Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Ian Brady cost UK taxpayers £8MILLION sick fans donated him a personal fortune of £100,000

Taxpayers have paid around £8million to keep Ian Brady in secure psychiatric care and jail since he was convicted of the notorious moors murders.

Brady escaped the hangman’s noose as the death penalty was abolished just months before he was handed three life sentences.

The serial killer has since spent 29 of his 51 years behind bars in mainstream jails at an annual cost of £50,000.

In 1985, Brady was moved to Park Lane special hospital, in Merseyside, which was later renamed Ashworth, where bills are said to be around £300,000 a year.

The total bill for his half a century in prison – during which he fought a series of publicly-funded legal wrangles over where he is held – is estimated at £8million.

Shamed lawyer Giovanni di Stefano, who is understood to be an executor of Brady’s will, has said he also amassed a personal fortune of around £100,000, mainly from donated gifts sent to him by sick fans.

Di Stefano, who is himself serving time for fraud, said: ‘It is largely Brady, centre, pictured with Myra Hindley being driven away from his trial in 1966. He has since spent 51 years behind bars, serving time in a secure hospital since 1985from morbid well-wishers fascinated by Brady’s notoriety.

‘There was little for him to spend money on at Ashworth so his savings simply grew.

Di Stefano said he does not know which organisations or individuals might benefit from Brady’s will.

Brady served the first part of his sentence in solitary to protect him from other inmates’ anger over his crimes.

He then staged hunger strikes at Gartree Prison in Leicestershire in a bid to force the Home Office to allow Hindley to visit him.

The strikes ended in him being force-fed and the Home Office, in the face of public outrage at any compassion being shown to the two killers, refused his requests.

He then launched a campaign in 1971 to transfer to Broadmoor special hospital, but the Department of Health blocked it, saying medical criteria for such a move had not been fulfilled.

Labour peer Lord Longford continued the fight and in 1985 Brady finally had his wish granted to move to Park Lane special hospital, later renamed Ashworth.

Following another protest in 1999, Brady went to court demanding the right to be allowed to die.

After a five-day-hearing at Liverpool Crown Court in March 2000, which Brady attended every day, Mr Justice Maurice Kay ruled he should be force fed.

In giving his decision the judge quoted from psychiatric reports that said Brady remained a psychopath who showed no remorse for his crimes or empathy for his victims, and was not capable of deciding his own fate.

He later wrote to a Guardian journalist saying: ‘Haven’t exercised in the open air since 1975; walking from matchbox into a shoebox of sunshine only reminded me of where I was.

‘Three decades devoid of sunshine hasn’t affected my health unfortunately, despite my smoking the strongest tobacco. My luck has run out, I can’t even catch cancer.’

Brady never showed any remorse for his terrible crimes and refused to reveal where one of his victims was buried

Brady never showed any remorse for his terrible crimes and refused to reveal where one of his victims was buried

Brady came to detest Ashworth and in 2013 successfully brought another appeal before a Mental Health Tribunal in a bid to be transferred back to a jail on the grounds he was no longer mentally ill.

Granted a public hearing, it was to be the first time he had spoken in public since he was jailed for life.

With wavy greying hair in a fading Teddy Boy style and wearing a dark jacket, shirt and tie and metal-framed dark glasses he sat hunched over speaking in a gravelly, quiet Scottish accent giving evidence for an entire day.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with a narcissistic personality disorder, he gave rambling, incoherent and dismissive answers, claiming his mental illness was just a show.

The hearing was described as a ‘circus’ and the wisdom of giving Brady the stage to publicly grandstand was questioned.

He likened himself to Jack the Ripper and described his own crimes as ‘recreational killings’ done for ‘existential experience’.

Brady had suggested, if allowed to go back to a jail, he would be ‘free to end his own life’ by starving himself to death.

In fact the tribunal heard rather than on hunger strike, Brady daily ate toast and soup, the ‘strike’ not seriously suicidal but just another protest to satisfy his pathological need for control.

He lost, the tribunal ruling Brady was still mentally ill and must remain at Ashworth.

Source: Ian Brady cost taxpayers £8MILLION in psychiatric bills | Daily Mail Online


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