Myra Hindley once cheated on Ian Brady with a married police officer – and almost joined the force herself
The dysfunctional relationship between the Moors Murderers is well documented – including one often-overlooked detail that throws Hindley’s claims that she was “besotted” by Brady into question.
Myra Hindley photographed at home by Ian Brady, circa 1963–1964.
If the infamous Moors Murders were, as Ian Brady once labelled them, substitute “marriage ceremonies” between himself and Myra Hindley, then one would naturally assume the periods in between killing their child victims were the “honeymoon phases”.
This makes one particular incident from the latter half of 1963 particularly interesting. It is not entirely known when this happened – Myra Hindley later remembered that it was during the summer of that year (i.e. between the murders of Pauline Reade and then John Kilbride – their first two victims), and though this has been accepted by several of the most respected authors on the case, the timeline of events can be called into question. Read my earlier article for a full overview of the Moors Murders case.
At this time, Hindley was continuing to illegally drive her Ford Prefect van around, despite the tax disc having expired months ago. This vehicle had been gifted to her by her neighbour for her 21st birthday (23rd July 1963) because of the tax disc issue – he couldn’t afford to keep that vehicle on the road which is why he gave it to Hindley, assuming that she would take care of that side of things. Hindley had been driving this vehicle around beforehand regularly, and it had also been used to abduct 16-year-old Pauline Reade on 12th July 1963 – their first murder victim.
It should also be noted that Hindley failed her driving test three times, and did not pass until 7th November of that year – little more than two weeks before she and Brady abducted 12-year-old John Kilbride in a hire car, later burying his body on the moors. She and the neighbour who gifted her the van were eventually summoned to court, and the one concrete fact is that on Wednesday 11th December 1963, Hindley was ordered to pay a £3 fine for “fraudulent use of excise license”.
One day – again, this is Hindley’s account and when exactly this happened in relation to the court appearance is uncertain – a policeman came to the door, and she later reflected that he was “one of the tallest, most good-looking men I’d ever seen. He said he’d come to talk to me about the van and could he come in for a few minutes?”
The officer introduced himself as Constable Norman Sutton and asked whether, in view of the legal trouble over the van, she would consider selling it to him. (If this did happen in the summer of 1963, as basically every book on the case that mentions it states, then I have questions as to around why there was only legal trouble with the van itself and not as to the fact that an unlicensed driver was using it – because Hindley was never charged for that offence.)
Hindley agreed, and proposed he pay £20 for it – he told her he would be happy to pay £25 but couldn’t exchange money while he was on duty.
Sutton asked her if she would go out with him for the night so he could give her the money then. She accepted, and could tell by his manner that he liked her.
At the time, Brady was virtually living in the Gorton home that Hindley shared with her beloved grandmother, Ellen Maybury. She remembered that it didn’t faze her Gran, who – according to Hindley – thought that this police officer might be better for her than the increasingly-distant Brady was.
Despite the obvious chemistry between her and PC Sutton – as well as her Gran’s feelings about Brady – Hindley did not hesitate to tell Brady the story of the sale whilst they were out picnicking one afternoon.
Brady found the irony of her selling a vehicle that had been used in a murder to a policeman hysterical (this might suggest that enough time had passed for any forensic remaining from Pauline Reade to have been completely clear from the van, if this was his reaction), and Hindley laughed with him.
In fact, Hindley was even contemplating joining the police force herself. (Again, this is still her account of the events.)
Some evenings, she attended night school at her former secondary school and was receiving English tuition from one of her old teachers. The two were on friendly terms, and one night Hindley mentioned Sutton to her.
The teacher was reminded of one of Hindley’s old classmates, who had become a police constable. She ended up putting in a good word for Hindley, who was then offered an interview at Mill Street station and handed numerous brochures and forms – that much was later confirmed by a former police officer who worked at the station.
Hindley said it was later that evening when Sutton gave her the money for the van in a pub in West Gorton – just out of sight from friends and neighbours. Not only was it accepted knowledge now that Hindley and Brady were courting, but Sutton was married and he couldn’t risk anybody notifying his wife that he was seen out with another woman.
Sutton revealed to Hindley that he had recognised her right away from her days working at Belle Vue Zoological Gardens’ bierkeller when she was a teenager, and that his mother was the head barmaid there.
It all sounded so romantic to Hindley – these were memories of a different time.
They returned home to Bannock Street, and Hindley warned him that if Brady were to appear, he was to use the excuse that he was just there to give her the cash and then leave. He asked her if she was serious about him, to which Hindley said she was, even though she wanted to get married and have children someday. Sutton kissed her, and she did not resist his advance.
Hindley claimed to have felt an overwhelming urge to tell him all about what that van had been used for, but instead they ended up arranging a second date.
This heralded the beginning of a relatively brief but passionate affair.
Night school was Hindley’s alibi, and after her classes had finished Sutton would meet her on his 650cc bike. They went dancing at the Levenshulme Palais together (quite a nostalgic activity for Hindley), they went drinking in pubs and they also went for rides on his bike. They also started having sex, which Hindley recalled was different from the sex she had grown accustomed to with Brady.
Meanwhile, Sutton was supportive of Hindley’s newfound ambition to join the police force, and encouraged her to attend the interview at Mill Street station
Hindley remembered that she was initially excited by this – if not for the sake of growing closer with her new lover, it offered her at least some distance away from Brady and the grimy office they worked in day-in-day-out.
Though Hindley claimed she did attend the interview, because she did not complete her application form it is impossible to conclude whether this claim was true or not. (It is also impossible to date when exactly this happened, and if it did happen around the same time as her affair with Sutton in the first place.) Her account continued that she was probed about her past, and she managed to block Pauline’s death out of her mind and felt generally relaxed during the process.
It was then that she was allegedly handed the rest of the brochures and the application form.
Brady “wanted to kill” Sutton
16-year-old Pauline Reade, the first victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. She was driven up to Saddleworth Moor in the Ford Prefect, where she was raped before having her throat cut twice by Ian Brady.
When Hindley returned home from the interview, Brady was beside himself with laughter that she actually decided to go through with it. He mentioned that she could use her position to gain “useful information” (he also confirmed this account later, that these were his feelings about it), which is when Hindley said she started to have a second thought about it.
The initial hilarity subsided, and Brady frankly asked her if she was sleeping with the police officer. Hindley didn’t respond to him, which effectively confirmed his suspicions. He casually remarked that he might just kill him, but the confirmation of his suspicion barely seemed to faze him – after all, he was still amused by the prospect of having Hindley on the inside and the two made love that night.
Hindley and Sutton’s affair supposedly continued for the next few months. Despite this apparent green light on Myra’s side, there was always the threat of Sutton’s wife finding out – and to complicate things further, at one time Sutton was unfortunate to directly encounter Ian Brady’s wrath.
Years later, Sutton told Duncan Staff – author of the 2007 book The Lost Boy – that:
“Brady was a complete maniac. He came round when I was there, having a cup of tea. The bastard started screaming at me. He wanted to kill me.”
Because he was married, he couldn’t do anything about Brady’s threats, and so they hung over the affair like a black cloud until Hindley decided that things would never progress between them and that it was time to break it off between her and the police officer.
When Brady and Hindley were first arrested some two years later, Sutton came forward and was frank about the affair. His sympathetic colleagues had agreed to hush up about it at the time for the sake of keeping his name out of the media, and his identity had even been protected by Hindley herself when she confessed to Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping in 1987.
But when his identity was eventually leaked by The Sun newspaper (with his full name, new city of residence and a long-lens photograph of him printed) it effectively ruined Sutton’s life. He had long since divorced his wife, but he was forever the police officer who had an extramarital affair with one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.
Hindley retained the newspaper story and kept it in her cell until her death in 2002. Only she – and possibly Ian Brady, who died in 2017 – would have known the real reasons as to why she continued to pursue her affair with the police constable for so long.
Through corresponding with Hindley for years, Duncan Staff came to the conclusion that Sutton probably “got caught in a game between them: he became a means of heightening their sense of danger and excitement” – although Hindley maintained that her feelings for him were genuine.
“If we’d met before Ian and I did, I knew that the love that had grown between us would have blossomed. I would have had no hesitation in marrying and having children with him.”
Recap the full story of the Moors Murders in the first instalment of my series, which includes cited sources. The information for this particular write-up was sourced from:
- The National Archives (ASSI 84/425) for proof of Hindley’s criminal record prior to her murder convictions
- This Guardian article and Duncan Staff’s 2007 book “The Lost Boy”
- “One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley” by Carol Ann Lee (2010)
- “Ian Brady: The Untold Story of the Moors Murders by Dr. Alan Keightley (2017)
This article has not been monetised and I own no rights to any of the photos published. All rights belong to the respective copyright owners.
I have chosen to keep my real identity a secret for the sake of not taking the shine away from my account’s central mission, which is to ensure free access to accurate information around the Moors Murders case. This is the third article in the series. Thank you for reading.
