Hindley challenges Brady: Tell truth about grave

Myra Hindley last night confirmed that she would be hypnotised to help find the body of Keith Bennett and launched a bitter attack on claims by her fellow Moors Murderer Ian Brady that she would "fake" a trance.

In a statement to the Independent, Hindley continued her public row with Brady and challenged him to take a truth drug "to tell the truth for the first time in his life". The statement was issued through Hindley's solicitor, Andrew McCooey, following therelease of details of a letter sent to Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, by Brady from his cell in Ashworth special hospital, Liverpool.

He claimed Hindley would use the exercise as a "theatrical event" and would "sham hypnotic trance and use it as a front to change her story yet again without being discredited, while simultaneously protecting an appearance of concern and co-operation to impress the parole board".

Hindley replied: "If Brady believes I will fake a trance just because he thinks I will do anything I can to get out of prison, why doesn't he offer to be hypnotised, since he alleges he never wants to be released? And why doesn't he take the truth drug since he was the one who first suggested it?

"He was the one who committed all the sexual assaults and murders and he buried all the victims, including Keith Bennett. He knows where Keith is buried and he should be the one to be hypnotised and take the truth drug to help Winifred Johnson [Keith's mother] find him. Maybe then he will remember all that he did and tell the truth for the first time in his life."

Keith Bennett was murdered in 1964 but, despite intensive searches of Saddleworth Moor, his body is the only one of Brady and Hindley's five victims never to have been recovered.

Mr McCooey said: "Although Myra is apprehensive, as she has not been hypnotised before, she is willing to undergo this hypnosis if it will assist Mrs Johnson in giving her son a Christian burial. This is not a gimmick or publicity stunt; it is a genuine attempt to alleviate Mrs Johnson's suffering."

Hindley, 52, first offered to be hypnotised last year, an offer accepted on Tuesday by Michael Forsyth, the prisons minister, after meeting Mrs Johnson. Hindley's counsellor, Joe Chapman, was concerned that she was too emotionally drained to be hypnotised after being told five weeks ago that she would never be freed from jail.

However, he said last night: "I estimated it would be nine to 12 months before she would be fit to be hypnotised, but she hopes it will be less. She will make up her own mind when the time is right. She was very angry and upset by what Brady said. It seems that every time she tries to do something positive and constructive, he chooses to be critical and attempts to exercise control over her."