‘Normal happy girl’ interrupted: An auto/biographical analysis of Myra Hindley’s public confession

Responding to the need to develop the range and scope of narrative criminology, this paper provides an empirical demonstration of how auto/biographical analysis can be used for criminological purposes. More specifically, the paper explores how British serial killer Myra Hindley sought to construct, (re)present and rehabilitate her own identity in the face of the ‘mad, bad, or evil’ discourse that she was typically associated with. Using her auto/biographical letter to The Guardian newspaper as the main source of data, supplemented with material taken from her prison files available in The National Archive, the paper examines how she sought to develop her own causation narrative in the face of massive public derision. It demonstrates how the ‘normal happy girl’ interrupted narrative which Hindley constructs is neither an accurate account of her life, nor an invention of her imagination. Instead, it is a product of the immediate local context which she found herself in; the conventions of criminal autobiography; the rules and regulations that govern prisoners; the redemptive requirements of the penal process; and, the generalized causation narratives of serial killers that were being reconfigured by various lay commentators for use in the ‘Moors murders’ story.