Ian Brady Henry Lee Lucas Criminal Profiling
June 20, 2007
In his book, The Gates of Janus , Ian Brady examines the case of Henry Lee Lucas and he comes to the following conclusions. Henry Lee he claims was sadistically abused by his father and as a result he at the age of 23 killed his mother for, in effect, just standing by and letting it happen. Brady is correct in pointing out to the reader that this phenomena of the victim of abuse sometimes killing the so to speak innocent parent is not uncommon but he is wrong in his facts and almost certainly wrong in his conclusions.
Henry was no doubt abused by his father though not sexually but this was as nothing compared to the abuse from his mother. His mother , a prostitute , would bring men , several men at a time home and Henry and his young sister would be forced to watch , to literally stare at his mother having sex with these men. If he so much as let his eyes wander from the action for even a very brief moment she would beat him mercilessly. Much of the time his father would be gone for several days on drinking sprees. It also must be noted that his father did in fact try to stop this going on but the local welfare didn’t really believe his complaints about his wife and indeed were giving support to his wife at the time.
Brady also claims that Henry was of average or below average intelligence. He seems to base this on the fact that Henry was something of a feckless drifter with no noticable ambition and little education. But yet again Brady is wrong. Henry when arrested for the murder of his young wife and a woman called Kate Rich began to confess to something in the region of three hundred murders. He convinced the police and the press and through them the entire American nation. He later withdrew his confessions and surprisingly everyone believed him all over again. He claimed that he had seen all the other murders in the papers and decided that he would confess to them all as he , in his own words , “Wanted to be famous , like Elvis Presley”. All this sounds just fine unless you just sit back and think about it for a while. Imagine that you were in police custody and decided to , for whatever reason , confess to a whole array of crimes committed over several years and thousands of miles. How many names , dates , locations etc would you remember? It’s true that much of the time the police were almost leading him on , giving him bits of information about many of the killings to ‘help’ him remember but this does not explain Henry’s ,for the most part , very convincing story. No matter which way you look at it or which of his confessions you believe the one thing that becomes quite clear is that Henry Lee Lucas was far from being a fool.
Henry Lee was a casual killer. He , as far as we know , never planned anything. He lived on the road much of the time and travelled thousands of miles and his story (his first confession) is , no matter how extradordnary it may sound very , very convincing. I have little doubt that he did in fact kill all those people , and I am equally sure that there are others doing the same thing right now. Henry had in some ways the perfect system for killing , ie keep it simple and keep it moving. Brady is certainly wrong about the mans intelligence and seems to , for some reason or other , have believed the official version of events. There is no doubt that Henry Lee did confess to some crimes that he obviously could not have committed , having in some cases been in prison at the time , but that is neither here nor there. Criminals such as Lucas (and Brady) mix half truths , and lies when speaking to the police. This is probably the one thing that all murderers have in common and if anything makes Lucas’s story more believable. But Brady , based on just the afore mentioned fact jumps to the opposite conclusion in spite of his own personal experience. One gets the impression that he is so busy trying to impress us with scholarship that he overlooks the immediate and obvious.
Brady also claims that an ‘eminant author’ asked for his advice in the case and had material sent to him from the FBI at Quantico ( Psychological Profiling Unit of the FBI) which I just don’t believe ever happened.
There is of course no way that we can be sure about the truth about Henry Lee Lucas but Brady’s certainty in the matter is just a little too rigid. Henry Lee’s story may or may not be true but it is not at all improbable that he did in fact kill hundreds of undocumented people on empty highways all over the USA.
I am one of those who belive Brady is a remarkable and highly intelligent man. He has no doubt researched Henry Lee and other criminals of note but he simple does not have , as you and I do , the means to see all the research and the wider debate surrounding people like Lucas. Nor does he have the ability to test his ideas as we do by being able to ‘bounce’ them off a wide circle of people with common interests.
The movie Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer was based on Henry Lee but it’s a romantic Hollywood version that has very little of fact in it.
You can see Henry himself on Youtube but after you watch him don’t be too quick to jump to a conclusion. Henry Lee is very convincing in claiming that he admitted to all these murders for as he tells it , an endless supply of cigarettes and a bit of fame but he was equally convincing when claiming that he was a mass killer. The police did let the whole thing develop into something of a circus and even the then Governor of Texas George Bush acted out of character for the first and only time in his life but all of that acts as something of a diversion and it’s easy to find yourself thinking that Henry was just a hapless fool. But no one disputes that this man killed three women two of them within a very short space of time immediately before his arrest. He killed these women without so much as a second thought and if he had not been caught would have moved on and lost himself out on the highways yet again. So the question you have to ask yourself is was Henry acting out of character when he killed these people or was he just out of luck in getting caught. I have a feeling that if Brady and Lucas had met in real life then Brady might not have lived long enought to write his book. Watch the Youtube video and make your own mind up.
Ian Brady The Gates of Janus Moors Murders
June 18, 2007
This is not a review of The Gates of Janus. It’s more of an excuse for me to think out loud about Ian Brady. I first read this book when it was first published in 2001. I didn’t like it and in fact was quite disappointed by it but picked it up again a few days ago and am now about half way through. To my surprise I now find that I am enjoying it , so much so in fact the I think it is in parts quite hilarious. It’s actually quite a good book and for the most part Brady is spot on with most of his opinions. But it’s more a book about him venting his hatred of his captors and society than anything else. And he is relentless. Every sentence is like a hammer blow. If words were bullets his enemies would be dead in their thousands by the end of this book. It’s an interesting book and if you haven’t read it go out and get a copy. You wont be bored , that’s for sure.
But the really interesting thing is Brady’s attitude to it’s publication. When I read interviews with Brady or come across extracts of letters he may have written it strikes me at times that the man does not understand what’s really going on in the world outside. He is of course a very well informed man and seems ,as is reported ,to be of above average intelligence but there are times when it’s obious that he just does not see or understand what’s really happening. This is of course quite understandable given that he’s been locked up for forty years but there are times when I almost feel embarrassed for the man. He will for instance from time to time mention that criminologists in the USA have been in touch with him about his book , that various academics have written him etc. etc. He seems to think in other words that his book is being taken seriously , that it has generated debate in the academic community and all that goes with that.
It’s true that his book has been read and discussed by some of the most eminent people in the legal profession as well as the quality press but what he does not seem to understand is that this is no more than the inevitable reaction given who he is and the nature of the book and that for the most part all of these people have just dismissed it as the rant of a madman and forgotten about the book almost immediately. The BBC reporters and such like who write or visit him , not to mention playwrights and actors merely reinforce this idea that he is a man that the world takes seriously.
The criminologists of course are little more than hacks. And those who write about him are for the most part just an extension of the gutter press or people who have temporarily run out of copy. As I say the book is quite good but it has one serious flaw and that is of course that it’s about serial killers. There is of course no such thing as a serial killer. There are people who kill and kill more than one person and we call them , for want of a better word , serial killers but that’s about it. There is for instance no such thing as a serial killer who has not actually gotten around to killing people yet. We use the words to describe someone after the event and there is nothing wrong with that but to jump from that to the conclusion that there is a separate species of killer is just rubbish. Or to put it another way , Ian Brady is a serial killer but he is also no different than us. You or I might just as easily have gone down the same road as him and anyone who doubts that for even a second is seriously deluded. The fact that Brady writes of himself as a serial killer is no more and no less than a variation of the theme of believing ones own publicity. This is not to say he’s a fool but simply human. We all fool ourselves and some of us do it every day of the week.
Brady also likes to present himself as some kind of master criminal and hints in this book of his other victims , implying that he has gotten rid of some of his fellow criminals who happened to get on the wrong side of him. However apart from the fact that there is no evidence of any of this having ever happened , and plenty of people have looked for it , there is also the fact that after he killed I think Pauline Reade he said that from then one they must get younger children as she had been a bit of a handful. While this does not prove anything it seems an odd thing to say for someone who claims to have a pedigree in killing.
The Gates of Janus is , for all that a very unusual book and it’s refreshing to hear Brady’s point of view being expressed for a change and it would not be such a bad idea if everyone was to read it with an open mind. It deserves a wider readership and might I say a better publisher.
Moors Murderer Ian Brady suing Author Duncan Staff
June 8, 2007
Moors Murderer Ian Brady who has been on hunger strike since 1999 is to sue author Duncan Staff for using private photographs of him in his book , “The Lost Boy”. He is also suing his former psychiatrist Professor Malcolm McCulloch for breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. Brady’s claims that the photographs of which there are five are private property as they were not part of any evidence in his court case. Brady wants to put an injunction on Professor McCulloch , Duncan Staff and Ashworth Hospital and is seeking legal aid.
It will be interesting to see how all this works out. I think Brady has quite a good case but that’s not to say he will get justice this time around. You can read the full story such as it is on the Daily Express Site.
Read my review of The Lost Boy.
Ian Brady: Moors Murders and False Memories
June 7, 2007
Yesterday or the day before I posted a short piece about Ian Brady and the people who write to him in which I gave a link to someone who had had a letter from him. In the letter Brady speaks of his time in America and how he had met ‘contacts’ there. I am aware of Brady having made statements like this before but in view of the fact that he has never been to the USA it reminded me of how we all have ‘false memories’. And such things as false memories are very real and quite common. Some would of course say that Brady is mad and that that explains his false memories however given his situation , ie locked up and isolated for 40 years , such memories might become very real indeed and might just keep him from really going mad.
We are all familiar with the case of therapists helping abuse victims to recover painful memories and their sometimes terrible consequences for perfectly innocent people when it all goes wrong. I have just now been reading of a woman in the USA who was led to believe she had been raped when she was in fact a virgin. It’s possible of course that I am suffering from such a false memory in relation to Brady and that he has perhaps been as he claims to the USA. If anyone out there in the ‘real world’ can shed light on the subject why not drop a message here.
PS. Depending from where you acessed this page from the links contained in this post may or may not work. This is due to a change in my URL (address). The problem will be sorted out within the next week so if they did not work for you call back later.
Have you written to Moors Murder Ian Brady? Have you ever thought of writing him a letter? The question is rhetorical. But many people do just that. Over the years I often was tempted to write to him myself but I figured that he has enough people pestering him as it is. Of course those who do write to him do so for what is to them a good reason but it must get tedious for him none the less. Of those that I know of and those who over the years have visited him in prison and hospital it would seem they all are looking for something.
Be it reporters or playwrights they are all after something. And not only that but they all make a point so saying what an evil man he is which begs the question of why they want to have his company or his correspondence in the first place. There are some who write to serial killers as a hobby or maybe to sell the letters on eBay or something like that. I am not knocking those who do write to him but I find it all a bit odd. I don’t mean those who write to him privately , there are some I’m sure who do so and keep it private as one would normally do with any such correspondence , I mean those who then go on to publish or otherwise advertise or even sell the letters.
Below are a few quote’s from him . I wrote a couple of posts about Brady and as a result received some comments and decided to reply by way of a post or entry in my blog but as this turned out to a bit too long for a blog post I have uploaded it to my Pages. If you don’t want to navigate to the page just click HERE.
“[I]t is mostly in the quiescent company of the atheist, the sceptic, the cynic, the nihilist, the existentialist, those self-absorbed who are content to propose and preach nothing, that we may sometimes escape the obsessive demands of synthetic morality and the jarring irritations of theological presumption. They cast aside the ridiculous banality of metaphysical minutiae striving beyond man’s feeble comprehension, and instead opt for that comfortable, sensual silence known chiefly to old friends, lovers and opium addicts, which is so often much more stimulating and inspiring.”( from Oswald Defense Lawyer). ( originally from Gates of Janus).
That’s it , it’s the messiest yet.
I have accepted the weight of the crimes both Myra and I were convicted of justifies permanent imprisonment regardless of expressed personal remorse and verifiable change.
I reached the stage where , whatever came to mind , get out and do it. I led the life that other people could only think about.
Here is a typical short letter of Brady’s. I’m showing this link as it has been on the Internet for a while now. Also there is no real issue of privacy here. If you wish to read my other posts on Ian Brady , Myra Hindley or the Moors Murders just click on any of these names on the right hand sidebard of my blog. If you wish to see a review of Duncan Staff’s new book on the moors murders just click on his name on the right hand taskbar also.
Dennis Nilsen: History of a Drowning Man
May 30, 2007
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen has lost his latest legal battle to publish his autobiography. The UK High Court said the prison service had the right to read and if necessary censor the manuscript before his solicitor returns it to him. Nilsen maintains that the book called Nilsen:History of a Drowning Man is a serious work. He began work on the manuscript in the early 90′s. He was refused permission to appeal.
On 4th. November 1983 he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of twelve young men with a recommendation that he serve not less than 25 years but this was later changed to a life tariff by the Home Sectary. This means that he will never be released from prison.
I did in fact meet Dennis Nilsen many years ago. Unlike Ian Brady or Peter Sutcliffe we rarely see anything in the press about Nilsen and even spending a good hour on the Internet will turn up very little information on him. Few books have been written about him but the one that is best know is Brian Master’s “Killing for Company”. This is an excellent book , one of the best true crime books ever written in fact. I bought it when first published and I remember that it received very favourable reviews from all of the quality press. It’s an intelligent and well written book which I can recommend without reservation.
Ian Brady and Ashworth Hospital
May 25, 2007
Ian Brady was first admitted to Ashworth Hospital in 1985. When first sent there he had expressed ‘deep remorse’ for his crimes but this was to change. After a knife had been discovered taped under a sink in a washroom Brady was forcibly moved to a cell on Lawrence Ward of the hospital. Prior to this he had been refused the right to donate one of his kidneys. According to Colin Wilson “”it was because of this attempt to express remorse was thrown back in his face that he began to contemplate suicide”. In Oct. 1999 he went on hunger strike and is still being tube fed to this day.
“On 30 September 1999, Ian Brady was transferred to another ward. He took objection both to the transfer and to the manner in which it was effected. In addition to making complaints to the police and through the National Health Service complaints procedure he went on hunger strike. At the same time he began a media campaign, writing repeatedly to the BBC and others and issuing information through his solicitor complaining about the way that he had been treated, giving details of his hunger strike and the manner in which he was affected.
Because of the substantial media interest which Ian Brady generated, the director of communications of Ashworth found it necessary to make 12 press releases between 30 September 1999 and 11 January 2000 answering inquiries for information. The release of the 2 October 1999 began by stating: “Ian Brady, a patient at Ashworth Hospital, has exercised his right to refuse permission for the hospital to disclose any clinical details about him”. On 29 October, it was announced that he had refused food for a total of 30 days and that a program of “refeeding” had been introduced, which involved force feeding by means of a nasogastric tube.
On 2 February 2000, Ian Brady obtained permission to apply for judicial review, in order to challenge the continuing decision to force feed him. The hearing was held in private but, due to the public interest in the case, Maurice Kay J delivered his judgment in open court: see R (Brady) v Ashworth Hospital Authority[2000] Lloyd’s Med R 355; (2001) 58 BMLR 173. Maurice Kay J ruled that force feeding was lawful since it was reasonably administered as part of the medical treatment given for the mental disorder from which Ian Brady was suffering. By virtue of section 63 of the 1983 Act consent was not needed for such treatment. The judgment set out in detail particulars of Ian Brady’s clinical history which related to his decision.” ( taken from the website of the House of Lords).
In Sept. 1999 a telephone call from Dirty Harry’s bar in Amsterdam triggered an inquiry into the running of Ashworth Hospital. The call had come from Stephen Daggett a convicted paedophile who had absconded from Ashworth while on day release. He claimed that pornography was freely available as were drugs. As a result The Fallon Inquiry was set up and in it’s final report the hospital was roundly condemned.
While there is little reason to believe that Brady is mad his mental health has diminished since going on hunger strike. He recently (2006) wrote to Winnie Johnson the mother of Keith Bennett a rambling letter complaining of his treatment at the hospital.
A review of the latest book on the moors murders may be found here.
THE LOST BOY by Duncan Staff Bantham Press.
There have been many books written about the moors murders and this one is no different from the rest. Apart that is from the fact that there is some new material from Myra Hindley’s diaries , letters and brief extracts from her unpublished autobiography. Mr Staff would , like so many journalists before him wish to have us believe that he wrote this book for some suitably grand motive. In his case to help in some way to find the body of Keith Bennet , the only victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley who’s remains has not been recovered from Saddleworth Moor. But this of course is a lie. This like all the others was written for money and Duncan Staff stands to make a lot of money out of this book. The fact that he feels the need to justify himself in this way tells us a lot about him and those like him.
Quite early on in the book on page 3 and referring to Hindley he say’s ” I would have to get very close to her to extract the story. Not only would this be distressing but…..” This is another way of depersonalising Hindley in much the same way as most writers refer to her and Brady as monsters and evil. He has hardly started the book but want’s us to know that these people are not like you or me. The problem is that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are just like you and I and indeed that is why they have the hold over us that they have. And while Staff spends the rest of the book trying to understand Hindley he is doomed to fail from the very start.
Much of the book is a retelling of Hindley’s life story as told by her and at various points he insists on quoting for us the opinion of Professor Malcolm MacCulloch Bradys psychiatrist. This is done no doubt in part to impress us but it soon becomes quite clear that Staff actually rates this man highly. The professor is trotted out at what are obviously felt to be pivotal points of Hindley’s narative but if the purpose is to give weight to certain events then it soon has the opposite affect. I doubt if any psychiatrist has ever been so wrong about so many things as MacCulloch. Indeed he’s so far off the mark and generally inept at explaining human behaviour that at times the whole thing has an air of Vaudaville about it. We can almost see the professor in our minds eye but we come to see him as something out of a Carry On film. To give just one example of how wrong this man can be…..
In the course of telling her life story Myra mentions death quite a lot. The professor considers this ‘significant’ and ‘unusual’. He makes a point of stating how ‘unusual’ it is for anyone to have so many memories of death in their childhood. But we have already learnt from Myra that her grandmother with whom she lived would from time to time prepare the corpse of a deceased neighbour for burial and on a least one occasion kept one in the house overnight. In the fifties this was not unusual. Life was hard and extended families meant that old and young lived side by side in the same house and often the same room. Death was a normal part of day to day life. People , including children died from diseases and illnesses that are virtually unknown today. A child growing up at that time would see more death by the age of twelve than most people today would experience in a life time. If we further consider that Myra wrote this account of her life as a direct result of the death(murder) of several young children and that her normal life ceased when she was in her twenties then it would be very strange indeed if death was missing from her story. And yet the professor feels that this is all a bit odd. This is as I have said just one example of the professors insight and we have a great deal more of it inflicted on us throughout the rest of the book.
Another problem we find when reading this book is that most of the information comes from Myra Hindley herself. And while much of it has a ring of truth about it she does not attempt at any point to explain in any credible way why she helped Brady to murder and murder again. And of course she had been lying for years about her part in the murders to anyone who would listen. There is of course nothing in the book about Brady’s life story or no extracts from his letters as he does not make these available particularly to journalists. This is the one real problem that all authors who choose to write on the moors murders have in common.
The book is fairly readable overall and you will probably get through it at one sitting. But it cannot be regarded as a particularly good book and is full of the usual prejudices about Brady and Hindley. I will be writing more about the moors murders soon and will have no doubt more to say in relation to Staff’s book but for review purposes there is not a lot more to say of it here. A readable but ultimatly disappointing book.
If you are not familiar with the story of the moors murder then you may wish to read my previous post on Ian Brady Moors Murders.
See also this post.
Video Footage: For video report on new evidence presented by Duncan Staff go to this page and click on video link at top right of page.
If you wish to read some abridged extracts from Duncan Staff’s book go to this page.
Ian Brady Moors Murderer
May 11, 2007
Ian Brady the moors murderer has been locked up now for 40 years. He is currently in Ashworth High Security Hospital and it seems he will die there. He is a man that I have come to admire over the years. They say that he is a monster and the most evil man in Britain. But who are they?
Brady was born in the Glasgow in may 1938. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966 for the murder of three children. He committed two more murders which he has admitted but not yet been charged with. He spent 19 years in various prisons before being sent to Ashworth Mental Hospital in 1985. In 2001 he published a book ,”The Gates of Janus” which is about serial killers. He has expressed a wish to be let die and has been on hunger strike now for several years. He will never be released. He holds a special place in the mythology of evil , is universally hated and is probably the most famous murderer of all time. The word ‘monster’ is commonly attached to his name in the tabloid press.
But Brady like all of us is human. By definition he is part of humanity. He is just like us whether we wish to believe it or not. And yet in those 40 years I have never hear him being refered to in this regard. He is, if we are to believe the press a one dimensional man. A man of pure evil. Albert Speer who was complicit in the murder of six million jews was released from Spandau Prison on the ground of compassion but Brady is beyond our compassion. As Brady himself remarked , if he had come form a different background and gone into politics and killed thousands he might have been honoured and awarded a pension. As Dennis Nielson once said , “The only house of Horrors I know of is 10 Downing Street.”It’s the old story. Few rich men go to prison and none stay there very long.
There are many myths surrounding him but they are just that. One of these being that his crimes are inexplicable. But they can in fact be explained. If Brady had been born twenty years later these crimes would never have happened. He is very much a product of his time. He was born into a time of great social and cultural change. He was a self educated young working class man with a history of petty crime who read the wrong books and crossed the line from fantasy into reality. It could quite literally have happened to any of us. The intellectual climate of the time was that anything goes and morality was relative. The books he read reinforced this concept of morality. Many rebelled in a harmless way imitating their heroes of the big screen while his were more potent heroes. But we must not forget that many of the former walked out of the cinema and killed in imitation of there heroes. The ‘flick’ knife was common as was it’s use.
Another myth is that he has never apologised. But he has apologised and unlike others has neither asked for nor expected anything in return. He has however never apologised to the press who as he remarked are always ready to make money out of murder and the bloodier the better. Nor has he apologised to his better’s who keep him behind bars and make political capital out of his crimes , the same people who pleaded for years the case of Speer. Brady is not a stupid man and refuses to be judged by such people and is right.
None of this is intended to excuse his crimes. I am not a liberal much less a bleeding liberal. When Brady was sentenced to life in prison justice was done and he himself has acknowledged this but much of what has happened to him since has nothing to do with any kind of justice. We say that a society may best be judged by how it treat’s it’s prisoners. When we deny Brady his humanity we deny our own humanity. There is no profit to society in any of this.
He has been interviewed relatively few times and is selective in who he speaks to. Be it the quality press or BBC playwrights ( he’s had a couple of plays written about him and Hindley) they all go to him looking for something. They report him as being a highly manipulative man , the implication being of course that they are not taken in but that perhaps less educated people ( working class people like Brady himself) might be. There is a class prejudice at work here that reminds us of the trial of the Kray Brothers.
He is certified as insane but there seems no reason to believe that he is actually mad. He is the loneliest man in Britain and might have eased his situation by compromise. Perhaps there’s madness in that. Many books have been and will continue to be written about him. Authors and publishers have made money out of this tragedy and no doubt there is even more profit to yet be made. There are countless websites devoted to the exploitation of him and his crimes while his victims are largely forgotten. They of course deserve our humanity and compassion too. Their names are as follow’s
Pauline Reed age 16
John Kilbride age 12
Keith Bennett age 12
Leslie Ann Downey age 10
Edward Evans age 17
There may be others but not children. Myra Hindley claimed that they murdered a hitchhiker but her word is not to be relied on while Brady himself claimed to have killed a member of the Glasgow underworld but this may not be true. The mother of Keith Bennett still to this day visits Saddleworth Moor in the hope of finding his body. She also deserves our compassion. Brady has offered to go back to Saddleworth Moor ( he was brought there once before but could not find the site of Keith Bennett’s burial). He claims that he could now point to within twenty yards of where the body is but his offer has been refused. There is no reason to believe he is lying or just seeking publicity. He has never sought parole and has said he never will.
Another post on Ian Brady may be found here.
