This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt by Howard Sounes

This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt Reviews

• 
  Joanne Robertson

  I couldn’t finish this-I found the descriptions of what happened leading to the events covered in this book just too distressing and disturbing. Although written in a factual style and not sensationalised it still felt too raw even after all these years. So a DNF for me.
• 
  Alex

  This Woman: Myra Hindley's Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt is the 2022 true crime book from author Howard Sounes and is a compelling account of Myra Hindley's botched escape plan and love affair with a prison warden. In many ways, Sounes returns to his roots after his earlier career-defining book Fred & Rose which detailed the life and career of one the most infamous serial killing couples in British criminal history: Fred and Rosemary West. It is also one of the most popular true crime books of all time
  Fred & Rose. Howard Sounes is, after all, the man who broke the case back in the 90s and referred to 25 Cromwell Street, the scene of the West's depraved torture and murder of young women and girls including their own daughter, as the 'House of Horrors'. He has been prolific since then writing biographies of musicians such as Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan. This Woman is therefore a return to his earlier form. It is just as gripping as Fred & Rose which the author recently updated.
  
  The story begins in 1971 at the infamous crumbling Victorian Holloway Prison with Violet Ali, the first of Myra Hindley's go-betweens in a budding romance with prison warden Patricia (Tricia) Cairns. Hindley had then been inside for five years, having been sentenced to two concurrent life sentences on May 6. 1966 at the age of 23 for her part in the Moors Murders (between July 1963 and October 1965 in and around Manchester) with her paramour Ian Brady. Justice Fenton Atkinson described them as 'two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity'. Hindley was later described as 'a quiet, controlled impassive witness who lied remorselessly'. Since then, Hindley had positioned herself as the exemplary inmate. Gone was the brassy bottle-blonde Medusa of the infamous black-and-white shot, staring out blankly from under her bouffant. She had been replaced by a self-possessed brunette who was both articulate and intelligent. Hindley had a genuine interest in learning and bettering herself and was a dab hand at needlework carefully crafting out a respectable persona. She presented as an even-tempered woman carrying herself with a detached regality. It paid off because her campaign to be changed from a Category A inmate to a Category B inmate was successful and enabled her disastrous 'day out' under Governor Dorothy Wing. Many wardens, inmates, and governors would become impressed with Hindley but others (more cynical) would be a lot more suspicious. But she had a hunger to get out which became an obsession and the main preoccupation of her life. Her love affair with Tricia Cairns was one of the furtive glances, secret messages, and clandestine meetings. The attraction was strong from the start. What is most extraordinary in a story that would become ever more baffling is that Tricia Cairns was a former nun. How Cairns became so enamored with Hindley that she was willing to risk her reputation and destroy her life is hard to understand. But Cairns was a compassionate woman at heart and all too human. It is obvious that Hindley had a hold of her emotions. In spite of what later happened, those feelings would remain strong until Hindley died alone at 60 on 15 November 2002 of respiratory failure. Cairns had been in the convent during her trial and had missed the details of the case although she came from Manchester just like Hindley. The crimes would change the very fabric of British society just like the Charles Manson case would do in the United States. A new note of mistrust had crept into the public consciousness. Children were no longer safe. Cairns had missed all this. The woman she loved was almost universally despised and had been locked up for five years. Cairns would be a lot more forgiving than most.
  
  The hunger to escape her incarceration would serve up a tale fit for Sunday night television. It was a rogue's gallery of saints and sinners, petty criminals, and misguided supporters and donors that would not have been out of place in a 1950s crime caper. Among the crooks was Maxine Croft, known in jail as Little Max who got mixed up in the escape plan, and a bright American woman named Joan Kleinert who was inside for drug smuggling. Among the hard cases was Linda Calvey who was known as the Black Widow and became an armed robber and Ronnie Kray's common-law wife which seems straight out of a Lynda La Plante novel and Rosemary West jailed for her part in the murder of innocent young women and girls at 25 Midland Road and 25 Cromwell Street, including her own daughter Heather. Interestingly enough Calvey mentions West in her memoir The Black Widow where she documents with disgust how West became hysterical after her cell was torched by an inmate and her pet bird was burnt but had no compunction about killing her own daughter. It gives another angle to life inside and she also recalled that after Myra Hindley broke her leg in the exercise yard she was deliberately left out there for hours. By then her reputation had been permanently damaged by her botched escape plan and her carefully crafted persona was ruined. The saints included the governors who were willing to give Hindley another chance, among them were Governer Dorothy Wing and Joanna Kozubska. These were not foolish women but professionals with compassion. Nevertheless, Wing's ill-judged walk around Hampstead Heath for Myra Hindley would almost cost her her reputation and obliterated any slim chance Hindley may have had of parole. Veronica Bird was a good deal less sympathetic viewing Myra Hindley as a manipulative woman with an end game, a sentiment shared by many. Among the saints was the kindly and well-intentioned Lord Longford who championed Hindley's cause like a knight on a white charger and became more of a hindrance than a help. David Astor who was inordinately generous to Myra Hindley and of whom she took full advantage. Reverend Peter Timms, himself a former prison governor, remained loyal to Hindley even when it was shown that she had lied. And that's not counting the other shifty characters that appear in the baffling stranger-than-fiction story. Howard Sounes details them all expertly, recounting a tale that is totally engrossing and at times bordering on farce like a comedy of errors. The actual botched escape plans involved a master key and soap impressions.
  
  At the heart of the story is Myra Hindley, a complex woman who is difficult to pin down. She was able to charm governors and even police officers with her reason and intelligence. But she was also a woman staring down the barrel of a life sentence who would do anything to get out. Her latent manipulation of those around her must be put into context. There is a poetic justice perhaps in the fact that her lifelong incarceration was a special kind of hell for one of the most abominated women in the world. She never gave up hope of parole but it was an impossible dream and it tortured her to the grave. The very idea that Myra Hindley could be released back into society was patently ludicrous. She never admitted to her part in the Moors Murders but the evidence suggests otherwise and Howard Sounes is almost certainly correct that she may have genuinely felt regret for her involvement although it is difficult to unravel the maze of contradiction. I do not doubt that her Catholicism was sincere but how truly sincere can never be known. Religion is low-hanging fruit. After the murder of a child the atheist Ian Brady shook his fist up at the sky. But there is no reason to doubt that Myra Hindley found solace in the Catholic church. Something that she shared with former nun Tricia Cairns.
  
  There was also the tragedy of the families and the legacy that the Moors Murders left behind. Among them was Winnie Johnson who never found out where her murdered boy Keith Bennett was buried and went to her grave tormented by it. It is very likely that HIndley genuinely could not remember where the little boy was put and inclement weather had not helped the remains. But it is highly unlikely that she was the innocent bystander that she presented. Ian Brady was an odd, intense man, dark-haired and slightly built obsessed with Nazism and with a morbid curiosity about death. He was later pronounced hopelessly insane. It's no doubt that Brady took pleasure from the anguish of the victim's families but there is no reason to doubt his admission that Hindley had fully participated in the crimes at a time when it was in his interest, to tell the truth. It is also very likely that Ian Brady knew a lot more than he let on but this is a tactic that murderers use to maintain control over their victims and their loved ones. It is the last card they have to play.
  
  I have had the pleasure of interviewing Howard Sounes, once for my own research and the second time for Real Crime magazine. He is an exemplary writer and I wholeheartedly recommend his podcast on the Wests and his documentaries featuring Trevor McDonald and luminaries from the true crime world. His biographies give a fascinating insight into the world's foremost musicians and his books are always meticulously researched, and brilliantly detailed. This Woman will be a huge treat for fans of the groundbreaking Fred & Rose and lovers of true crime. Sounes pieces the story together with a keen eye for minutiae and a forensic examination of the material. I could not put the book down and read it in spades as if I were enjoying a gourmet dinner at the Savoy! An absolutely recommended read for those interested in the fate of one of the most reviled women in British criminal history.
• 
  Chloe Edwards

  I found this book a bit strange. I feel like it’s trying to talk you out of hating her by saying how nice she was and a ‘model prisoner’.. Then slamming you in the face telling you how manipulative she was.
  
  I think it does really show what kind of person she was, she was able to manipulate vulnerable people and even prison officers to get what she wanted or to get them to do what she wanted. Highly intelligent too. She must have been living in a dream world to think that she was ever going to live a normal life after what she did.
  
  For me it comes down to one really simple thing. If it was not for Hindley, the children wouldn’t have gone with them and they wouldn’t have been murdered. It starts and ends with her.
• 
  Simon Jones

  Just as good as Fred and Rose
• 
  Monica

  Super interesting look into prison life. Very well written.