Gnome

She would have gone back in immediately anyhow - she was only actually convicted for two of the murders. The CPS had the files ready to immediately charge her with the two further murders (Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade) should she win her European court challenge.

Incidentally - for US readers - the story of the Moors murders is here -
<a href="http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial4/moors/moors2.htm" target="_blank">Crime Library</a>

Lord Asriel

I second that. And how curious that, while there are various people up in arms about the USA's willingness to execute murderers, we in the UK are currently force-feeding Iain Brady because we won't respect his wish to die.

Hindley's campaign for release must have been the most divise topic of conversation in the UK for the past thirty years, outside of politics and football.

FWIW, I believe that the various extensions to her sentence by various Home Secretaries were made for reasons of political expedience, rather than in the best interests of justice i.e. no-one wanted to be the one to let her out because of the cost in votes. That, in itself, is an abuse of human rights.

At the same time, I don't believe justice would have been served if she had ever been released. To put it another way, that fence was really starting to hurt my arse, and I for one am glad she is dead.

Beats me why she wanted to get out anyway. She wouldn't have lasted twenty minutes.

DMB

I am actually older than Myra Hindley. I remember very well the whole case and the preceding debate about capital punishment. During this debate, it was stressed that a life sentence was just what the words said, but that in certain cases where there might be mitigating circumstances, an early release on licence might be possible. I can't see what the objection is to holding certain killers for life.

In the case of Hindley, she was fully adult, she knew what she was doing and she didn't just kill; she deliberately tortured. If her repentance was sincere (and I doubt it), she ought to have accepted life imprisonment as a punishment for the enormity of her crimes.

I make a big distinction between her and Thompson and Venables. What they did was terrible, but 10-year-olds don't have the same capacity to understand fully the consequences of their actions.

Captain Pedantic

The reason why I don't believe in capital punishment is simple: I don't believe in revenge. Not for any reason, not even for murder.

Revenge serves no real purpose except to make one feel briefly better. But surely the whole point of judging criminals is that they are the ones in the wrong, they are the ones that lost control? If the people judging them lose control, if they start throwing stones and knives, who are they better than?

Maybe it is only human to lose control, but it shouldn't be considered a virtue.

Of course, in the case of Hindley, my opinion means shit to the thousands of members of the "BURN THE WITCH" brigade who would probably have tried their very hardest to track her down until one of them found her and "sorted her out".

I expect several million people will now tell me that it'd be different if I had children. And maybe it would. But I do hope I wouldn't turn into one of those "BURN THE WITCH" people.

Oh yes, and despite her bad 60s hair and square face, Myra Hindley was a woman. There are pictures of her about, older and with less frightening hair.

sullster

That photograph is a man in drag. It has to be. Is it Eric Idle?

Biff the unclean

I thought it was "Bubble" from Ab Fab

Pugilist Atheist

Eddie Izzard will be playing Myra Hindley in the upcoming film...

Egoinos

That photograph was and is used deliberately. I've seen better photographs of Hindley, where she looks like a normal person. But they don't get shown because it is much more comfortable to us to demonise and de-humanise someone like her than to admit to the fact that she was as human as any of us.

Captain Pedantic

I ought to say, though, that Hindley doesn't actually have a grave - or didn't have when Boro Nut wrote that post, what with being cremated and all.

I'm not sure about what happened after the cremation, though. Maybe the ashes were put in a small hole or something.

(Pedant++)

sullster

I know I brought this up in another thread, but you Brits did start a group called, "Alpha", which has come over here to the USA and is selling christianity.

I totally admit that the USA is awash with rabid theism, but you Brits act like you live in a country of atheists from one corner to the other. What about the Alpha group? Are they not true Englishmen or are they descendants of the children fathered by American soldiers during WW2?

Sometimes I tire of the British condescension on this issue. Especially considering that England rammed protestant christianity down the throats of all its colonial outposts. Now, England is atheist after infecting the world with theism. Oh, sure.

[ November 21, 2002: Message edited by: sullster ]</p>