MOORS Murderer Ian Brady was forced by the courts to leave Scotland for Manchester as a 17-year-old but the serial killer always spoke about his love for his homeland.
He died of chronic lung disease as a patient at Ashworth Hospital, Merseyside, but begged to be moved to a Scottish prison to live out his final days.
Scots author Jean Rafferty wrote to Brady for many years as part of research for her book Myra, Beyond Saddleworth. Brady spent 51 years in jail, and when he died was the UK's longest serving prisoner.
“He has enormous affection for the Glasgow of the past and wanted me to send him photographs of certain places from his childhood,” Rafferty recalled in 2012, writing for the Sunday Herald.
Brady railed against the regime at Ashworth and world leaders in his letters to Rafferty.
She said: “His writing swarmed across the page, fluent despite its minute size. And angry. There was a huge feeling of rage from Brady’s words, mostly about the regime at Ashworth, which he hates with a passion, and about politicians. People like Tony Blair and George Bush, he declared, had as much blood on their hands through their imperialistic wars as he ever did.”
Rafferty also regularly exchanged gifts with Brady, including postcards of his home town.
Read more: Murderer Ian Brady could still be cremated in his native Glasgow
She said: “I have sent him many postcards of old Glasgow, of the steamie at Partick, one of a drinking cup at Glasgow Green which set him off about drinking cups in general.
“They often triggered off memories and small details which I would use in my novel.”
Among the chilling gifts Brady sent to Rafferty were “a reproduction of an 18th-century etching of skeletons fighting”, “a DVD of a children’s film, The Amazing Mr Blunden”, and “a compilation of film music, most notably the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers.”
Rafferty added: “Afterwards I wrote to him and said he had a very black sense of humour. I never knew whether that amused him or not. As with everything he doesn’t want to answer, including details of the murders, he simply ignored the remark.”
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