The Moors Murders
In the 1960s, a 23 year old stock clerk named Ian Brady met 18 year old typist Myra Hindley and they soon became infatuated with each other. Both coming from troubled childhoods they started planning bank robberies together, although coming to nothing it sparked a fearsome fire inside them that no one saw coming.
By 1963 Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about ‘committing the perfect murder’ and regularly spoke to her about Meyer Levin’s Compulsion. A story that polarised the fictionalised account of Leopold and Loeb case, two young men who attempt to commit the perfect murder of a 12 year old boy escaping the death penalty because of their age. In June of 1963 Brady moved in with HIndley at her grandmother’s house on Bannock Street and on the 12th of July they murdered their first victim. The couple were then rehoused to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in 196 during the post war slum clearances.
Pauline Reade, 16 (12th July 1963)
She was abducted on her way to a school disco and attended the same school as Hindleys younger sister Maureen. Pauline was sexually assaulted and had nearly been decapitated by two deep cuts to the throat.
John Kilbride, 12 (23rd November 1963)
He disappeared from a marketplace in Ashton-upon-Lyne, near Manchester. Hindley offered to give him a lift home but detoured to the moors where Brady sexually assaulted him and strangled him to death with a piece of string.
Keith Bennett, 12 (16th June 1964)
He disappeared on his way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight after Hindley asked him to help her load boxes into the car. Bennet was also assaulted and then strangled to death.
Lesley Ann Downey, 10 (26th December 1964)
She was snatched from a fairground in Ancoats after the couple fooled her by dropping their shopping and asking her for help. Lesley was stripped of her clothing, gagged and forced to take pornographic photographs before being raped and murdered. Both Brady and Hindley accused the other of her murder.
Evan Edwards, 17 (6th October 1965)
He was picked up by the couple for a claimed sexual encounter and taken back to the Wardle Brook Avenue house. He was plied with alcohol and then brutally attacked by Brady with a hatchet after refusing to stay quiet. Brady then throttled Edwards’ with an electrical cable.
Four of the five victims were buried in graves on the Saddleworth Moors. The final victim, Edwards’, was found in their house. Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, had been present at the time of Edwards’ death. Due to him being the eldest of their victims he was too heavy for Smith to carry on his own after Brady had sprained his ankle during the attack. They had to wrap the body in plastic sheeting and left it in the spare room. Smith had been scared stiff that he would not make it out of the house alive so he did what they wanted. He later went home and told Hindley’s sister, Maureen, everything had they called the police together.
One of the main factors in the two being charged with the murders was a suitcase that included pornograohic photographs of Lesley Ann Downey and a sixteen minute audiotape where she can be heard crying and pleading to go home. Downey’s body was later found buried on the moors after her mother was able to identify the clothing that was found with the body. Brady was charged with the murders of Evans, Kilbride and Downey. Hindley was also charged for Evans and Downey and only as an accessory to murder for Kilbride.
Both Brady and Hindley entered pleas of non guilty. Brady testified for over eight hours and Hindley for nearly six. Hindley went on to deny that the photographs found of the Saddleworth Moors weren’t taken on the victims gravesites. The sixteen minute tape recording of Downey was played in full in court with Hindley admitting her attitude towards Downey was ‘brusque and Cruel’. After deliberating for just over two hours the Jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley for Downey and Evans. Due to the death penalty being recently abolished the longest sentence they could be given was life imprisonment. Brady was taken to HM Prison Durham and Hindley was sent to HM Prison Holloway.
Over the years that followed Hindley assisted the police twice on visits to the Moors during searches patrolled by over two hundred officers. She couldn’t be certain that her memory was good enough to connect to certain sites in the moors. Many described these visits as pure publicity stunts and a waste of time and money. In 187 HIndley formally confessed to her involvement in the five killings in a recording that lasted seventeen hours. The detective described it more as a great performance rather than a genuine confession. Something she had been working on for some time.
Once Brady was told of Hindley’s confessions he too agreed to confess only if he was given the means to commit suicide after doing so. Then from one of the areas identified on the moors the body of Pauline Reade was found three feet below the ground. Although both admitted to the killings of Bennett and Reade, the prosecution decided that nothing would be gained by having another trial as they were both already serving life sentences. Although Brady admitted he could take police within twenty yards of where Bennett’s body was buried this never happened and sadly Bennett’s mother has since passed never knowing the location of her child’s burial.
Brady spent nineteen years in mainstream prison before being diagnosed a psychopath in 1985 and was moved to Ashworth Hospital. In 2017 Brady died of restrictive pulmonary disease and had been refusing food and fluids in the run up to his death. He was cremated without ceremony and his ashes were disposed of at sea during the night.
Between December 1997 and March 2000, Hindley made three separate appeals against her life tariff claiming to be a reformed woman now. Each appeal was rejected by the courts. In November 2002, aged 60 Hindley died due to bronchial pneumonia a side effect of her many years of chain smoking. She was cremated with a small ceremony of eight people with her ashes then being scattered in Stalybridge Country Park just sixteen kilometres from the Saddleworth Moor.
In 1987, Manchester City Council decided to demolish the house on Wardle Brook Avenue saying it created too much unwanted attention for the other residents. Nothing has been built in its place since.
