Brother of victim hails Brady ruling

Court artist of Moors Murderer Ian Brady.

THE decision to deny the wish of Moors Murderer Ian Brady to be transferred from a maximum security hospital to jail has been welcomed by a victim’s relative.

The infamous paedophile killer will not be allowed to leave Ashworth Hospital, in Merseyside, after a tribunal ruled he remained mentally ill and his continuing disorder required medical treatment for the safety of himself and others.

Terry Kilbride, whose brother John was snatched in November 1963, aged 12, said Brady should stay in hospital.

“He should stay where he is,” he said. “I don’t believe he’s going to kill himself, that’s just a ploy, just another wind–up.”

He added that Brady (75) should be kept alive as long as possible so that he could say where he had buried Keith Bennett, another of his five victims, whose body has not been found.

Keith’s mother, Winnie Johnson, died last August aged 78 after she had made repeated pleas to Brady to reveal the location of his grave.

Her solicitor, John Ainley, senior partner at Oldham-based solicitors, North Ainley Halliwell, said she would have been “stressed and angry” at Brady’s references to his murders as “recreational” and an “existential experience” during the eight–day hearing but would have been satisfied with the ruling.

“She always felt that Ian Brady did not give the children any choice and consequently he should not have the choice to leave the hospital environment,” he said.

Suffer

The tribunal was the first time Brady has been seen in public since the 1980s, when he was taken back to Saddleworth Moor in the search for the bodies of two of his victims, and the first time he had spoken in public since being jailed for life at Chester Assizes in 1966.

The decision on Brady’s appeal was given by the three–person panel headed by Judge Robert Atherton, who heard the tribunal at Ashworth that was relayed to the public and press at Manchester Civil Justice Centre.
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