Moors murders

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

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around the area of Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged from 10 to 17, at least three of whom had been sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because four of the children were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; the body of the fifth victim remains undiscovered as of 2009.

Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has described the murders as the result of a "concatenation of circumstances" which brought together a "young woman with a tough personality, taught to hand out and receive violence from an early age" and a "sexually sadistic psychopath". The murders were the first widely reported case of serial child abduction and murder in the United Kingdom, described as an "end of innocence" The murders were also the first high-profile case of a woman's involvement in serial child sex murders.

Background

Ian Brady (born Ian Duncan Stewart in 1938) spent most of his Glasgow childhood in foster homes because of his mother's inability to care for him properly. As a young child he took pleasure in torturing animals; he broke the hind legs of one dog, set fire to another, and decapitated a cat. As he grew older Brady's "brutality escalated", and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself. By the age of 15, while still at school, Brady had two convictions for housebreaking, and shortly before his 17th birthday a Scottish court put him on probation on the condition that he went to live with his mother, who had by then moved to Manchester and married an Irish labourer called Pat Brady.

In 1961, the 18-year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards Merchandising, a chemical distribution company on the outskirts of Manchester, as a typist. Described as "deeply religious", she had a few years earlier witnessed the drowning of a teenage boy in a reservoir. The shock had encouraged her to turn to the Catholic Church, into which she was received in 1958. At Millwards Hindley met Brady, who was employed there as a store clerk. She soon became infatuated with him, despite learning that he had a criminal record. Brady was fascinated by the Nazis and the writings of the Marquis de Sade, and in December 1961 invited Hindley to a film about the Nuremberg Trials. The pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities, and Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, dying her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick. "Within months", Hindley said, "he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all"; Hindley claimed that Brady began talking about "committing the perfect murder" in July 1963; 18  months after the pair become lovers she had become Brady's accomplice in the first of a series of child murders. Brady had often spoken to Hindley about a book published in 1956 called Compulsion, the story of two children from well-to-do families who attempted to carry out the perfect murder of a 12-year-old boy, and who escaped the death penalty because of their age, a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case of 1924.

Victims

Pauline Reade

Hollin Brown Knoll, the area where Reade's body was discovered in 1987

Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade (born 18 February 1947), a neighbour of Hindley's, who disappeared on her way to a dance in Crumpsall on 12 July 1963. She entered a van with Hindley while Brady secretly followed behind on his motorbike. When the van reached Saddleworth Moor, Hindley stopped and got out, and asked Reade to help find a missing glove in exchange for records. The pair were busy "searching" the moors when Brady pounced and fractured Reade's skull with a shovel. He then raped her before cutting her throat with a knife. According to medical records, her spinal cord was severed and she was almost decapitated. Brady buried her body in a shallow grave by Hollin Brown Knoll on Saddleworth Moor, but it was not discovered until 1 July 1987, shortly before the 24th anniversary of Reade's death.

During the 1990s, Hindley claimed that she only took part in this murder because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic pictures he had taken of her, and had threatened to kill her younger sister, Maureen.

John Kilbride

Brady and Hindley's second victim was 12-year-old John Kilbride (born 15 May 1951). On 23 November 1963, Hindley approached Kilbride at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and asked him to help her carry some boxes. Brady was sitting in the back of a Ford Anglia car that Hindley had hired. When they reached the moors, Brady took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. On the moor, Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride 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. Kilbride's body was found nearly two years later on 21 October 1965, clothed, but with his jeans and underpants pulled down to mid-thigh and his underpants appearing to have been knotted at the back. The body was by then severely decomposed, and Kilbride was identified by his clothing.

Keith Bennett

Hoe Grain leading to Shiny Brook, the area in which Bennett's undiscovered body is believed by the police to be buried

The third victim was 12-year-old Keith Bennett (born 12 June 1952), who vanished on his way to his grandmother's house in Gorton on 16 June 1964—four days after his 12th birthday. Hindley lured Bennett into the car with a request in loading some boxes near Stockport Road in Longsight. Bennett agreed to help Hindley. 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.

Brady and Hindley did not confess to the murders of Bennett or Pauline Reade until 18 November 1986. A renewed search effort in 1987 saw Brady and Hindley visit the moors separately, under police guard, in an effort to locate Bennett's grave, but the search was unsuccessful.

The BBC reported on 1 July 2009 that Greater Manchester Police had officially given up the search for Bennett's body. GMP are reported as saying: "only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart". Police also released to the press previously unpublished photographs of Hindley near a small stream on the Moors, in the hope that members of the public might be able to give them some indication of the whereabouts of Keith Bennett's body.

Lesley Ann Downey

Brady moved in with Hindley and her grandmother in their home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, near Hyde, during September 1964. Ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey (born 21 August 1954), Brady and Hindley's fourth victim, was lured to the house from a fairground in Ancoats on 26 December 1964. Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for pornographic photographs. Nine photographs were taken, and either Brady or Hindley made a 13-minute recording of the scene on a reel-to-reel audio tape, in which Downey is heard "crying, retching, screaming, and begging to be allowed to return home safely to her mother".

Downey was raped and then fatally strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child, and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned to the room. 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 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, although she also had to listen to the audio recording of her daughter's voice to confirm her identity.

Edward Evans

The fifth victim was 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans (born 3 January 1948). Brady met Evans at Manchester Central Railway Station on 6 October 1965, and invited him to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue with the promise of a sexual encounter. Brady then hacked him to death with an axe. He claimed that Evans was a homosexual, although Evans's family deny the allegation. It remains uncertain whether Evans was actually a homosexual or if Brady was merely attempting to defame the young man's character—homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time. The murder was witnessed by Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith, who had married Myra's younger sister Maureen in 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.

Manchester Central Railway Station, where Brady met his final victim, Edward Evans

Throughout the previous year Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith, who had copied a quotation from the Marquis de Sade into his diary: "Rape is not a crime, it is a state of mind. Murder is a hobby and a supreme pleasure."

Hindley invited Smith to the house on the evening of 6 October 1965 on the pretext that Brady 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 striking Evans with the flat of an axe before throttling him with a length of electrical cord. Smith was then asked to help clean up the blood and bits of bone and brain 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 complied. In the months before this murder, Smith had refused to believe Brady's claims of carrying out several murders and disposing of the bodies on the moors, and had conveyed his scepticism to Brady.

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 and ran home, where he woke his wife and told her of the 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. At 06:07 Smith made an emergency services call to the police station in nearby Hyde and told his story to the officer on duty.

Early on the morning of 7 October, shortly after Smith's call, Superintendent Bob Talbot arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, wearing a baker's overall to cover his uniform. Talbot identified himself to Hindley as a police officer when she opened the door, and told her that he wanted to speak to her boyfriend. Hindley led him into the living room, where Brady was sitting up in a divan writing a note to his employer explaining that he would not be able to get into work because of his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating "an act of violence involving guns" that was reported to have taken place the previous evening. Hindley denied that there had been any violence, and allowed police to look around the house. When they came to the upstairs room in which Evans's body was stored the police found the door locked, and asked Brady for the key, but with no response. Hindley claimed that the key was at work, but after the police offered to drive her to Millwards to retrieve it, Brady told her to hand the key over. When they returned to the living room the police told Brady that they had discovered a trussed up body, and that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder.

Hindley was not arrested with Brady, but she demanded to go with him to the police station, accompanied by her dog Puppet, to which the police agreed. Hindley was questioned about the events surrounding Evans's death, but she refused to make any statement beyond claiming that it had been an accident. As the police had no evidence that Hindley was involved in Evans's murder she was allowed to go home, on condition that she returned the next day for further questioning. Hindley was at liberty for four days following Brady's arrest, during which time she went to Millwards and asked to be sacked so that she could go on the dole. While there she found some papers belonging to Brady, which she burned. Eventually she was charged as an accessory to the murder of Evans on 11 October, and was remanded at Risley.

Initial investigation

A photograph taken by Ian Brady of Myra Hindley with her dog, Puppet, kneeling over John Kilbride's grave on Saddleworth Moor.

Brady admitted under police questioning that he and Evans had fought, but insisted that he and Smith had murdered Evans between them; Hindley, he said, had "only done what she had been told". Smith told police that Brady and Hindley had hidden evidence in two suitcases stored in a left-luggage office somewhere in Manchester. British Transport Police began searching all of Manchester's stations, and on 15 October found what they were looking for—police later found the left-luggage ticket in the back of Hindleys prayer book. Inside one of the cases were nine photographs taken of Lesley Ann Downey, naked and with a scarf tied around her mouth, and the 13-minute tape recording of Downey screaming and pleading for help.

Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue found an old exercise book in which the name "John Kilbride" had been scribbled, which made them suspicious that Brady and Hindley may have been involved in the unsolved disappearances of other youngsters as well as Evans. A large collection of photographs was also discovered in the house, many of which looked as if they had been taken on Saddleworth Moor. A close neighbour, 11-year-old Pat Hodges, had on several occasions been taken to the Moor by Brady and Hindley, and she was able to point out their favourite sites. One hundred and fifty officers were drafted to search the Moor, looking for locations that matched the photographs, and it was not long before one of them discovered a human arm bone belonging to Lesley Ann Downey sticking out of the peat. The girl had been buried naked with her clothes at her feet. Detectives were also able to identify another spot on the opposite side of the A635 road from where Lesley Ann Downey had been discovered, where they found the "badly decomposed" body of John Kilbride. The search for further bodies continued, but with winter setting in it was called off in November.

Presented with the evidence of the tape recording, Brady admitted to taking the pornographic photographs of Lesley Ann Downey, but insisted that she had been brought to Wardle Brook Avenue by two men who had subsequently taken her away again, alive. Brady and Hindley were remanded in custody on 11 November 1965, three days after the Murder—Abolition of Death Penalty—Act came into force and abolished the death penalty. Brady was charged with the murders of Edward Evans, John Kilbride, and Lesley Ann Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey, as well as harbouring Brady knowing he had killed John Kilbride. Committal proceedings were heard in front of three magistrates in Hyde over an 11-day period during December, at the end of which the pair were committed for trial at Chester Assizes.

Trial

The trial was held over 14 days beginning on 19 April 1966, at Chester Assize Crown Court in front of Mr Fenton-Atkinson, the trial judge. Brady and Hindley were each charged with three murders, those of Evans, Downey, and Kilbride, as it was considered there was by then sufficient evidence to implicate Hindley in Kilbride's death. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General, Frederick Elwyn Jones; Brady and Hindley were each defended experienced QCs. in Brady's case the Liberal Member of Parliament Edwin Hoosen; Hindley was defended by Godfrey Heilpern. David Smith, Hindley's brother-in-law and the man who had called the police following Evans's murder, was the chief prosecution witness. During the trial it was discovered that Smith had agreed a deal with a newspaper he refused to name—even under intense questioning—guaranteeing him £1,000 (equivalent to about £20,000 as of 2024) for the syndication rights to his story if Brady and Hindley were convicted, something the trial judge described as a "gross interference with the course of justice". By the time of the trial Smith had already enjoyed a foreign holiday at the same newspaper's expense, and it was also paying for his accommodation in a five-star hotel for the duration of the trial.

Brady and Hindley pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, and were both called to give evidence, Brady for over eight hours and Hindley for six. Although Brady admitted to hitting Evans with an axe, he did not admit to killing him, arguing that the pathologist in his report had stated that Evans's death was "accelerated by strangulation". Under cross examination by the prosecuting counsel all Brady would admit was that "I hit Evans with the axe. If he died from axe blows, I killed him." Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims. On 6 May 1966, after having deliberated for a little over two hours, the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent terms of life imprisonment and Hindley was given two concurrent life sentences, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady knowing that he had murdered John Kilbride. Brady was taken to Durham Jail and Hindley was sent to Holloway Prison.

The judge in his closing remarks described the trial as a "truly horrible case", and condemned the accused as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity". 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 stated that Brady was "wicked beyond belief" and that he saw no reasonable possibility of reform. However, he did not consider the same was necessarily true of Hindley "once she is removed from [Brady's] influence".

Later investigation

In 1986 Brady confessed to a journalist that he had been responsible for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, something that the police had already suspected, as both children lived in the same area as Brady and Hindley and had disappeared at about the same time as their other victims. The subsequent newspaper reports prompted the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to reopen the Moors Murders case, in an investigation headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, who had been appointed Head of GMP's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) the previous year.

Incarceration

Brady

Brady spent nineteen years in mainstream prisons before he was declared criminally insane in November 1985 and sent to Ashworth. He 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. The trial judge had recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision; 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".

As of 2009, Brady is incarcerated in the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital. After he began a hunger strike in 1999 he was force fed, fell ill, and was transferred to another hospital for tests. He eventually recovered and considered 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 inside a hollowed out crime novel.

Hindley

Hindley was told that she should spend 25 years in prison before being considered for parole. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, but in January 1985 Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased her tariff to 30 years, ruling out parole until at least October 1995. By that time, Hindley claimed to be a reformed Roman Catholic. 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 until West's death in February 1999 she gave regular television and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley's release was rumoured.

After receiving a letter from the mother of Keith Bennet, in 1986 Hindley agreed to cooperate with Greater Manchester Police in the search for the bodies of the victims. In June 1987 she was taken to Saddleworth Moor to assist with the search; the remains of Pauline Reade were found on the moor on 1 July 1987.

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. 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. In 1997 the Parole Board ruled that Hindley was low risk and should be moved to an open prison. 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 her life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.

Jock Carr, one of the police officers who brought Hindley to justice, stated that if Hindley were ever released she would almost certainly be murdered. Carr further feared that Hindley might 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 others whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released from prison. Hindley's release seemed imminent and plans were made by supporters for her to be given a new identity. Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, more commonly known as Lord Longford and a devout Roman Catholic, campaigned to secure the release of "celebrated" criminals, in particular Myra Hindley, which earned him constant derision from the public and 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".

Part of Stalybridge Country Park, where Hindley's ashes were scattered in 2003

Hindley died as the result of a heart attack at the age of 60 on 15 November 2002. None of her relatives were among the congregation of six who took part in a short service at Cambridge crematorium, as they were living anonymously in Manchester under assumed names. In February 2003 Hindley's ashes were scattered by a former lover, a woman she had met in prison, less than 10 miles (16 km) from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. Such was the strength of feeling more than 35 years after the murders that fears were expressed the news might result in in visitors choosing to avoid the park, a local beauty spot, or even to the park being vandalised.

Less than two weeks after Hindley's death, on 25 November 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.

Aftermath and impact

As it was the first widely reported case of serial child abduction and murder in UK history, some have described the trial as an "end of innocence"; the end of an era in which Britons did not worry about allowing young children out on their own. It was also the first high-profile case of a woman being involved in serial child sex murders. Hindley's part in the killings was considered especially egregious and inexplicable, and her attempts to secure her release in the later years of her life were met with widespread opposition, particularly in the tabloid press.

David Smith became "reviled by the people of Manchester", despite being instrumental in bringing Brady and Hindley's killing spree to an end. His home was vandalised and it was impossible for him to find employment. After knifing another man during a fight, in an attack he claimed was triggered by the abuse he had suffered since the trial, Smith was sentenced to three years in jail in 1969. While in prison his wife Maureen divorced him, and their three children were taken into care. Maureen died of a brain haemorrhage in 1977, and Smith moved to Lincolnshire in an attempt to rebuild his life.

Manchester band The Smiths wrote and recorded a popular song commemorating the murders called "Suffer Little Children", released on their eponymously named album in 1984. The song caused a brief media controversy until the mother of one of the victims voiced her support for the band.

The house in which Brady and Hindley lived on Wardle Brook Avenue, and where Edward Evans was murdered, was demolished by the local council, although tours continued to frequent the area.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Carmichael, Kay (2003), Sin and Forgiveness: New Responses in a Changing World, Ashgate Publishing, ISBN 0-7546-3406-X
• Furio, Jennifer (2001), Team killers, Algora Publishing, ISBN 978-1-892941-62-6
• Gibson, Dirk Cameron; Wilcox, Dennis L. (2006), Serial murder and media circuses, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-275-99064-0
• Staff, Duncan (2007), The lost boy, London: Bantam Press, ISBN 978-0-593056-92-9
• Topping, Peter (1989), Topping: The Autobiography of the Police Chief in the Moors Murder Case, Angus & Robertson, ISBN 0-207-16480-0
• Williams, Emlyn (1992), Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection, Pan, ISBN 0-330-02088-9

Further reading

• Goodman, Jonathan (1986), The Moors Murders: The Trial of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, David & Charles, ISBN 0-7153-9064-3
• Hansford Johnson, Pamela (1967), On Iniquity, Macmillan.
• Harrison, Fred (1986), Brady and Hindley: The Genesis of the Moors Murders, Grafton, ISBN 0-906798-70-1
• Potter, John Deane (1967), The Monsters Of The Moors, Ballantine Books
• Ritchie, Jean (1991), Myra Hindley: Inside the Mind of a Murderess, Paladin, ISBN 0-586-21563-8
• Robins, Joyce, Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: 100 Tales of Infamy, Barbarism and Horrible Crime, ISBN 1-85152-363-4. {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Boar, Roger; Blundell, Nigel (1988), The World's Most Infamous Murders, Mass Market Paperback, ISBN 0-425-10887-2

External links

• The official Keith Bennett website