Like Hindley, Carr embodied transgression precisely because she was a woman and she, uniquely, could deliver her man what he wanted: children. The saturation media coverage of the girls’ disappearance – at the expense of other, more prosaic and more typical atrocities against children in their own homes – engaged society.It was the summer of 2002, the news schedules were suddenly filled with a mystery that concerned not just the disappearance of the girls, but a narrative about the nation itself. And she was, of course.It was her remorseless fidelity that seemed to connect her to the greatest crime of all. By insisting that she was there in that house with the girls, that she was their friend, and that she saw them walk out of the door, she acquired a privileged position.

She was an enigma whose loyal silences confirmed her as perhaps even more sinister than the killer.The phantom of Maxine-the-new-Myra was inferred from her confirming his alibi. It was as if she was the last person to see them alive, and she, therefore, held the secret of their death She did not have the audacious Hindley look She seemed small and distracted We thought she must have been lying. In the beginning, before the trial, the less we knew about her, the worse she was Fantasies were poured into the empty space. And she gave us the notion of a woman so impossibly sadistic she had to be an offence against nature.The alliteration was too tempting: Myra faded away and metamorphosed into Maxine. A new mistress of evil was conjured up, a woman whose partnership with the school caretaker convicted of killing the Soham friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman implicated her in their inexplicable deaths. Myra was the template for Maxine.Rose West was also lurking in the metaphorical shadows, her unflinching stare behind her big, working-class spectacles. Like West and Hindley, Carr’s steadfast adhesion made her appear as more than merely an accomplice.

She gave us the look: the glare of a prowling hypnotist, a look that seemed to enjoy the transmission of terror. He said: “Tony Blair was crucial in helping me win my seat in 1997 and in retaining it in 2001.”. Myra is dead, long live Maxine, wherever she is. The woman in Ian Huntley’s life has been mobilised as the successor to the woman in Ian Brady’s life, a new recruit to the monstrous regiment of murderous women

Myra is dead, long live Maxine, wherever she is. Anyone else would not have as much in common with English voters.”Gareth Thomas, Harrow West (majority 6,156), agreed that the Prime Minister had “particular appeal in the South”. One leading Blairite said: “Were the worst to happen, which I don’t think it will, the history of the Labour Party suggests that there would be a contest.