I scrutinized Brady's crimes. Like me, he had an adoption that failed – and he was in pain over being called a bastard. I thought he was innocent – I don’t know why – something in his eyes in the photograph. A cop investigating the case asked around about Black Magick and others sneered at him for it.
The idea went around my head – occult; in the 15th Century was studied by Agrippa - now it was all Harry Potter.
My adoptive Aunt, a nun, taught me how to follow the waxing and waning of the moon; in another time she would have been burned at the stake for being a witch.
Desperate for answers to the meaning of life I wrote to and visited the evil serial murderer, Brady when I was 21 to try to find out why ‘bastard children’ were evil; they werent of course; I had just been told that by my adoptive Mother who beat me bloody on the backs of my legs with a wooden cane to handle her sleazy husband's perverse attraction to me.
On my third visit to the Liverpool based hospital for the criminally insane, Brady full of drugs sat alone with this slim young blonde and encouraged to visit by the psychiatrists who had deemed all his social visits be unsupervised. I was that very stupid girl; out of my depth with a world class rapist. Hawk eyed, Brady lunged at me, his recent medication giving him the courage to flick his tongue greedily around my little mouth.
Staggering out of there in agony and trauma - I felt like my little body held all the energy of his heinous crimes, that he had poured it inside my open mouth like the Egyptian open mouth ritual – and now his daemons sat like dirty spit inside me.
I wanted to die; I felt invaded by something otherworldly. I saw visions of bloody, violent terrifyingly evil crimes and I knew something had entered me. Recovering, by using prayer and asking spirits via a book called 'Strangers Among Us' to let me die and another higher being take over my body, I recovered.
I immediately felt like a new person. One not ruined and despoiled. I read about Walk-ins and I wondered was I one, I felt stronger and more purposeful, even my eyes looked different inside the looking glass - the eyes of a wolf - stronger - my 6th senses increased tenfold.
I had noted on the visits each personality of Ian Brady; one was the intellectual, one a child; one a teenager, his fourth personality felt pure evil. I called the fourth man, the torturer I found inside him – ‘Doktor Evil.’
A Fleet Street journalist called Phil Hall hung around outside my digs in London watching me. Who Watches the Detectives? Phil Hall told me that he was captivated by the fact that a young woman had visited a beast. Phil was a well know hack and had early grey hair was softly spoken; I immediately felt attracted to him because he felt like a father figure, someone who would help me.
They wrote that I 'claimed' to be his long-lost daughter. Phil said it was better he phrase it that I 'claimed' it; then he wouldn't get his career ruined when the others found out it wasn't actually true.
He was over the moon when Ian Brady wrote a letter to him to say he remembered my Mother.
A lie so he might slobber over me.
They dressed me in really dark make-up, spiky high heels and a gold and red dress to fly up to Liverpool to go inside and ask Ian Brady - '...are you my father?' I was on his visiting list so I had access to go in on any visiting day.
Of course I didn't ask him, I knew he had lied. My hope long ago before I met him was the madness of an unwanted teenager trying to find an excuse for a Mother who had unceremoniously dumped me.
I felt sick to be face to face with serial killer, Ian Brady again - he was becoming more and more real to me and his life was pathetic as was he.
'Tell the press nothing,' he ordered me as Phil waited outside.
Phil wrote up a tale of bad blood and orphanages and a monster cuddling a busty blonde. I read about it on the front pages of the Sunday Tabloid and felt that my life was over. Phil said to me, 'It's odd how we have the power to ruin lives, it never ceases to surprise me! People will always think you're his kid now - lol.'
While the second weeks story was being prepared; Phil took us on a ferry then hired a car and we drove across France, his white shirt billowing out the window. He took us down South; picturesque Pond Du Gard in the South of France to hide me from the Pack. The name they gave the pack of hounds of Fleet Street.
We skinny dipped in the warm French Riviera underneath the stunning bridge that looked almost Greek. We stuffed oily snails in garlic and we supped good old brandy on nights where the hum of crickets kept us awake past the small hours. I was falling in love but saw him as too good for me because of his job – big shot journalist. I knew then it was what I wanted to be – what I’d kill to be able to do; it seemed powerful and exciting to work in Fleet Street.
Strolling along the bridge arm in arm in the hot sun, we sang songs and made each other laugh, at old wooden tables outside little South of France bistros sucking with wet lips on fresh peaches pulled out of chilled glasses of Moscato.
Phil coached me how to locate stories to delight newspaper editors so I could join him in his profession. I envisaged us as a married power couple, Posh and Becks, except writers, sought after by everyone - F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.
While he chewed on a cigarette we chatted over the phone to Brigitte Bardot and she agreed to meet us, but then cancelled due to her dogs getting sick. Phil taught me how to put together a newspaper story over exquisite fresh ground French coffee and crumbling croissants, our newly tanned bodies marbled by a brightening and waning yellow sun.
On temperate evenings as a dying marmalade light danced across the balcony, Phil taught me how to file copy to the NewsDesk copytakers as our eyes danced away from each other’s longing looks. We sipped fruity champagne kirs in the rooms as he taught me how to locate the breadcrumb in a story to follow up on.
I felt enthralled that Phil allowed me access to a higher world – one of men in white shirts who held pens instead of hammers. I glimpsed into a magnificently powerful world run from glossy skyscrapers in the midst of a mysterious London, full of history in Westminster and St Paul's and I loved its lush opulent vibe.
In France, I lazed in a polka dot bikini beside my Hemingway in a Mimosa scented breeze on the river bank on sunny days, believing I had joined this world of top newspaper and book writers, an ambition I had long nursed since watching Brain Clemen's 'Thriller' as a child.
I found delight in his mind and he in my naïve and ridiculous hero worship. I forgot James and I began to think that Phil was my soulmate – the one whom I had been told would smash down my doors and find me.
I had once visited a renowned psychic called Mike Brown who told me that a person called J would ‘impact on me so hard – that he would beat down my walls, that he would locate the real me and kiss me back to life. Since all Mike said came true, I waited for J. I imagined myself in a white seed pearl dress and our spiritual other worldy lovemaking … me and J - my Twin Flame.
Phil laughed and told me that his nickname was Jolly Phil Barton and I believed him so during that very hot night as crickets croaked and the heat made us sweat, we made love for the very first time in Pond Du Gard, France and I prayed to God that he was J.
Phil's caresses on high count white cotton sheets bought me to a pitch of excitement and then something happened right in the middle of the point where he was just about to enter me. I felt repelled. He wasn’t J – I could taste it, yet I had no choice but to let him go ahead and plunge inside me - hating every minute of our closeness. Who had I fallen in love with? Another part of me was revolted by him.
Back in London, I wondered was J – James all along; but he was in Sudan on a long-term job and we barely spoke.
Phil was my still my 'becoming a Fleet Street journalist' teacher and he took me out to Joe Allen and Bootlegger's as Madonna's 'Into the Groove.' blasted out and curvy Page 3 girls dined alongside us with rich Arabs and vintage champagne flowed. He felt guilty, he told me. that I hadn't been paid for being a World Exclusive front page story for two weeks running, so dinner was his treat. I only had a few hundred savings left in my bank account an I was homeless and jobless since the story broke.
Through his ongoing tuition I actually did become a bona fide journalist.
With my full stripes I bought a cheap one way ticket to New York City and like his baby bird leaving the nest I rented a bedsit in a rough area of Brooklyn, I began to walk the streets of Manhattan hunting news like a bloodhound seeking a bone.