This Woman

The true account of the scandalous affair between one of Britain’s most notorious murderers, Myra Hindley, and a prison guard—and their jailbreak plot to run away together.

Myra Hindley was convicted in 1966, with her boyfriend Ian Brady, of what became known as the Moors Murders. Between July 1963 and October 1965 the couple sexually assaulted and killed five children and teenagers. Four bodies were buried on the moors near Manchester, and a tape recording was played in court of one child begging Hindley for their life. Hindley became an icon of evil, but in 1973, in London’s Holloway prison, one woman fell in love with her.

Hindley was a highly intelligent woman capable of charming anyone. Desperate to regain her freedom, she convinced an infatuated prison guard named Patricia Cairns, a former Carmelite nun, that she was a reformed woman who wanted to return to the Catholic church. Believing Hindley was sincere, yet had no chance of parole, Cairns plotted to break Hindley out of prison. This riveting story is told in vivid detail based on prison records and new interviews with former prison staff, inmates, and even the women’s accomplice.

Interspersed with powerful accounts of the Moors Murders, This Woman reveals Hindley’s complex character and fiendish powers of manipulation—skills she used to lure children to their deaths in the 1960s, and used again to try to escape from prison.