August 17, 2012

Karma?

I’ve grown up hearing the names Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Their images are instantly recognizable to me, just as I could tell you who Pope John Paul II, Clint Eastwood and James Cagney are.
They are famous, or should I say infamous, murderers and rapists from 1960s England.

Like all people of infamy they have been glamourised by some, but for the most part vilified as they rightly deserve. Between them they sexual assaulted and tortured five children (that they admitted and where convicted of, but unofficial numbers are higher) between July 1963 and October 1965. They were convicted in 1966. Before I was even born, but their names often popped up.

In the mid 80s they gained a tremendous amount of press when they returned to scene of their crime to find the graves of their victim, but could only find one.

In 1995, Hindley was in the news again, but this time for her mugshot being used as the basis for a portrait painted by Marcus Harvey using children sized hand prints.



Hindley died at the age of 60 in 2002 in jail.
Today I saw the name Ian Brady in the paper and though, surely he’s dead now, but apparently not.

I read this story and felt hope for the family of Keith Bennett.

It was the last line of the story was what caught my eye and brought out a very rare, extreme, non-humane reaction from me.

‘The tribunal was to consider Brady's application to be transferred to a Scottish prison and be allowed to die. He has been tube-fed since refusing food 12 years ago.’

My immediate reaction to this was ‘Let the f*cker suffer!’
Then I reconsidered.  At 72, is it right that he be allowed to die or should he be forced to continue to suffer?  Does that make his captors as bad as he?

I know say, let him die and maybe, just maybe his name will cease to reoccur in our lives to remind us of the evil he and his girlfriend perpetrated forty odd years ago.

    NOTE: the image was taken form here and the copyright belongs to them, not me.

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