Moors murderer rebuffs police

By Peter Gould BBC News Online

Brady murdered five children with accomplice Myra Hindley

The Moors murderer Ian Brady says he will not co-operate with a police plan to interview some of Britain's most notorious serial killers.

Scotland Yard wants to carry out the interviews in an effort to understand how mass murderers operate.

Detectives hope the information gathered will give them a better chance of catching these dangerous criminals in future.

But Brady, who is now 66, and has written a book on serial killing, has told BBC News Online he wants nothing to do with the research.

"I will not participate in the proposed serial killer interviews," he says in a letter from Ashworth high security hospital, in Merseyside.

"Interviewing the few serial killers in UK prisons would only occupy a week! And compared to the professionals in power, they are only amateurs anyway."

Police interviews

Scotland Yard has not said which killers it plans to approach.

But the list is likely to include such notorious figures as Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called "Yorkshire Ripper", who killed prostitutes, and Dennis Nielsen, who murdered homeless young men and disposed of their bodies in the drains of his house.

Given the present day public anxiety over child killers, researchers would also have been likely to want to talk to Brady.

He was jailed for life in 1966 after being convicted with his accomplice Myra Hindley - who died in prison in November 2002 - of the abduction and murder of children in the Manchester area.

Research conducted by the penal authorities is self-serving... an exercise in pretension and time-serving by the tea and biscuit-munching professional drones Ian Brady

Four of their five known victims were buried on Saddleworth moor. In the 1980s, Hindley and Brady both agreed to go back to the moors to help the police try to find the graves of missing children.

But today Brady says he is not interested in helping researchers who want to discover more about the motivation and methods of serial killers.

"Research conducted by the penal authorities is self-serving... an exercise in pretension and time-serving by the tea and biscuit-munching professional drones massaging one another's egos," he writes.

"These committee mentalities collectively lack even one positive brain cell or spine. All for show; a hubris of arrogance based on ignorant petty authority and no self-esteem."

Brady says he believes such research is pursued by those looking to profit from lecture fees, book deals and media careers.

"Already a gaggle of the usual suspects are wrestling with one another for TV spots... the second-rate profilers who pop up in studios with their personal banalities padded out by plagiarising research of decades ago.

"Not worth throwing peanuts to, let along communicating with."

Psychologists

The Moors murderer's response may not come as a complete surprise to Scotland Yard, who must be expecting some of the serial killers now behind bars to remain silent.

It remains a matter for conjecture how much they will get out of the murderers who do agree to talk.

Some psychologists think that offenders who have little hope of being released will simply use the opportunity to play games with the police.

Serial killers pose a particular challenge because their victims are often selected at random.

Ian Brady wrote to Peter Gould from Ashworth high security hospital

While a pattern may become apparent as new victims are found, the lack of any obvious connection with the killer makes it one of the most difficult crimes to solve.

Much of the pioneering work on the psychological profiling of serial killers has been done in the United States.

The work of experts at the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit inspired the fictional story of Hannibal Lecter, as portrayed in the film Silence of the Lambs.

Ian Brady recognises the fascination that these terrible crimes hold for some people, and has written on the subject at length in his book The Gates of Janus.

While some people were appalled when an American company decided to publish the book, Brady says his thoughts on serial killing have been welcomed in the academic world.

"The correspondence from university staff and students congratulating me on The Gates of Janus continues," he claims.

"Several lecturers have put it on the official reading list for students. One lecturer stated it was more inspiring than 'ten textbooks by ex-FBI profilers claiming unique insight into the criminal mind and vying with each other for media careers'.

"I didn't even stretch myself with Janus, deliberately omitting particular information."

That is a reference to the fact that while his book discussed a number of particular cases, there was nothing in it about the crimes for which he was convicted.

Brady was transferred from prison to a psychiatric hospital almost 20 years ago, and has been campaigning for the right to starve himself to death.

He is now in the fifth year of a hunger strike, being fed against his wishes, through a plastic tube.

He says he has no reason for living, and his message to the police suggests he wants to take his secrets to the grave.