Although Brady refused to work with Ashworth's psychiatrists, he occasionally corresponded with people outside the hospitalsubject to prison authorities' censorship including Lord Longford, writer Colin Wilson, and various journalists. In one letter, written in 2005, Brady claimed that the murders were "merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964". By then, he claimed, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles.