'If I am ever released, it is then that my sentence will really begin'

In a series of telephone calls and correspondence with The Independent, Myra Hindley expressed frustration at the refusal of successive home secretaries to respond to her pleas for release.

Her words provide an insight into her 37 years of imprisonment and give previously undisclosed details of her relationship with Ian Brady.

In a 1997 interview with The Independent she explained what freedom would mean. "I know I could be out one week before someone assassinated me. But at least I would have had a week of freedom. I will take my chances. I would prefer one week of freedom to the security of a lifetime of incarceration."

She added: "I shall continue to seek release from what has become mere containment. If I am ever released, it is then that my sentence will really begin."

In later telephone exchanges with the journalist Steve Boggan she revealed her feelings towards Ian Brady and the crimes they committed.

She described herself as "a monster as guilty as Ian" because she had lured the children to their deaths.

Then, in August 1998, she spoke to The Independent from inside prison. "I just want people to know what happened," she said. "People think I am the arch-villain in this, the instigator, the perpetrator. I just want people to know what was going on ... [to] help people understand how I got involved and why I stayed involved." Later she said: "Brady made me do it. I was under duress and abuse before the offences, after and during them, and all the time I was with him," she said. "He used to threaten me and rape me and whip me and cane me. I would always be covered in bruises and bite marks. He threatened to kill my family. He dominated me completely."

In a statement used in her appeal to the Home Secretary in October 1998, Hindley refers to an incident before the killings began when she had accepted a lift home from a work colleague.

"All the time we were talking he was running the knife across his fingers and I honestly thought he was going to stab me. Then he laughed, put the knife away and and told me never to accept a lift from [the colleague] again.

"He raped me anally, urinated inside me and, whilst doing so, began strangling me until I nearly passed out. Then he bit me on the cheekbone, just below my right eye until my face began to bleed. I tried to fight him off strangling me and biting me, but the more I did, the more the pressure increased. Before he left, when he'd seen the state of my face, he told me to stay off work the next day."

She described how, after the first murder, Brady threatened to kill her if she betrayed him. "As we were driving home, he told me that if I'd shown any signs of backing out, I would have finished up in the same grave as Pauline ... I just said 'I know'."

Brady repeated the threat when he found her reading a notice from Pauline Reade's family in the personal ads of the Manchester Evening News.

In 1998, Hindley gave a detailed account of how she and Brady used a code to communicate with each other after their arrest.

"Over the seven months we were on remand, Brady compiled a notebook in which he wrote dozens of messages that I was to respond to in a code he'd devised. If the date was underlined, it meant there was a message in the letter." The code began six lines in with the seventh and eighth words beginning the message; a line was missed – with no message words – and the seventh and eighth words continued the message.

"It carried on in this way, every other line until the message was over. It was written in such a way as to make complete sense as a normal letter to whoever read it – the censor etc."