Serial Killers and the Media by Ian Cummins & Marian Foley & Martin King

Author:Ian Cummins & Marian Foley & Martin King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030048761
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

According to Smith (Smith and Lee 2011) it was Joe Mounsey, the detective who had led the initial investigation into the disappearance of John Kilbride, who finally believed him and the other detectives soon followed suit (Lee 2010). Smith then became the chief prosecution witness at the remand and committal hearings in Hyde in 1965 and then at the trial at Chester Assizes in 1966. However, by that time, his unwanted celebrity status had taken hold in the public imagination, particularly in the Manchester area. The hearings provided a setting for the venting of public outrage and because of Smith’s suspected involvement in the case and the fact that he and Maureen had been taken up to the Moors as part of the search for bodies, he became a public focus, given that he and Maureen were accessible. They were pushed by angry crowds as they left the remand hearings in Hyde and this public aggression would continue to play out with crowds gathering outside their flat in Underwood Court, Hattersley, as they left for court, graffiti messages on their flat and the smearing of dog faeces on the property (Smith and Lee 2011).

Their celebrity status also grew among journalists. As Smith (Smith and Lee 2011:190) describes in Witness: ‘reporters kept pushing cards through our letterbox wrapped up in fivers with scribbled invitations. “If you fancy a drink and a chat give us a ring”. By evening there would be a small pile of cards in the hallway floor. The car park at Underwood Court swarmed with reporters and photographers’ lenses were trained on our balcony and the main door downstairs’.

Smith claims to have ignored initial approaches but a deal to tell his story to the News of the World, now common practice but rare in those days, was arranged via his father and his uncle. This proved to be a major concern at the subsequent trial (see Chap. 3) but knowledge of the deal added to public outrage and David and Maureen Smith became subject to verbal and physical abuse on a regular basis wherever they went in Manchester. Smith eventually served a prison sentence for an incident in which he reacted violently to one such attack (Lee 2010).

Witness (Smith and Lee 2011) also contains a contested account of a visit of Lesley Ann Downey’s mother, Ann West, her partner, and another relative to the Smiths’ flat in Underwood Court which ends up with the Smiths being attacked. Indeed, Witness (Smith and Lee 2011) is an account of the impact of Brady and Hindley as George Bailey in reverse, an account of a lifelong attempt to break free from celebrity status by association, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the continued impact of media attention long after the initial case was closed. This by itself is a feature of the story of Brady and Hindley’s celebrity and its far reaching effects and is the way in which the news cycle has operated around the story for over 50 years.

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