Moors murderer Ian Brady denied he was insane as he recalled cooking steaks with Ronnie Kray whilst mingling with some of Britain's most notorious criminals during his half century of incarceration. In an extraordinary four-hour display which veered between vaunting self-aggrandisement and breath-taking callousness towards his victims and their relatives who were watching via video-link, the child killer failed to express any remorse for his crimes.
Throughout the long-awaited appearance at the mental health tribunal, which must decide whether the 75-year-old - now the UK's longest serving prisoner - be returned to a normal jail from the secure hospital where he is held, Brady repeatedly stonewalled at suggestions he had a personality disorder or that his five murders were evidence that he was "abnormal". Speaking in a quiet, controlled voice, his Glaswegian accent still pronounced, he hit out at "media fascination" with his past complaining he was demonised and romanticised like Jack the Ripper and comparing reports of the shocking moorland killings to the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Gothic romance Wuthering Heights.
He passed judgment on politicians that had considered his case over the years - praising Labour's Roy Jenkins as the "greatest Home Secretary ever" and claimed to have once discussed Russian literature with James Callaghan. Brady was particular scornful of Tony Blair who he accused of getting rich off his "war crimes" in Iraq whilst claiming he was effectively a political prisoner after Margaret Thatcher had intervened in his case. He said Britain was a "psychopathic country" that had been invading other nations for 300 years.
Under cross examination by the tribunal and counsel for Ashworth Hospital on Merseyside where the tribunal is being held , Brady pedantically answered questions with his own, arguing over definitions and showing off his prison learning in psychology, German and French philosophy.
At one point he mocked his questioners over their knowledge of the method acting techniques of Russian dramatist Stanislavski - which he claims to have studied to feign mental illness - and held forth on the dictionary meaning of existentialism, an idea he repeatedly used to explain the motivation for what he considers his comparatively "petty crimes". Asked to elaborate on the value he himself had received from killing, Brady replied “existential experience”.
Brady continued: “I’m as pragmatic as a soldier or a politician - you never see any regret from Tony Blair, in fact he is minting a fortune from his war crimes. I’m simply saying this dichotomy is common through all levels of society”... read more:
Moors murders
Death at 60 for the woman who came to personify evil
Death at 60 for the woman who came to personify evil
NB - There are some expressions of evil that can never be explained or understood, they are beyond the dignity of human comprehension. The Moor murders are one of those. It is a sobering thought that India has seen many such examples of incomprehensible cruelty.
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