Myra Hindley's private documents reveal graphic details of Ian Brady's sadistic abuse and violent rapes

'I used to ask him why he kept strangling me so much, and he told me he was "practising" on me,' Hindley says in papers

Private documents handed over by Myra Hindley just hours before her death reveal the hatred between her and Ian Brady - as she accused him of drugging, raping and beating her.

In graphic detail, Hindley describes a catalogue of sadistic abuse by Brady including violent rape, regular throttling and threats of murder if she did not comply.

The papers were personally handed over by Hindley as she was escorted from HMP Highpoint to the West Sussex Hospital where she died later that day in 2002.

They formed part of an appeal to reduce her life sentence - which motivated Brady to write to Home Secretary Jack Straw in a bid to scupper her efforts.

He claimed the pair were "a unified force, not two conflicting entities" and that Hindley regarded "periodic homicides" as "binding us ever closer".

Hindley and Brady murdered five children, aged between 10 and 17, in the Greater Manchester area between July 1963 and October 1965.

First victim Pauline Reade, 16, disappeared on her way to a dance on July 12, 1963.

In the letter to lawyers, Hindley claims that Brady coerced her into the murder by threatening her if she backed out.

"As we were driving home, he [Brady] told me that if I'd shown any signs of 'backing out' I would have finished up in the same grave as Pauline Reade did.

"I just said 'I know'."

Hindley, a neighbour of Pauline's, claimed she "began to shake and cry" after reading a missing appeal by the youngster's parents and was subsequently throttled by Brady.

"He [Brady] grabbed the paper off me...put the bolt on the front door in case gran came back, did the same to the back door, and began to strangle me," she wrote.

"Before I lost consciousness, I heard him remind me of what he'd said after Pauline's murder, and that threat still stood.

"I used to ask him why he kept strangling me so much, so many times - this was before the offences took place - and he told me he was "practising" on me.

"I said one of these days he was going to go too far and kill me, but he just laughed and said he wouldn't - he needed me."

"Infatuated" Hindley, who died aged 60, also claimed Brady ignored her for a week after he learned she had been given a lift to work by a colleague he despised.

The then 18-year-old said Brady drove her down a "small winding country lane" on his motorbike at dusk and told her to get off. He armed himself with a "sharp-bladed Stanley knife...which he ran lightly over his fingers" to threaten after asking Hindley if she planned to leave him.

Hindley wrote: "All the time we were talking, he was still running the knife across his fingers, and I honestly thought he was going to stab me.

"Then he laughed, put the knife away, told me never to accept a lift from Brian again, and we drove back to the pub.

"Later, as we were driving home, I dreaded what he would do when we got there, for I knew he would do something.

"Then he bit my cheekbone, just below the right eye, until my face began to bleed. I'd tried to fight him off strangling me and biting me, but the more I did the more the pressure increased."

Hindley refers to life in her relationship as being in "Brady's prison" - and gives a graphic account of being urinated over as the letter closes.

"I was so humiliated when he did all the things I've mentioned to me," she said.

"I had no self-esteem or self-respect, whereas before I met him, and for the year I worked with him before he first made a date with me, I was an attractive, confident and sociable teenager, never short of dates."

Hindley even claimed Brady drugged her grandmother by putting nembutal - a popular sleeping pill in the 50s and 60s - in her tea and later threatened to push the frail pensioner down a staircase to her death.

She describes how Brady sent her to Manchester central library to collect a series of books with a dark theme, including one called 'Sexual Murders'.

He also asked her to buy books by the Marquis de Sade, a writer famed for his libertine sexuality.

Hindley says Brady demanded sex after reading a book.

She wrote: "He began shaking me to wake me up, and I said leave me alone, I need to sleep.

"He was enraged - I knew the book had 'turned him on' and I just couldn't bear to be touched by him - and said he'd soon wake me up.

"He went to the kitchen and came back with a sweeping brush and using handle and head in turns, beat me until I was a bleeding bruised mess.

"I'd learned not to cry out when he was hitting me, for my gran had been wakened several times and shouted down the stairs.

"He often used to sit cleaning the rifle, and when I looked up, he was pointing it at me with his finger slowly pulling the catch back. I didn't know if it was loaded or not, but it petrified me, until one day I said 'Shoot me and put me out of my misery'. He just laughed."

She also states: "I couldn't go to the police about him for there was no proof of anything, and whilst I feared and often hated him, I was so emotionally obsessed with him I just couldn't change my feelings for him."

In 1997, Brady wrote to Home Secretary Jack Straw to stop Hindley's attempt to be freed from her life sentence.

It coincided with a High Court appeal against a ruling that his accomplice should never be released.

He wrote: "[Myra] regarded periodic homicides as rituals of reciprocal innervation, marriage ceremonies theoretically binding us ever closer."

He said he lied to cover for his former lover for "20 years" before she began to "fabricate" stories about the way he treated her.

"The fact that she continued to write several lengthy letters a week to me for seven years after we were imprisoned contradicts this cynical allegation," Brady wrote.

"I instructed both her counsel and my own to ask me specific questions designed to give the fullest opportunity of providing a cover for Myra.

"This managed to get her off on one murder charge [and] I also told her to adopt a distancing strategy when she went into the witness box, admitting to minor crimes while denying major.

"All my evidence had been in her favour.

"In character she is essentially a chameleon, adopting whatever camouflage will suit and voicing whatever she believes the individual wishes to hear."

Hindley and Brady were convicted of the murders of Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans in 1966.

Brady was also convicted of the murder of John Kilbride with Hindley found guilty of acting as an accessory.

In 1987 Brady and Hindley confessed to two further murders - those of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett whose remains have never been found.

At least four of the children were sexually assaulted. Two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor - and a third grave was discovered there in 1987.

The body of fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also thought to be buried there but remains undiscovered.

A never-before-seen autobiography chapter by Hindley is included in the documents, as is her will and a letter from missing victim Keith Bennett's brother, Alan, dated January 1996 - 34 years after the youngster's death.

There is also a letter from Hindley's lesbian lover, Dutch criminologist Nina Wilde, who met the killer at Cookham Wood prison, Kent in 1993.

In her autobiographical notes, Hindley writes: "When I grew older and used to babysit for neighbours, I often taught babies to walk with the aid of a kitchen chair turned upside down. My mother told me I learned to read and write from an early age, and could read and count and tell the time."

She writes articulately, focusing on her early life growing up, even comparing William Blake's "dark satanic mills" to her gran's work in the cotton mills.

Hindley was raised between her mum and gran's house - and she describes a strained relationship with her father whose return from war brought an "unhappy upheaval" to her life.

She wrote: "Although I left the family home and moved to Gran's, I never felt rejected or 'farmed out', or unwanted. On the contrary, I had the best of both worlds. I used to go home to mam's for the midday meal where I had to be bribed, cajoled and sometimes threatened by my father to eat the stews and hotpots which I hated."

The account is dated May 7, 1985 - and Hindley links her early years to those spent in jail. On one occasion, she described stealing condensed milk as a child - with reference to prison milk.

She wrote: "That condensed milk which we used while sugar was rationed got me more good hidings got me more good hidings than most other things, because I loved to stick my finger in the tin or eat it by the spoonful.

"I vowed with all the frustration of a child being told by adults when you want to do or have something to 'wait until you're a big girl' one day when I had enough money, I would buy many tins of condensed milk as I could eat.

"But the day never came when I actually wanted to, until I'd been in prison for about four years.

"It was in the summer, when the prison-issued milk kept going sour in the heat that I bought some from the prison canteen. I bought two tins, one for 'emergencies' and one to eat, and I managed to get through the whole thing without feeling sick."

The letter from Alan Bennett to Hindley includes well wishes for the woman who murdered his brother, aged 12, with accomplice Brady.

Keith's remains have never been found and Brady, who died of lung disease in 2017, took the knowledge of his last resting place to the grave.

Alan Bennett writes to Hindley: "I do not seek revenge for Keith...my only wish is to have him found and properly laid to rest.

"I hope your leg is getting better and you are on the mend in general."

In a second letter, dated October 1997, Mr Bennett writes to Hindley: "It is up to you now that the objections and excuses given to us in the past have been pushed aside.

"Your long silence has been and still is a deep concern to me. I await your reply."

In her will, Hindley asks to have Adagio by Albinoni played at her funeral. The song was also played at Princess Diana's funeral - more than two years before the will was written on January 12, 2000.

The will states: "I, Myra Hindley, of HMP Highpoint, being of sound mind, declare this document to be my living will.

"If, for any reason, I become severely incapacitated or am left in a persistent vegetative state, it is my wish that no attempt whatsoever be made to resuscitate me or keep me alive by artificial feeding or treatment.

"It is also my wish that no organs or limbs or other parts of my body be removed under any circumstances or for any purpose after my death.

"It is also my wish to be cremated, and for the cremation service to be conducted by the Rev. Michael Teader and for my ashes to be disposed of at his discretion. Furthermore, I would like Albinoni's Adagio to be played during my cremation, and would like Masses to be offered for the repose of my soul."

Nina Wilde's handwritten letter is undated. It is accompanied by a 1999 letter from Hindley to a person named Sam in which she described Wilde as "part of my being; in my blood and even in the marrow of my bones".

But Hindley writes in a defeated tone because she fears Sam is in a relationship with Wilde - and says she is "completely out of her life".

She wrote: "You said you wouldn't be in after 6.45, so to ring before then.

"When I made a note to do this, I also wrote 'I do wonder about her and Nina. If they get together, I'll have to sever all contact with both of them. I just couldn't cope.' "The problem is the way I still feel about Nina, and probably always will do.

"Would you tell Nina that I've spoken with Audrey and asked her to arrange to collect everything that Nina was storing for me."

Wilde had earlier written to Hindley: "I'm sorry I haven't written to you sooner. I received the money thank you - I'll choose a radio soon.

"And thank you for your long letter keeping me informed of all things going on. It doesn't ever stop, does it?

"It's Saturday and I'm sitting here with another thumping headache after a night out at the pub.

"Take care of yourself, love Nina."

The papers have been acquired by the Crime Through Time museum at Littledean Jail in Gloucestershire, where they will go on display this weekend (Sep 22-23).

It will be the first time they have been made public.

Andy Jones, 56, curator and owner of the macabre attraction, said: "Myra Hindley clearly sees herself as the victim. Brady and Hindley were as evil as each other.

"In the end, she deservedly served 36 years in prison.

"Shame the death penalty had been abolished before she and Brady were given a life sentence.

"My view is that they should have been hanged.

"As a private collector, it is most certainly a very unique and rare historical archive which in my view provides a disturbingly harrowing personal insight into the sadistic, satanic, most depraved child killing evil beast."

Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985 and confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He died aged 79.

SWNS