I have always been interested in reading true crime. I don’t know if this comes from being the child of reading parents who passed such books onto me when they were finished, or if it was because I come from the city where Ted Bundy was finally convicted. The trial was held in my town. I didn’t see any of it in person, but watched it (pre-CourtTV) on the local news every night. We even purchased one of those yellow suction cup babyonboard thingys one time that read “Bake Bundy” and hung it on our refrigerator.
Long story short, I have read an enormous amount of true crime books. My all time favorite is Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection by Emlyn Williams. It is the story of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, a true folie à deux, who in 1963 murdered as many as five young people in England. The book is literate and well-written and I am lucky to have found it when I did—as it spurred me to read more true crime at an age when I could have ventured off into other topics if faced with a bad book on a subject.
The book was published in 1968 and you can still find it easily enough in used bookstores or online for very little money.
It wasn’t until 2001 that I stumbled upon an update to the Brady/Hindley story in an odd little book titled The Gates of Janus written by one of the killers themselves!–Ian Brady. It was the handiwork of the uber-prolific true crime writer Colin Wilson, who had written Brady in prison and started a correspondence, visiting him and learning about him first-hand. It is the eeriest book I have ever read. Here is what Publisher’s Weekly has to say:
The infamous “Moors Murderer,” writing from his U.K. jail cell, Brady provides a rambling account of the socio-philosophical and psychological genesis of the modern day serial killer, but it’s emphatically “not an apologia.” The child pornographer and convicted killer (of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, 12-year-old John Kilbride and others) spends the first half of the book contending that killers such as himself, who are free from societal, religious and moral chains, are able to provide greater insight into the criminal mind than psychiatrists, crime reporters or police. But this argument, in and of itself, is unsurprising, and any logical authority Brady might have been able to build up is undermined by page after page of his nihilistic ranting. Pointing to myriad problems present in overpopulated, self-satisfied, privileged societies, Brady imagines contemporary culture as a breeding ground for serial killers. To prove his point, he attempts psychological profiles of Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and other notorious killers. But these chapters are not profiles so much as they are detailed accounts of the gruesome crimes committed. While revisiting such felonies might be enjoyable for the hardcore true crime fan, for most readers the depictions will feel as gratuitous as the heinous crimes they describe. The relentlessly abrasive and controversial social critic Sotos (Pure), an aficionado of murders recorded on audio tape, adds a provocative afterword.
Indeed. It isn’t until after reading that afterword that all things came together into one enormous understanding of just what was going on in this case. It was riveting and intense.
Myra Hindley died a few years ago in prison. Brady is still around, never to be released. He is one scary dude!
I can’t say enough good things about Williams’ book, and I can’t warn you enough about Brady’s diatribe. It is a frightening exploration into the mind of a serial killer. It will make you angry and confused and you might even want to write Brady yourself when you read how he bastardizes Nietzsche to his own use. I almost did, but was talked out of it by my sister who warned me about getting personal with such individuals—they are experts at using people. I am glad I took her advice and didn’t write.
But I still wish I had gone at least one day to the Bundy trial. The courthouse where it took place is still there, but it has been turned into an historical museum. They also operate ghost tours of the facility at night. Apparently, they feel the place is haunted from all the events that have transpired there over the years. Like Lizzie Borden’s trial courthouse, which still stands in New Bedford, and is open to the public when the court is not in session, Ted Bundy’s courtroom still stands, open to historical types and paranormal investigators.
