been an explosion in the publication and sales of dark psychological thrillers involving brutal crimes of sexual violence. At the same time, there has been a revival in what is termed cosy crime—your local bookshop will have a large section dedicated to it. Novelists such as Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham have been repackaged as classics from the lost golden age of crime writing rediscovered. It might seem strange to suggest that books involving murders are nostalgic. The books have been marketed to appeal to a version of 1930s Britishness. For example, the covers resemble Enid Blyton novels. They are making a double appeal to adult readers’ memories of an imaged middle class childhood. The British Library Crime Classics series is very popular and features a range of titles such as The Cornish Coast Murder, Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery and Death on the Cherwell. The plot of Death on the Cherwell encapsulates the beautiful features of cosy crime. Miss Cordell is the principal of Persephone College. She is concerned with maintaining the reputation of the college. Her world is turned upside down when the society of undergraduates meets by the river and finds the body of the college bursar.
The Persephone students suspect foul play, and take the investigation into their own hands, again redolent of Enid Blyton’s work. The violence in such works is downplayed and the real pain of the crime is almost non-existent. In these works, the crime is a puzzle for the reader to solve. It is a diversion, an entertainment. At the end of the novel, order is restored and the miscreant duly punished, though the denouement is the revealing of the killer by the amateur sleuth, not the police.
The advertising and marketing of true crime and neo-noir fiction could not be further removed from Famous Five pastiches of female Oxford undergraduates solving crimes. The covers of such works are lurid, dripping in blood. The audience gaze is focused on the victim and we see things from the perpetrators’ perspective. Books about the Moors Murders almost all feature a version of the mugshots of Brady and Hindley and the Moors. Browder (2006) suggests that counterintuitively true crime offers a happy ending. We know that the perpetrator has been caught and punished. There are exceptions to this. However, the element of solving a puzzle is not one of the attractions of true crime. There is in a sense, no mystery for the reader in a true crime account of Brady and Hindley. Some might argue that until their confession to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett that was an element. However, since their conviction in 1966, there has never been any suggestion that anyone other than Brady and Hindley were responsible for these crimes. None of the accounts that we have read offer any concrete information that is not already in the public domain that would assist the authorities in the search for the body of Keith Bennett.
The cases that form the basis for most true crime books have already received wide spread media coverage, from the initial crimes themselves through to the arrest, trial and conviction of the killer. There will have been post-conviction news and documentary coverage including interviews with the police officers involved in the case. Increasingly such programmes feature clips of the police interviews with suspects. Browder (2006) notes that true crime accounts require a great deal of investment from the reader. They tend to be long and involved, for example Bilton’s (2003) account of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper is over 700 pages long. By their very nature, they involve disturbing information. Burn’s account of the West case is an example of this. The author himself describes how he felt emotionally exhausted and drained having completed the book. Apart from the levels of depravity that he encountered in researching the work and attending the trial, Burn also hinted at a kind of existential exhaustion. Paradoxically, as he researched the case in greater and greater detail, he found himself less, not more, able to give reasons or explanations for the crimes of Fred and Rose West. This is a view that, in working on this project, we certainly understand.
The reader knows that a book about the Wests or Ted Bundy is going to contain horrific details. Part of the attraction must lie in these details. Such works often include a series of photographs—the killer in a school photo which is presented with some sense of foreboding, pictures of victims, crime scenes and the mugshot or the killer being led away to prison. In addition, such works focus on the heroism and stoicism of the police in general or an individual officer who has played a key role in bringing the killer to justice. These true crime works thus replicate many of the features of the narrative structures of detective fiction. From Capote onwards, true crime has traded on an air of authenticity, the recreation of the period and place. Browder (2006) suggests that the majority of true crime is inherently conservative. It presents the police as heroes, asks few if any questions about the nature of punishment. Once the killer has been caught that is the end of the story. As with detective fiction the catching of the killer marks a symbolic restoration of order. True crime can be read as a form of documentary, one with a dystopian vision at its core and a focus on the killers. Biography is presented as both motive and explanation. True crime presents an outline of problems that are insoluble. Killers might have been stopped after their first victims or if police investigations had shared information more effectively. However, there is rarely any indication that the crimes themselves could have been prevented.
Hall et al. (2013) note that in reporting crime, journalists are heavily reliant on institutional sources—court hearings and contacts with police officers. This is an implicit criticism arguing that there is a lack of a critical interrogation of the structures of the Criminal Justice System. What might be termed as literary true crime seeks to set itself apart from the tabloid sensationalism that has been a feature of crime reporting since the appearance of the Victorian penny dreadful. There is also a new form of true crime—podcasts and documentaries that recount complex and compelling cases. Podcasts such as Serial and documentaries such as the Making of a Murderer have become hugely popular and received critical acclaim. The Serial podcast examines the murder of Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore, in 1999. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The podcast has led to a retrial in the case. The podcast has been criticised (Jones 2014) for being a form of voyeurism rather than journalism. The main argument here is that Sarah Koenig, the lead producer of the podcast, did not know the outcome of the investigation at the time the programmes were broadcast.
It is probably a commonplace truth that all authors either overestimate their own abilities to complete work or underestimate the commitment and effort required to deliver a final project on time. We were as guilty of this as all our colleagues. In addition, there was an element that we did not take account of the emotional impact of working on this particular volume. The research and writing of this work has taken us into some dark and troubling places. On the surface this seems a statement of the obvious, the subject matter was bound to involve this. It was shocking to read a paper by one of the police officers involved in the investigations and come across a photograph of the torture of Lesley Ann Downey (Benfield 1968). It would be fair to say that we underestimated the potential impact on ourselves, which we discuss below, but also we did not consider fully the appetite for salacious details that exist. At the end of this project, this now appears rather naive. Such a project naturally involves immersing oneself in the literature—this is a huge undertaking because of the sheer volume of the material. It is the nature not the volume of the material that has the impact. One of the key arguments that we put forward is that the case has become deeply woven into the cultural fabric of British life. The responses to Brady’s MHRT hearing followed by the media coverage of his death in 2017 served to confirm this. It seems unlikely that the death of Brady will mark some final closure.
David Parry-Jones, a journalist who covered the trial for the Chester Chronicle also stated that the playing of the tape of the torture of Lesley Ann Downey in open court had a profound impact.first heard the tape when I was a detective sergeant in Manchester investigating the Moors Murders. When the 16-minute tape was played at the police station before the trial, I saw senior detectives and legendary crime reporters—hard men who had been through the war and seen terrible things—dissolve into tears.
Journalists, particularly crime reporters and police officers have much in common. They are viewed as sharing a rather jaundiced and ultimately pessimistic view of the world. Part of this is maintaining a face to the world and avoiding any overt shows of emotion.
Policing is clearly a stressful job. Police officers come face to face with a wide range of society’s most intractable problems on a daily basis (Kelly 2005).
This is part of the attraction of the role but it also brings with it the dangers that these factors will have a seriously negative impact on the mental health of individual officers.
Kroes et al.’s (1974) study identified policing as the second most stressful occupation after air-traffic controller. In more recent studies, officers focused on bureaucracy as the biggest cause of work related stress (Violanti 2010). Other aspects of the job, for example dealing with physical violence were largely downplayed. There is an increasing body of research that explores the long-term physical and emotional impacts of stress on police officers. Police officers are recruited as fit, strong and healthy young adults but subsequently retire early on health grounds. A series of studies (Malasch and Jackson 1979; Malasch 1982; Violanti 1996; Violanti et al. 1998; Hackett and Violanti 2003; Violanti 2010) emphasise that being a police officer can put mental and physical health at some risk. They have lower life expectancy than the wider population which demonstrates one of the possible long-term impact of workplace stress (Violanti et al. 1998). The pressures on detectives investigating child homicides are particularly intense. These pressures increase the longer the inquiry takes to solve the case (Roach et al. 2017).
Work place stress let alone the concepts of ‘vicarious trauma’ and ‘burnout’ were not readily recognised in the mid-1960s—the period when the policing and journalism worlds were confronting the crimes of Brady and Hindley and their aftermath. Arthur Benfield and his fellow officers were not able to seek the range of psychological support that would be available at present. Our understanding of the psychological impact of working on stress environments has developed significantly since the mid-1960s. Symptoms of work place stress are recognised as potentially including depression, anxiety, poor sleep, headaches, withdrawal, and irritability. It is now also acknowledged that working with traumatised individuals, examining difficult material or researching challenging areas can produce similar symptoms. This is the notion of vicarious trauma, which is often identified as a component of burnout. The initial work in this field was carried out with counsellors who were supporting the victims of rape and sexual violence (McCann and Pearlman 1990). They suggested that vicarious trauma should be viewed as a cumulative process. The therapist has not been subject to the same traumatic events. However, they exhibit symptoms that are similar to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) . These include anxiety and depression, poor sleep, emotional numbing and the blurring of personal and professional boundaries (Adams and Riggs 2008). The idea of vicarious trauma explicitly acknowledges that there is a possible emotional and psychological cost to supporting those who have undergone extreme sexual and physical trauma. It was subsequently applied to other professions, for example medical and disaster relief workers. The concept has also been used to explore the long-term effects of police work. Cummins and King (2014) note that the exploration of the emotional impact is now a standard feature of modern fictional representations of policing.
We should emphasise that we are not, in any sense, claiming that our experience in writing this work can be compared to those who confronted Brady and Hindley, discovered photographs of torture and listened to the infamous tape. However, there is a sense that this research became too dominant. This was not about the usual pressures of failing to meet writing deadlines or worrying about the quality of the work produced. We did not set out on this project to produce a definitive history of the case. We were and remain suspicious of those who offer complete explanations, be they psychological or sociological, of Brady and Hindley’s crimes. In attempting to examine the aftermath of these appalling acts of brutality, we were drawn reluctantly further and further into works that focus on a consideration of the details of the crimes themselves. Within this, it is not necessarily the descriptions of violence that have the most impact—shocking and disturbing though these are. It is the at-first-sight minor details that become more terrifying. Details such as the fact that Hindley’s grandmother was upstairs in Wardle Brook Avenue the night of the murder of Edward Evans or that Pauline Reade and her family lived a few streets away emphasised the essentially ordinary settings in which this brutality and violence took place. They also offer an insight into the complete and utter ruthlessness of Brady and Hindley.
We have an almost daily contact with the CJS. There is an item about crime on virtually every news bulletin. Newspapers devote significant space to the coverage of crime, particularly violent and sexual crime. TV drama is dominated by cop dramas (Carrabine 2008; Jewkes 2011). Detective fiction and true crime are incredibly popular genres. Commuters are often engrossed in the latest mystery or in reading the details of the childhood of a serial killer on their way to work. Yet, the majority of us have little, if any, direct contact with the Criminal Justice System. It is, therefore, hidden. Law and order and penal policy remain very important social and political issues that generate controversy and strong opinions. The media may be a major force in shaping their views on crime, policing and sentencing (Carrabine 2008). For Conservatives there has been an ongoing concern that the media is criminogenic, as it serves to undermine traditional institutions, including the police (Reiner 2000). From the viewpoint of radical criminology, the impact of the media is two-fold: it exaggerates legitimate concerns about crime and emphasises the bureaucratic and other restrictions under which the police operate (Reiner 2000). Film and TV drama creates a simplistic narrative of crime solving (Reiner 2000). Despite the ongoing portrayal of police work as dynamic and exciting, the majority of it is not (Cummins et al. 2014). Murder investigations, which are often presented as mysteries that are solved by a maverick detective, usually involve a great deal of checking information, gathering statements and looking at tapes from CCTV. This is in stark contrast to the psychological profiling and car chases that dominate TV and film drama. For example, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was arrested following an essentially routine stop by police officers as his car had a faulty brake light (Burn 1984).
The detective novel can be viewed as essentially an intellectual game between the author and the reader. The author leaves clues that might enable the reader to identify the murderer before the final denouement. In the true crime genre, the reader knows the outcome—we know that Peter Sutcliffe committed 13 murders and 7 violent assaults. One of the key features of the detective novel is thus absent. True crime is offering the reader something else. Many such works make the claim that they are providing the definitive account of the crimes and their investigations. In this regard, they share many traits with traditional detective fiction—the focus on the creation of a sense of place, the representation of the police as stoics who defend society and an attempt to provide some psychological explanation or understanding of the killer’s motivation. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the narrative ends with the arrest and sentencing of the killer. This is symbolic restoration of order. There is much less written about prisons, punishment and so on. The majority of these cases fade from the public view reappearing at sporadic intervals.
Brady and Hindley have never faded from public view. The case and various aspects of it have been a constant feature of the media news cycle since October 1965. In a study that examined newspaper reporting of Brady’s MHRT hearing in June 2013, we undertook an initial electronic search of UK newspapers since 2009. This produced over 3000 articles that discussed some aspect of the case or Brady’s ongoing hunger strike. The fact that Brady wanted a public hearing was a driver for some of the coverage. However, it illustrates the continued media interest. Brady’s death in 2017 led to another surge in media coverage. This was, of course, totally predictable. The media is not going to, nor should it, ignore the death of one of the most famous or notorious men in Britain. The tribunal hearing was another example of the way the media reporting helped Brady to maintain his position as Britain’s most high profile serial killer, a status he clearly wanted to maintain for as long as possible.
True crime accounts have become an important feature of what has become the serial killing industry. The study of serial killing has almost solely focused on the biography of individual offenders (Haggerty 2009). A search for serial killers on Amazon UK produces over 20,000 possible titles. The leading titles include: Serial Killers: Notorious Killers Who Lived Among Us (Murray: 2007), The Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence (Wilson and Seaman: 2007), Serial Killers: The World’s Most Evil (Blundell: 2010) Talking with Serial Killers (Berry-Dee: 2003) and Serial Killers: The Methods and Madness of Monsters (Vronsky: 2004). It is very rare indeed for there not to be a true crime account of a serial killer to be produced. These naturally vary hugely in quality. Many are nothing more than a rehash of newspaper articles. These works are produced quickly after conviction to achieve maximum sales. There are others that are much more serious in tone and ambition. Following Capote, these are serious works that seek to answer broader questions about the nature of the society that produces such killers or what these crimes reveal about wider social attitudes. A constant tension exists between the way we are drawn towards stories of violent crime and our willingness to examine the brutal reality of these offences and their impact. The result is that violent crime can become just another story on the news. The best True Crime accounts move beyond this. Two outstanding examples are concerned with the Yorkshire Ripper case. Nicole Jouve Ward’s The Street Cleaner (Ward-Jouve 1986) and Gordon Burn’s Somebody’s Husband Somebody’s Son (Burn 1984) both place the case within a social wider context of a misogynistic culture.
In writing and researching this volume, we have had to engage with dark and disturbing material. This includes not just the details of the case but also the responses to it. This raised troubling and difficult questions, some of these related to Brady and Hindley, and one inevitably finds oneself trying to explain their motivations. This is difficult to do without stepping on territory that they define. Brady presents his crimes as existential acts of freedom, he was not being restricted by wider morality. He takes this a stage further to suggest that the wider society is jealous of the fact that he exercises such freedom. To dismiss it, is still to engage with it and feel that, in some senses, you are having an argument with Brady that you do not want to have. The other questions relate to the apparent need for more and more details about the case. Why would anyone want to listen to the tape of a child being tortured and murdered? What could this possibly add to our understanding of these crimes?