MYRA Hindley's evil is legendary - but today she is unveiled as a self-obsessed, self-pitying egotist.

Secret documents have been made public relating to the Moors Murderer's time in prison.

They give a dramatic new insight into the killer's mind and include letters she wrote, her personal papers and Home Office correspondence relating to her years behind bars.

And they reveal that despite the unbearable anguish she inflicted on them her evil never managed to tarnish the dignity of her victims' families.

Among the 593 files stored at the National Archives in Kew are heart-rending handwritten letters from Winnie Johnson and Ann West.

Mrs Johnson's 12-year-old son Keith Bennett was murdered by Hindley and Ian Brady after being snatched while he walked to his grandma's house. He was buried on Saddleworth Moor in a shallow grave.

Mrs Johnson's letter was said to have reduced the `usually controlled' Hindley to tears.

She had contacted Hindley in prison 20 years after Keith's disappearance in 1964 and wrote: "As a woman I am sure you can envisage the nightmare I have lived with day and night, 24 hours a day. Not knowing whether my son is alive or dead, whether he ran away or was taken away is literally a living hell, something which you no doubt have experienced during your many years locked in prison."

She describes how it has taken five weeks to write the letter `because it is so important' and that she writes out of `desperation' and `faint hope' that Hindley will help her find out what happened to her son.

Dignified

"My heart tells me you know and I am on bended knees begging you to end this torture and finally put my mind at rest."

The tone of the letter is dignified and ends: "Please Miss Hindley help me."

A memo from staff at Cookham Wood Prison in Rochester, Kent, described Hindley's reaction to the letter. It said: "She became extremely upset and tearful whilst reading it and it took a very long time for her to compose herself sufficiently to talk (this is most unusual as Myra is normally very controlled)."

Hindley denied all knowledge of Keith's death when she first read the letter, according to the memo - which also referred to Hindley's dilemma about how to respond because of fears of newspapers publishing her reply or being seen as callous if she did not reply.

The memo, addressed to a Miss Wallace in P4 Division, Cleland House, and dated November 3, 1986, said Hindley's exact words on reading the letter were: "I wish I did know something - I could at least then put the poor woman out of her misery."

She later confessed to Keith's murder. A letter from Mrs West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey, is also revealed in the files. It is written to the then Home Secretary Robert Carr, and makes a moving plea for Hindley to be kept behind bars. The three- page letter, dated September 13, 1972, also protests at Hindley being let out for walks in the park.

"You must think I am very bitter and I am and there must be hundreds of people that feel the way I do about this.

"If it was me, I would feel safer where I was. Please help me as a mother who has suffered more than anyone knows to lose a little girl in such a cold blooded murder."

The letter is signed: "Thanking you, Mrs A West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey."

Hindley and Brady were jailed for life at Chester Assizes in May 1966 for the murders of Lesley and Edward Evans, 17. Brady was also convicted of murdering John Kilbride, 12, with Hindley as an accessory. In 1987 - after Mrs Johnson sent her plea - Hindley and Brady confessed to killing Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade, aged 16. Police searches of the location provided by Brady and Hindley led to the discovery of Pauline Reade's body - but Keith's body was never found.

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