Margaret McCooey speaks about representing Myra Hindley

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Transcript

00:00 just opened a firm, it was 1987, and we bought this house with a view to it being a firm.

00:07 You know, the Lawyers Christian Fellowship was approached to say, would a local solicitor

00:12 - she was in Rochester, women's prison - be willing to take on her application for parole?

00:19 I mean, this is long after the murders and the horrific things that were done. And in

00:26 prison she had become a Christian. Many people would question that, but who are we to question?

00:36 And she wanted a Christian solicitor, and nobody in this area would take her on because

00:41 of her dreadful name. And Andrew said to me, what do you think? I think we should say yes

00:50 and apply for parole. She'd served her sentence, but it was a political reason she was kept

00:57 in prison because it would have been so unpopular whoever honoured her time for parole. And

01:05 he said, we'll get a lot of flag. And I said, no, I think we should. And the point was,

01:15 is there anyone so evil or brought so low who God couldn't forgive? He was a criminal

01:23 lawyer and it would fall in the usual remit, but no one would take it. Our families were

01:31 horrified, which is the first line of how can you? Our families were horribly upset.

01:40 And I remember we got a brick through the window once, the room next door, got hate

01:47 mail, but we didn't waver. You expect criticism if you're doing something you believe you're

01:59 meant to do. I'm sure we lost clients, but I haven't retained it in my memory really.

02:07 How could you? You could put it in many words, couldn't you? How could you? One friend disowned

02:12 us for several years. People have different ways of expressing their disapproval, don't

02:23 they? I think it's a lawyer's duty if you're in that field that you help anyone. You're

02:29 not the judge, which Andrew would always point out. You're not the judge. You have got a

02:36 duty to help them with their legal problem. We often met her in person and I spoke to

02:43 her on the phone. You know, you'll probably have heard, she seemed a very ordinary person

02:50 and she looked nothing like the horrific pictures. I was once on the front page of The Sun because

02:57 at Christmas we often sent our prisoners a little bit of money so they could buy presents

03:03 for family. And of course, with someone like Myra Hindley, prison guards would leak stories

03:12 to get money. Dreadful people like Margaret McCouey sending money to a horrific person

03:21 like Myra Hindley. I wasn't the only one, but I thought, "Wow, I'm on the front page

03:25 of The Sun. Who would have thought? I'm such a goody-goody by nature."