Moors murders

Mug shots of Moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady at the time of their arrest in October 1965.

The Moors murders are so named because four of the victims were buried to the north of the A635, Greenfield Road, over Saddleworth Moor between Oldham, then in Lancashire, and the Wessenden Road junction to Meltham, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Their five victims were children aged between 10 and 17 years.

Victims

Pauline Reade

Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley's, who disappeared on her way to a dance in Crumpsall on 12 July, 1963. She got into a car with Hindley while Brady secretly followed behind on his motorbike. When the van reached Saddleworth Moor, Hindley stopped the van and got out before asking Reade to help her find a missing glove in exchange for some records. They were busy "searching" the moors when Brady pounced on Reade and fractured her skull with a shovel. He then raped her before slitting her throat with a knife; her spinal cord was severed and she was almost decapitated. Brady then buried her body in a grave only three feet deep. It was not discovered until 1 July, 1987, 11 days before the 24th anniversary of her death.^[1]

John Kilbride

On November 23, 1963, Brady and Hindley struck again. The victim was 12-year-old John Kilbride. When he was approached by Hindley at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, Kilbride agreed to go with her to help carry some boxes. Brady was sitting in the back of the car. When they reached the moors, he took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. On the moor, Brady subjected Kilbride to a sexual assault and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade, but failed; Brady strangled him with a piece of string (possibly a shoelace) and buried his body in a shallow grave. His body was found there on 21 October, 1965. The body was clothed but the jeans and underpants that he had been wearing were pulled down to mid-thigh and the underpants appeared to be knotted at the back. Kilbride's body was by then severely decomposed and he was identified by his clothing.^[2]

Keith Bennett

The third victim was 12-year-old Keith Bennett who vanished on his way to his grandmother's house in Gorton on June 16, 1964 - four days after his 12th birthday. Bennett accepted a lift from Hindley near Stockport Road in Longsight. She drove to Saddleworth Moor and asked him to help search for a lost glove. Brady then lured Bennett into a ravine, where he strangled him with a piece of string before burying his body. Hindley stood above the ravine and watched the murder. Hindley later confessed that she had destroyed the photographs taken at the site of this particular murder, that had been kept at Brady's workplace at Millwards. Hindley had access to these photographs during the four days between Brady's arrest and her own in October 1965.

On 18 November 1986, Brady and Hindley confessed to Bennett's murder and that of Pauline Reade. Despite a renewed search effort in 1987, Bennett's body has never been found. Since then, Ian Brady has said that if he is allowed to die he will point out where the boy is buried.

Lesley Ann Downey

The fourth victim, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, was lured from a fairground in Ancoats on Boxing Day, 1964, and taken back to Hindley's home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, on an overspill council estate in Hattersley near Hyde (Hindley and her grandmother had moved there from Myra's childhood home in Gorton only three months earlier). There the girl was undressed and forced to pose for pornographic photographs with a gag in her mouth, and in the last four of them with her hands bound - the last kneeling in an attitude of prayer. Brady took the nine obscene photographs of the girl, and either he or Hindley recorded the scene on a reel-to-reel audio tape.

The sixteen-minute tape contains the voices of Brady and Hindley relentlessly cajoling and threatening the child, who is heard crying, retching, screaming, and begging to be allowed to return home safely to her mother.

Downey was raped and fatally strangled with a piece of string at some point thereafter. However, during their trial more than a year later, Brady made a telling slip of the tongue while being cross-examined, telling the prosecutor that "we all got dressed" after the tape had been made, which suggests that Hindley was also actively involved in the sexual molestation of the child, and perhaps the physical killing as well. The following morning, Brady and Hindley drove Downey's body to Saddleworth Moor where she was buried in a shallow grave. When it was found on 16 October, 1965, the body was still identifiable and Lesley's mother Ann West later made the official identification in a mortuary.^[3]

Edward Evans

The fifth and final victim was 17-year-old Edward Evans. On October 6, 1965 he was lured to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue and hacked to death with an axe. Brady claimed that Evans was a homosexual, and on meeting him at Manchester Central Railway Station invited him back to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue with promises of sexual activity. It remains uncertain whether Evans was actually a homosexual or if Brady was merely impugn the young man's character (homosexuality was still illegal in Britain at the time). The crime was witnessed by Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith, who had married Myra's younger sister Maureen in August, 1964. Brady and Hindley had apparently staged the murder as part of Smith's initiation into their killing confederacy. The Hindley family had not approved of Maureen's marriage to Smith, since he was known to many in Gorton as a thug and had already acquired several convictions in the juvenile courts for violent offences.

Throughout the previous year, Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith who noted in his own diary: "Rape is not a crime, it is a state of mind. Murder is a hobby and a supreme pleasure".

Hindley had invited Smith to the house on the evening of 6 October, 1965 on the pretext that Brady had wanted to give him some miniature wine bottles. Smith was waiting in the kitchen when he suddenly heard a loud scream from the adjacent living room as Hindley shouted for him to go and "help Ian". Smith entered the room to find Brady in a murderous frenzy, repeatedly driving an axe into Evans's head before throttling the boy with a length of electrical cord. Smith was then asked to help clean up the blood, bits of bone and brain matter in the living room, and help carry the body to the spare room upstairs and wrap it in a polythene bag trussed up with rope. Fearing for his own life, Smith made an effort to maintain his composure as best as possible and complied. In the months before this murder, Smith had refused to believe Brady's claims of carrying out several murders and disposing the bodies on the moors, and had told Brady he was talking rubbish.

Arrest

Brady had sprained his ankle in the struggle with Evans, so Smith agreed to meet Brady the following afternoon to dispose of Evans's corpse. Smith then promptly left the house, frantically ran home and vomited in the toilet. He woke his sleeping wife and told her of the brutal murder he had just witnessed. Maureen burst into tears and eventually told him that the only thing to do was to call the police. Three hours later, David and Maureen carefully made their way to a public phone box on the street below. Before leaving their flat, David armed himself with a screwdriver and a kitchen knife in order to defend the two of them in the event that Brady might suddenly appear and confront them. Smith made an emergency services call to the police station in nearby Hyde and related his story to the officer on duty.

Superintendent Bob Talbot arrived at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue wearing an inconspicuous breadman's coat over his police uniform. Talbot was met by Hindley, who answered the door, and found Brady inside, lying naked on a divan and writing a note to his employer claiming he had suffered an ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating an act of violence that was reported to have taken place the previous night and proceeded to search the house. When he came to the spare room upstairs, Talbot found the door locked. He demanded the key to the room and after arguing with Hindley for several minutes, Brady eventually told her to comply with the policeman's request.

Talbot entered the bedroom and found Evans's body in the polythene bag. Talbot arrested Brady on suspicion of murder. During questioning, Brady immediately admitted to murdering Evans. However, he insisted that Smith had also participated in the killing, and that Hindley had been in no way involved and was unaware of the event. Officers thoroughly searched the house, and found a ticket in her prayer book, which led them to a locker at Manchester Central Railway Station where they found two suitcases packed with incriminating evidence. Hindley was arrested and taken in for questioning. As well as the photographs and tape recording of Downey's torture, there was also a notebook in which Kilbride's name was found as well as a photograph of Hindley with her dog, Puppet, staring down at what appeared to be a grave on Saddleworth Moor. This photograph convinced the police that at least one of the missing children's bodies was buried on Saddleworth Moor, and within two weeks they had found the bodies of both Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride.

Trial

A photograph taken by Ian Brady of Myra Hindley with her dog, Puppet, kneeling over John Kilbride's grave on Saddleworth Moor. The picture was discovered in one of the suitcases left behind at Manchester Central Station.

The presiding judge was Mr. Justice Fenton Atkinson, who called the Moors trial "a truly horrible case" and condemned the accused as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity".^[4] He recommended that both Brady and Hindley spend "a very long time" in prison before being considered for parole but did not stipulate a tariff. He also stated his opinion that Brady was "wicked beyond belief" and there was no reasonable possibility of him ever reforming. However, he did not think that the same was necessarily true of Hindley "once she is removed from [Brady's] influence".^[5]

Brady

Brady spent nineteen years in mainstream prisons before he was declared criminally insane in November 1985 and sent to a mental hospital.^[6] He subsequently confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett in 1986 and has since made it clear that he never wants to be released from prison.^[7] The trial judge had recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision, and in 1982 Lord Chief Justice Lane said of Brady "this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies".^[8]

Brady is now incarcerated in the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital, and after he began a hunger strike in 1999 he was subsequently force fed. Brady fell ill and was transported to another hospital for tests. He eventually recovered and was considering suing the hospitals for force-feeding him. In early 2006, prison authorities intercepted a package, addressed to Brady from a female friend, containing 50 paracetamol pills hidden within a hollowed out crime novel.^[9]

Brady has written a controversial book on serial killing titled The Gates of Janus.^[10] He also apparently has an agreement that will see his memoirs published as an autobiography after his death.^[11]

Hindley

Hindley was told that she should spend 25 years incarcerated before being considered for parole. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, meaning that Hindley could be considered for parole beginning in October 1990. However in January 1985 Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased her tariff to 30 years, ruling out parole until at least October 1995.^[8] By that time, Hindley claimed to be a reformed Roman Catholic. She explained that she had acted under the influence of Brady and that she had only carried out murder because Brady had abused her and threatened to kill her and her family if she did not.

Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, was at the centre of a campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released from prison, and has given regular TV and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley's release is discussed.^[12]

In 1990, then Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life tariff on Hindley, after she confessed to having a greater involvement in the murders than she had previously admitted.^[8] Hindley was not informed of the decision until 1994, when a Law Lords ruling obliged the Prison Service to inform all life sentence prisoners of the minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole.^[13] In 1997 the Parole Board ruled that Hindley was low risk and should be moved to an open prison.^[8] She rejected the idea and was moved to a medium security prison, however the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom. Between December 1997 and March 2000 Hindley made three separate appeals against the life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society. However each was rejected by the courts.^[14]^[15]

Jock Carr, one of the police officers who brought Hindley to justice, has said that if Hindley were ever released the probability was that she would be murdered. Carr further feared that Hindley could become a television celebrity who would profit from her notoriety, something he felt was "very wrong". When another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary's power to set minimum terms, Hindley and hundreds of other life sentence prisoners whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released from prison.^[16] Hindley's release seemed imminent and plans were made by her supporters for her to be given a new identity.^[17] Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, more commonly referred to as Lord Longford and a devout Roman Catholic, campaigned heavily to secure the release of "celebrated" criminals, in particular Myra Hindley, causing him constant derision by the public and in the press. He described Hindley as a "delightful" person and said "you could loathe what people did but should not loathe what they were because human personality was sacred even though human behaviour was very often appalling".^[18]

On November 15, 2002, Myra Hindley died in a West Suffolk Hospital from a heart attack at the age of 60.^[5] Less than two weeks later, on November 25, 2002, the Law Lords agreed that judges, not politicians, should decide how long a criminal spends behind bars, and thus stripped the Home Secretary of the power to set minimum sentences.^[19]