Controversy over final resting place for Hindley

An inquest into the death of Myra Hindley will open today amid speculation over where the Moors murderer's ashes will be scattered.

The Greater Suffolk coroner, Peter Dean, will oversee a hearing at Highpoint prison this afternoon and is then expected to release Hindley's body for cremation.

"The post-mortem [examination] has been completed and the results will now be passed to the coroner," a police spokesman said yesterday. Hindley, 60, died of respiratory failure at the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds on Friday evening. Her body has been kept under police guard at the hospital.

The intense interest in the killer 36 years after her conviction also contributed to the police refusing to disclose much about the funeral, saying only that there were plans for a cremation in Cambridge. There were reports that the funeral would be tomorrow, possibly late at night to avoid the "attraction of ghouls".

Only 12 people will attend the funeral, including her priest, her mother, who is 82 and living in a Manchester nursing home, her niece Sharon Scott, her brother-in-law William Scott, the lawyers Andrew McCooey and Edward Fitzgerald, her friend Trish Forrester and her former lover Nina Wilde.

Cambridge City Crematorium agreed to accept Hindley's body on "humanitarian grounds" after staff at the West Suffolk Crematorium in Bury St Edmunds refused to stage the funeral. Father Michael Teader, who got to know the Catholic convert when he was prison chaplain, will decide where to scatter the ashes secretly. "What will happen to her ashes will be decided by myself and probably her close relatives and the prison authorities," Father Michael said.

A Prison Service source added: "She did not say exactly where she wanted her ashes placed because she was worried that news might leak out. She left it to ... Father Michael to scatter them in a peaceful and secret place."

Hindley, who was weakened by a heart attack three weeks ago, developed a chest infection and was transferred to hospital last week.

She was jailed for life in 1966, with Ian Brady, her lover at the time, after being found guilty of murdering Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17. Brady was also convicted of murdering 12-year-old John Kilbride and Hindley was found to have been an accessory. In 1987, the pair confessed to killing 12-year-old Keith Bennett – whose body has never been found – and Pauline Reade, 16.

Brady was said to have shown no emotion when he was told of Hindley's death. The 64-year-old, who has been on hunger strike for three years, was reported yesterday to be close to death, with his kidneys on the verge of collapse. A source at Ashworth high-security hospital said his condition was stable.

In a public letter written in March 2000, Brady wrote: "Myra claimed that I had forced her to commit murders. In all the changing versions of events from her, this was the lowest cut of all ... Myra has fallen prey to the syndrome, having played the false role of injured innocence for over three decades."