A Criminal History of Mankind Read Online Free PDF Page B

the psychology of being “hooked” - e.g. Rasputin and the Tsarina, Loeb and Leopold, Hitler and his worshippers.’ This seems to me a penetrating comment; but it still leaves us no clue as to how a girl who loved animals and children became involved in such appalling crimes.
    Her early background suggests that the answer may be partly that she was not as ‘normal’ as she seemed.  Daughter of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage, she had been sent to live with her grandmother from the age of four - her father was something of an invalid after an accident. Myra undoubtedly felt that she had been rejected in favour of her younger sister Maureen. Moving between two homes a few hundred yards apart, Myra knew little of parental discipline; her grandmother adored her and spoiled her. She had a forceful personality, which manifested itself in her large, firm chin and her share of Lancashire commonsense and hard-headedness. Her school report described her personality as ‘not very sociable’, although her classmates remembered her as something of a comedienne. Then, shortly before her fifteenth birthday, she received a severe psychological shock. She was friendly with a thirteen-year-old boy named Michael Higgins; he was shy and delicate and seems to have aroused maternal feelings in her. On a hot June afternoon he asked her to go swimming in a disused reservoir; she declined. The boy was seized with cramp and drowned; Myra, going along to see why Michael had not returned home, found police standing around his body. She was shattered. She spent days collecting money for a wreath and attended the funeral. She wore black clothes for months afterwards and became gloomy and silent. Then she reacted to the shock of the death by becoming a Roman Catholic. She left school a few weeks after the funeral and took a succession of office jobs. She found them utterly boring, and made a habit of absenteeism; the result was that they never lasted for more than a month or so. She went to dances and changed the colour of her hair repeatedly; but she never allowed boys any liberties. In fact, she was a prude. Engaged briefly at seventeen, she broke it off because ‘he is too childish’. When her dog was killed by a car, she again went into a state of traumatic gloom.
    Myra’s problem was that of many strong-willed girls. Where males are concerned, determination is not a particularly alluring feminine characteristic. The male image of the eternal feminine is of softness, gentleness. But the strong-minded girl cannot help being strong-minded, and feeling a certain impatient contempt for most of the males of her acquaintance. So most men find her off-putting and she finds most men off-putting. This does not prevent her longing for the right man - particularly if, like Myra, she has strong nest-building instincts. It only prevents her being experimental, from having the kind of experience that weaker and sillier girls have every night of the week. Even if she finds a man attractive, it is difficult for her to send out the signals that might attract him - the yielding look, the lowered eyelids. Sheer cussedness makes her glare defiantly, or say something that implies she knows better than he does. She is her own worst enemy.
    Brady’s first impression of Myra was probably that she was a hard-looking bitch, the kind who would want to cut him down to size. Then, as it became clear that this big-chinned female was ‘gone on him’, the vague dislike would be replaced by pleasure; we all find it hard not to see the best side of people who approve of us. He notices she looks rather Germanic - a bit like one of those concentration camp guards. He begins to enjoy the game, like an angler playing a salmon; he wants it to go on as long as possible. She speaks to him in July and he looks embarrassed. In August she notices that ‘Ian is taking sly looks at me.’ And from then on, it is all ups and downs; one day he has got a cold and she wants to