Hindley: a case for the death penalty?

Mary Kenny
Some of the tabloid newspapers were critical of the fact that Myra Hindley, the moors murderer who died last week, received the last rites from a Catholic priest, Father Michael Teader of Highpoint Prison in East Anglia. Yet however evil a person's deeds, they are entitled to the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist on their death-bed.
Myra Hindley clearly was remorseful about the terrible murders that she had committed, with her lover, Ian Brady, when five children were murdered, and in some cases tortured, and buried in the Yorkshire Moors in the 1960s. With her dying words she asked her mother to forgive her, and to attend her funeral.
For many years, the late Lord Longford visited Myra Hindley, and always said that she was a reformed woman. He maintained that it was outrageous that she was kept in jail in perpetuity: she was no longer a danger to the public and had served her time.
Longford's biographer, Peter Stanford (a former editor of The Catholic Herald) has continued this plea and says it was inhumane that Hindley should have been died prison, having served 36 years.
I think it was indeed unsatisfactory that Hindley should have spent a fruitless 36 years behind bars; that her case should have been brought into the public eye again and again, while the bereaved parents of her victims felt unassuaged and unconsoled by her living presence. It seems to me that it would have been much better, and more Christian if Myra Hindley had (with Ian Brady) faced the death penalty when they were convicted of these heinous murders in 1966.
If Hindley had gone to the gallows, the whole matter of the grisly murders would have been put to rest. The families, although shocked, bereaved and agonised to think of the suffering their children had been put through, would at least have felt that society had delivered a just retribution. That the perpetuators of these terrible murders had paid the ultimate price, themselves, in forfeiting their own lives as an atonement. And Myra Hindley herself — if she was a reconverted Catholic, which Peter Stanford, is convinced that she was — would have entered into a contract of redemption by facing the death penalty with perfect Christian acceptance.
If that had happened, a page would have been turned on the terrible moors murders; and the families would have found closure. And that sense of natural justice, which is so important for the inner equilibrium of human community, would have been served.
Instead of which, Hindley was turned into a specific icon of evil, and time after time, the popular media would find reasons to feature her on the front pages, or at the heart of TV discussions. At one point, one of the tabloids had a special reporter whose main job was to continue contacting the mothers of the victims of the moors murders, so that the wound was constantly reopened afresh.
/met Mrs Ann West, the mother of little LeslieAnn Downey: the poor creature was a woman in torment. She could never find peace of mind, and instead
of being able to put the horror she had been through into the past, she was made to relive it again and again by the continual focus on Myra Hindley.
Neither, on the liberal side of the fence, did it help that campaigners were pressing for the release of Hindley (Brady is too mentally ill ever to be considered for parole) under the Human Rights Act. It was a metaphorical stab in the heart to the parents of the victims that prison reformers like Sir Louis Blom-Cooper invoked "humanity" and "civilisation" for Hindley's release.
Again, this would all have been avoided if the death sentence had settled the matter.
How can it be Christian to justify the death penalty? Well, how can it be Christian to justify war? But there is a case for a just war, and I believe that there is also a case for just execution — used rarely.
One of the arguments is the question of collatoral damage. Hindley's crimes gravely and unforgettably deprived five children of their lives, gravely and unforgettably deprived five families of their futures, and her continuing high profile presence continued to spread collateral damage like poison ivy.
There has been much talk, in the wake of Hindley's death, about our duty to "forgive". But it is not for us to forgive. That is for God. It is for civil society to consider the damage caused by heinous crimes, and to levy a just penalty in return. Fifty life sentences would not have been an adequate "tariff' for the moors murders: only the sacrifice of Myra Hindley's own life could have gone some way to do that.