Читать книгу Killer Couples - Tammy Cohen - Страница 4

Before you read any further, be warned. The stories in this book will leave you appalled and traumatised; worse still, they will shake your faith in human nature. Certainly that’s how it was for me as I researched each gruesome case with growing horror. When writing about lone killers, at least there’s the consolation of telling oneself that this was one isolated, deluded individual. Writing about couples who kill removes even that crumb of comfort.

These are disturbing cases that will make you question everything you know, or think you know, about who we are and what we are capable of. Our immediate instinct is to classify the perpetrators as monsters, alien creatures that exist outside our comprehension and yet if that’s the case, how is it that such exotic creatures manage to find one another? How many of them must there be to be able to pair off with such sickening regularity? Of course, the truth is that there are no monsters, only monstrous crimes that grow out of a particular dynamic between two people. That dynamic is what I have tried to focus on in telling these terrible stories. As far as can be ascertained, all the facts are accurate, but, inevitably, some small liberties have been taken in bringing people and events to life to understand them better.

In 1997, in a letter to the then home secretary, Ian Brady referred to the child murders he committed with Myra Hindley as ‘marriage ceremonies theoretically binding us ever closer’. While the Moors Murders have been analysed so many times as to make their retelling in this book unnecessary, Brady’s words offer a chilling insight into this most warped and most dangerous dynamic. The couple that kills together stays together – bound by their secrets, their knowledge of one another, and by the blood rituals they’ve shared.

Writing these stories wasn’t easy, but it was grimly fascinating in terms of what it revealed about the secret underbelly of human relationships. I hope reading them provides the same experience. Just make sure you leave the light on!

Tammy Cohen