The 3 best UK true crime books

All the UK true crime books out there would fill the Millennium Dome twice over. So which are the best?

True crime lists are full of books about some of the most notorious serial killers. Are they worth reading, or are they simply gratuitous accounts of rape, torture, mutilation and murder?

Some are, but others are more serious attempts to explore these damaging and damaged criminals, and the way we, as a society, deal with them.

One thing is certain: We should not admire them, and yet fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter and Dexter suggest that we do.

Toxic sexuality

The reality is they are almost always unstable men whose crimes reflect a warped and toxic sexuality. Think Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy.

Dahmer and Gacy are both American, but sadly, the US does not have a monopoly on serial killers, as three books about UK serial killers demonstrate.

It is interesting to read them in contrast to depictions of the better-known US killers: the Manson Family in Vincent Buglosi’s compelling but misleading Helter Skelter; or Truman Capote’s masterpiece In Cold Blood, which immortalised and humanised Richard Hickock and Perry Smith.

British true crime books – my 3 favourites

Why did I choose these books? Because they all focus on the context in which either the killer or the victim lived.

They don’t try to offer facile explanations for actions that seem beyond understanding; they give necessary details about the crimes, but they are not gratuitous. Finally, and importantly, they are all, in different ways, compelling reads.

One Of Your Own by Carol Ann Lee

This explores the life of Myra Hindley, one of the UK’s most notorious serial killers. She was initially convicted of the sexual murders of Edward Evans, 17, and Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and of shielding Ian Brady, in the knowledge of his murder of John Kilbride.

Later, she admitted to her role in the rape and murder of 16-year-old Pauline Reade and 12-year-old Keith Bennett.

Eerie and chilling

The book opens with an eerie, chilling account of Hindley’s last hours. The horror with which she was viewed is reflected in the events around her death and funeral.

The hospital where she died took steps to eradicate any trace of her presence. The bed sheets were burned. The room was disinfected. Local undertakers refused to handle her body. The location of her ashes remains secret.

Hindley’s life

Lee gives an account of Hindley’s life from her childhood, to her meeting with Ian Brady, her crimes, her convictions, her imprisonment and her death. A large section of the book focuses on Hindley’s life post-conviction and her ongoing attempts to regain her freedom.

Damning conclusions

Lee claims that she will write without judgement about this woman, and she achieves this insofar as it is possible.

The actions and words of Hindley herself invite damning conclusions. She expressed remorse for the one crime she could not disengage from, the murder of Lesley Ann Downey, but she admitted no role in any further killings.

Martyr

Hindley herself became the object of two campaigns: one to grant her parole; one to ensure she remained in prison for the rest of her life.

The evidence Lee gives, from Hindley’s own words, suggests Hindley’s supporters encouraged her to see herself as a martyr, a victim of Brady, and a ‘victim’ of the victims’ families.

Grim recording

Her claims of innocence and enforced participation are undermined, Lee makes clear, by her willing participation in the murder of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey. This was caught on a tape-recording Brady made of the child’s torture, which probably condemned both killers forever.

Coded letters

Many of her actions and words, as meticulously researched by Lee, make nonsense of her claims of innocence. She admitted to further murders only when it became clear Ian Brady was about to talk, and said she would have acted differently with Lesley Ann Downey had she known she was being recorded: ‘had I known, I would have been careful what I said…’.

She also wrote coded letters to Brady in the early days of her imprisonment suggesting further attacks on the siblings of the victims, and spoke disparagingly of the victims’ families. ‘That’s victim country’ she is quoted as saying.

State of denial

Lee’s book explores Hindley both as a woman who loved her family, who was capable of kindness, but also as one who seemed unable to understand or accept the enormity of her crimes.

She often expressed frustration at the victims’ families for their ongoing anger and raw grief. It’s ironic that the campaign to free her probably ensured she spent the rest of her life in prison.

My Sister Milly by Gemma Dowler

By the sister of murdered Milly Dowler, this book could be described as a long scream of anger and pain.

A family destroyed

It opens with an overlong and possibly too idyllic account of the life of the Dowler family before Milly Dowler’s abduction and murder by Levi Bellfield.

However, it soon becomes clear why Gemma Dowler wants to establish beyond doubt that the Dowlers were a normal, happy family.

After Levi Bellfield abducted the 13-year-old, the family were subjected to terrible ordeals by the police, the news media, and then by Bellfield’s defence team; which came close to destroying them.

The absent presence

In contrast to my other choices as the best UK true crime books, My Sister Milly is all about the victims – Milly herself, and her bereaved family. The absent presence of Milly haunts the book.

Gemma Dowler describes the trial by media Milly’s family endured. Some newpapers made appalling and sometimes illegal intrusions into the lives of the family both during the investigation and the trial.

Added to this is the tragedy of police error: a slender chance of finding Milly before Bellfield killed her was missed.

Botched investigation

Dowler describes how, as family members try to reconcile with their loss, they are knocked down again and again.

The police insist against the evidence that Milly was an unhappy runaway, or that her father killed her.

The press constantly intrude on the family’s privacy, hack Milly’s phone, and give credence to police suspicions about the family.

When the case finally reaches court, Bellfield’s defence team attacks Milly’s father, her mother and Milly herself in an attempt to portray her as a suicidal runaway.

A final, terrible irony is that the police had Levi Bellfield’s car, possibly moments after the abduction, on CCTV from the start of the investigation, but did not follow this up.

A terrible truth

Once Bellfield, now convicted of Milly’s murder, started talking, a terrible truth is revealed.

He didn’t kill Milly quickly, as he did in the blitz attacks for which he was convicted earlier. He abducted her and kept her alive for at least 14 hours, during which time he subjected her to sexual torture and possibly invited others to participate.

Recommended related reading

An excellent book to read in parallel with My Sister Milly is Colin Sutton’s Manhunt, which is a police procedural about the investigation into Levi Bellfield’s other murders.

Sutton alerted the Surrey police to Bellfield’s presence at the time of Milly’s abduction. Without Sutton’s intervention, it’s unlikely her murder would ever have been solved, or her killer brought to book.

Gemma Dowler’s anger is all the more understandable as she describes the missed opportunities in the investigation, when the evidence pointing to an abduction was there all the time. Is this hindsight? Colin Sutton certainly does not think so.

Hell

My Sister Milly is a book of raw emotion that gives a glimpse into the hell of those who have lost loved ones to depraved killers.

Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son by Gordon Burn

This is more a biography of Peter Sutcliffe than a traditional true crime book.

It explores the world in which Sutcliffe grew up. It gives a convincing portrayal of a society about to undergo major changes and a culture that is inherently misogynistic. Over 50% of the book is devoted to this.

As the killings start, they take almost a background place to Sutcliffe’s life: his marriage, his work as a long-distance lorry driver, his relationship with his family and the conflicting faces he showed to relatives, friends and colleagues.

Prior attacks

This is a book that was written before a lot of the information we currently have was available. We now know that Sutcliffe had carried out serious attacks on women prior to his murders.

I had a lucky escape in the early summer before his first recorded killing, when he approached me one evening in an initially unthreatening way. (The Stranger in the Square, in The Best New True Crime Stories, ed Mitzi Szereto.)

Sonia Sutcliffe

The book can be criticised for being biased.

Burn got most of his information from Sutcliffe’s parents and siblings. Possibly as a result of this, Sutcliffe’s wife, Sonia, appears on the pages as a distant, difficult woman, and the book, in places, comes close to putting some blame on her for her husband’s crimes. She didn’t talk to Burn, and her voice is never heard.

Good women and prostitutes

The other voices we don’t hear are those of the victims. They are named, described briefly and their injuries and deaths are recounted, but they remain very much in the background.

Burn tried hard to avoid it, but the good woman/prostitute distinction, made very much of by the police at the time, lurks on the pages.

Despite its flaws, this remains a good and informative read.

The unanswerable question

The question hanging over all three books is ‘Why?’

There is nothing extraordinary in the backgrounds of any of these people to explain why they did what they did.

However, Bellfield appears to have been an amoral bully with a capacity to charm his way out of trouble. This is a characteristic of a psychopath, and psychopathy may be the only explanation.

Personal responsibility

Sutcliffe claimed paranoid schizophrenia and spent 30 years in Broadmoor. He was convicted of murder, which meant the jury did not accept the evidence of psychiatrists that he was mentally ill. Burn’s narrative suggests he may well have been, and psychiatric evidence post-verdict supports this.

There is nothing to suggest that Hindley was mentally ill. She came under the influence of a man who was probably a psychopath. She saw this as an excuse, but Lee’s book does not avoid the issues of personal responsibility that Hindley never seems to have faced up to.

The ‘why’ of serial killing is a question that can’t easily be answered. These books don’t pretend it can, but they do ask it.