Researching a book about Myra Hindley, York-based writer Carol Ann Lee became aware of the vilification of chief prosecution witness David Smith. She tells Steve Pratt why his story needs to be told.
SOMETHING struck writer Carol Ann Lee while researching for books on Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
“After I visited the camps and spoke to people there was this dichotomy in those who worked there. They were perfectly happy to send people to the gas chambers, yet later on would go home and be a good parent and good family person,” she says.
“That I found really hard to process. How can someone compartmentalise their lives like that?
There were those two extremes.”
She found a connection with Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and the Moors Murders, a story that was always in the press while she was growing up and still around at the time she was writing about the Holocaust.
“I started reading more and more about the case and was really shocked how many errors there were from book to book,” she says. “It was a matter of wanting to correct mistakes. I’d spoken to the victims’ families as well, who felt it was time for the facts to come out.”
Lee wrote One Of Your Own, a biography of Hindley, who has been called “the most notorious female killer of the 20th Century”. “The dichotomy was that she could be party to these horrible rapes and murders while still be on the streets as though nothing had happened,” says York-based Lee.
“I went from writing about Anne Frank, an icon of female goodness, to someone who’s the opposite, Myra Hindley.”
Researching and interviewing for her biography of Hindley led her to David Smith who, at 16, married Hindley’s sister, and later found himself witnessing the last of the Moors Murders.
He stood as chief prosecution witness at the murders trial, but was vilified by the public because of accusations from Brady and Hindley about his involvement in their crimes. Hindley later confessed they had lied in an attempt to reduce their sentences.
Lee wanted to speak to Smith for her Hindley biography, but was aware he hadn’t given many interviews over the years.
“I wrote asking him for an interview. He wrote back a long email which was basically ‘no’. I emailed him back and his wife rang me and said why don’t you come and meet us and have an informal chat.
“As soon as I met him it was obvious he had a very interesting story to tell. He hadn’t spoken much about it over the years. He and his wife, Mary, have children and grandchildren and old rumours and rubbish are still out there.”
So his motives at the start, she feels, were mainly to put the record straight for the sake of his family. Lee interviewed him for hours and hours. He’d also written down his random memories, partly for an ITV drama a few years ago.
“The quality of his writing was very good indeed.
Although there wasn’t much of it, it did tell me lot more about Brady and Hindley than had been published over the years. Once he agreed we were going to tell his story, he started putting his own thoughts and memories on paper as well.”
The end result is their book Witness: The Story of David Smith, Chief Prosecution Witness in the Moors Murders Case. “He’s very honest in the book,” says Lee.
“There was never a point where I put a question to him and he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
He’s very upfront about his past. He’s always said, ‘I’m not running from anything, I’m not going to hide because I’ve done nothing wrong in terms of those crimes’.”
Lee says that when she asked Smith, who now lives in rural Ireland with his wife, how he felt about doing the book, he replied that “he felt incredibly relieved and it had been very cathartic”
for him.
“He has always kept his own family informed.
They grew up with it and were also attacked by people because their father was David Smith.”
Following her Hindley biography, the David Smith book has given her a detailed insight into the Moors Murders. Lee wanted to keep her own feelings under wraps as much as possible, not liking the idea of preaching to people.
She could never have any sympathy for Hindley because she doesn’t believe Brady or anyone could have forced her to do something she didn’t want to do. “It’s a line you would never cross unless there’s a part of you that really wants to,” she suggests.
But she felt David Smith deserved to have his story told, although she approached Alan Bennett, brother of still-missing victim Keith Bennett, about plans for the book. “Had he not been supportive of the idea I don’t know how much further I could have gone,” she says.
She exchanged a few letters with Brady in prison, but found he was only interested in talking about his supposedly tough life in Ashworth.
“I didn’t want to continue to write to him and give him a platform for his ridiculous views,” she says.
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