LONDON, Dec. 8 -- British murderer Myra Hindley has broken a 7- year public silence to appeal Thursday for release from her life sentence after 30 years in jail for the killing of four children. Hindley and her supporters argue she has paid her debt to society for the infamous 1963-65 'moors murders' and will plead with Home Secretary Michael Howard to end her sentence. In a statement to the Channel 4 documentary 'Witness' scheduled for broadcast on Thursday evening, she expressed regret for the murders she and her boyfriend Ian Brady committed. 'Words are inadequate to express my sorrow and remorse for the crimes I have committed and the pain they have caused,' Hindley's statement reads. 'But after 30 years in prison I think I have repaid my debt to society and atoned for my crimes.' 'I ask people to judge me as I am now and not as I was then,' it continued. 'Dreadful as my crimes were, I hope the home secretary will take account of the very special circumstances in which I became involved in those crimes.' Howard is due to decide within weeks whether Hindley and other convicted killers serving life sentences should remain behind bars until their deaths. He is under pressure from public opinion, especially from relatives of the 'moors murders' victims, who insist Hindley should never be freed from Cookham Wood prison near Rochester, southeast England. Ann West, mother of murdered 10-year-old Lesley Anne Downey, told television reporters Hindley should 'never, ever, ever be released.'
'How could I ever forgive her?' she said. 'She's a monster, she is!' And Danny Kilbride, brother of 12-year-old murder victim John Kilbride, told 'Witness' he would kill Hindley himself if she were let out. 'If I actually come face to face with Myra Hindley she is just dead, ' he said. But leading supporter Lord Francis Longford argues Hindley is a political prisoner, whose time in jail is extended by politicians bowing to public opinion while others on life sentences are freed after 14 or 16 years. Hindley and Brady were jailed in 1966 for the four murders, as well as one other to which Hindley was an accessory. The murders prompted police to lead a grisly search for bodies on the moors near Manchester, northwest England.
