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|
Brady flashed his lights as they passed sixteen
year old Pauline Reade, whom Hindley knew was a local girl. But despite the fact
that Hindley was on speaking terms with the doomed girl's mother, she lured her
into the van. After driving a short distance she offered to give her some pop
records as payment if she would come and help her look for the lost glove.
Pauline was on her way to a Saturday night dance but, being good natured and
friendly, she agreed to help.
They drove to the moors and pulled into a lay-by at Hollin Brow Knoll, a beauty
spot popular with courting couples and picnickers. There Hindley introduced
Pauline to Brady as her boyfriend. Brady told Hindley to drive the van further
on to a better parking place while he and Pauline walked on to the moor away
from the road to start the search. There Brady suddenly sexually assaulted the
off-guard teenager, then slashed her throat with knife.
In her confession, twenty four years later Myra Hindley told police that Brady
had returned to the van and asked her to follow him back on to the moor. There
she saw Pauline, her skirt pulled up and underwear undone, bleeding to death.
She said: "I could see lots of blood and Pauline was making a strange gurgling
noise. I felt sick, I wanted to go away."
Brady told Hindley to wait with the stricken girl and walked away. He returned a
few minutes later with a spade he had hidden in a drainage ditch several days
before.
By then Pauline was dead. Ordering Hindley back to the van, Brady set about
burying the still-clothed body of Pauline Reade in a make-shift grave. Brady
later returned to the van with the spade and the knife. He loaded his motorcycle
into the back of the van and the couple drove away from the scene of their first
dreadful dead. |
 |
[
Myra Hindley ] |
|
|
Back in the house they shared in the slum area of
Gorton, Brady burned the clothes he had been wearing on the fire grate, cleaned
the spade and tried to destroy the kitchen knife he had used to kill Pauline.
When it wouldn't break he took it out and threw it off a bridge into a brook
near Macclesfield.
During the clean up operation Brady told his lover that he had found four half
crowns in Pauline's coat pocket and had taken them and spent them on cigarettes
and sweets. At this time the death penalty was still in force for murder
committed during robbery. Hindley, terrified she might hang if they were ever
found out, insisted they return to the murder site the next day. In a bizarre
act they scattered four half crowns of their own in the long grass alongside
where Pauline lay cold in the wet ground. |
|
|
[
John Kilbride ]
A cheerful, good natured twelve year old John Kilbride lived with
his parents and six younger brothers and sisters in Smallshaw Lane in
the small town of Ashton-Under-Lyne. One of his regular tasks was to
visit his grandmother, to help around the house and garden. On the
afternoon 23rd November he had returned from his grandmother's, had
lunch and then gone to the local cinema with his friend before doing
errands in the marketplace. It was here that his friend last saw him.
A huge police search was launched, involving 500 posters and 2000
volunteers. His decomposed body, unidentifiable save for the clothing,
was found on Saddleworth Moor almost two years later. |
|
|
By November Brady was tingling with the urge to
kill again. He told Hindley: "It is time to do another one."
They hired a white Ford Anglia on Saturday 23rd November and set off to look for
another victim to slaughter. After driving around for several hours they
returned home and Brady loaded a spade and an unlicensed .22 rifle into the boot
of the car.
Hindley put on a black wig and a head scarf, fearing that her bleached blonde
hair might later identify her if they were spotted abducting a youngster from
the street.
They drove to a market place in Ashton-under-Lyne. There they spotted twelve
year old John Kilbride who was buying six pennyworth of broken biscuits from a
stall.
Brady approached the boy and asked if he would like to have some sherry. The boy
happily clambered into the front passenger seat next to Hindley while Brady got
in the back. They drove towards the moors.
Using the old ruse of a lost glove, Brady asked the wide-eyed twelve year old to
help with the search.
Fetching a torch and the spade from the boot Brady told his lover to drive away,
park in the nearby village of Greenfield, and return for them in half an hour.
Then, ushering little John to the side of the road they set off across the rough
ground and out of sight down a slope.
There Brady had suddenly attacked the boy. He later told Hindley that he had
intended to stab the boy using a knife with a sex-inch blade, but when he had
come to use it found it was too blunt for the job. Instead he pulled a length of
string from his pocket and strangled the crying child.
After sexually assaulting the boy Brady set to work digging another grave in the
boggy soil.
After finishing his ghoulish work, Brady found he had forgotten to put in one of
the victims shoes, lost in his desperate struggle for life, and took it back to
the car with him. |
|
|
 [
Ian Brady ]
Ian Brady, aged four. His mother claimed that his father had died before Ian
was born, but her assertion could never be verified. She revealed only that he
was a reporter for a Glasgow newspaper. |
|
|
Two years later when John Kilbride's remains were
found, detectives were baffled as to why he was only wearing one shoe.
Back at home that night the boy's shoe was burned along with the clothes Brady
had worn that day. The knife and string were destroyed and the spade cleaned.
A major police investigation followed the disappearance of John Kilbride. There
were newspaper and television appeals. Experienced detectives were sure he had
been abducted and murdered.
A huge operation to question thousands of shoppers from the market where he was
last seen was mounted, but no clues to his disappearance were found. For several
days the murderous couple were anxious when police organised a huge search of
moorland near Greenfield where Hindley had parked on the fatal evening, but the
hunt was called off a mile short of where John's body lay in a shallow grave.
In early 1964 Brady and Hindley brought an Austin A40 and later part-exchanged
it for a Mini pick up. By June Brady said he wanted to kill yet again. The
twisted couple set off looking for a new target. |
|
|
[
Keith Bennett ]
Keith Bennet, aged twelve, was the oldest of four children who lived with
their mother, Winnie and stepfather, Jimmie Johnson, at 29 Eston Street. On the
evening of his abduction he was on his usual fortnightly visit to his maternal
grandmother, who lived half a mile away. Concerned for his safety because he was
short-sighted and had recently broken his spectacles, his mother accompanied him
up to a few hundred metres from his destination. His grandmother never saw him,
but was not especially worried when he did not turn up, thinking his mother had
made different arrangements. It was only the next day when Keith did not return
home, that the police were informed. Keith's body has never been found. |
|
|
On 16th June they found what they were looking
for, another schoolboy. They were driving along a turning off Stockport Road
when they spotted Keith Bennett. Brady, in the back of the pick up, tapped on
the rear glass, the signal for Hindley to stop.
The story they had rehearsed this time was that they wanted some help to move
some heavy boxes from a shop. Keith Bennet, a good natured boy of twelve with a
Beatle hair cut and thick glasses, happily jumped into the passenger seat
alongside Hindley.
After a short distance Brady ordered his girlfriend to stop and asked the lad to
get into the back of the pickup with him. Keith happily complied.
The pick up headed for Saddleworth Moor and stopped at a point known as Hoe
Grain. The glove ruse was used again to get Keith to make his final walk to
death across the hummocks of heather and bracken on the deserted moor.
This time there was a variation in routine. Brady took his camera with him and
instead of driving away, Hindley locked the pick up and followed for a short
distance behind carrying a pair of binoculars.
They followed the course of a stream, known as Shiny Brook, until they were out
of sight and earshot of the road. There Brady stopped and signaled to Hindley to
use the binoculars to check for any possible witnesses.
When she gave the all clear signal, Brady and the boy disappeared into a dip and
Hindley sat down to wait. After about half an hour her man reappeared - alone.
He was carrying a spade. He had hidden it on the moor days before as part of his
preparation for the killing. |
|
|
[
Myra Hindley ]
Myra at about eight. She attended Peacock Street Primary School from the age
of five. At first her grandmother would accompany her on the three minute walk
there and back, but when she was seven she was considered old enough to go on
her own. |
|
|
Brady told her he had strangled Keith with a piece
of string, then candidly told her he had sexually assaulted him. He had then dug
a deep hole and buried him.
He had also taken sickening pictures of his young victim seconds after death.
Brady developed the film at home and showed his lover the pictures. In her
confession twenty three years later Hindley told detectives: "The boy was lying
on his back... there was blood on him so I wouldn't look closely. I couldn't say
if he was alive or dead when the picture was taken."
The next day the couple went to work as if nothing unusual had happened. |
|
|
[
Lesley Ann Downey ]
This ten year old girl was the second of four children who shared a council
flat with their separated mother, Ann Downey, and her husband-to-be, Alan West.
They lived in Charnley Walk in the Ancoats area of Manchester. On Boxing Day
1964, at about 4.30pm, she and two of her brothers went to the funfair with
three other children. About an hour later, having spent their money, the others
returned home but Lesley stayed on. She was last seen by a school friend near
the dodgem cars. The police were called in later that evening, and a relentless
search was conducted over the next few weeks. |
|
|
On Boxing Day 1964 wickedness had welled up once
more in Brady and he told his lover they should find another victim. A
fairground in the Miles Platting district of Manchester seemed to offer a good
opportunity. It was there, with Hindley once again wearing her ill fitting dark
wig disguise, that they spotted ten year old Lesley Ann watching the dodgem
cars.
Brady and Hindley were carrying boxes to look as if they were holding Christmas
gifts or shopping. Checking first to see if she was waiting for anyone to get
off the rides, they made their approach. Lesley had in fact gone to the fair
with her two younger brothers. But they had got separated in the crowds. Now she
was all alone.
As they walked close to her Hindley dropped her parcels on the floor and asked
little Lesley to help her pick them up and carry them to their car. The child
was happy to oblige. At the car they asked her if she would come home with them
to help them unload. Again dark haired Lesley, showing not the slightest
suspicion of the strangers, agreed to help and got in the car.
What took place in the follow hours represents some of the most diabolical acts
in the annals of crime and detection.
The couple had recently moved to a new house on a large council overspill estate
in the Manchester suburb of Hattersley. In the bedroom Brady had already set up
not only his camera and lighting equipment, but also a tape recorder. He wanted
to record the sounds of the child's torture and death as well as the sights.
Hindley asked Lesley to carry the boxes upstairs to the room where Brady had
already gone.
Once there Brady pounced on the girl and tried to tear her clothes off. The tape
recorder was running and the plaintive cries of Lesley asking him to stop,
begging him not to hurt her, as he forced her to strip and to pose for
pornographic pictures of the vilest nature, are burned into the memories of all
who have heard them. Brady had forced a handkerchief into her mouth to muffle
the cries.
Police were later to find a series of pictures of Lesley naked save for her
shoes and socks and with a scarf wound round her face by Brady in a crude
attempt to mask her identity. He had planned to peddle the pictures to child sex
perverts.
At the end of the terrifying photo session Brady told Hindley to run a bath so
they could 'clean the girl up'.
Hindley later told detectives that she waited in the bathroom for about twenty
minutes and when Brady didn't bring the girl in she went back to the bedroom to
be confronted with a horrific sight. Lesley Ann Downey was lying half on and
half off the bed; Brady had raped and strangled her.
It was Boxing Day night. It was very quiet and bitterly cold. As they drove
towards their burial ground on Saddleworth Moor the weather got worse. They ran
into a blizzard and were forced to turn back when the road ahead was blocked by
cars trapped in drifting snow. They returned home and took the body of Lesley in
again. Brady, blood still on his hands, feverishly set about developing the
pictures of the bestial session with the girl. The next day gritting lorries had
been out. The Mini with its pathetic cargo was able to make it to Saddleworth
Moor. There Brady lifted out the tiny corpse and sprinted into the darkness
towards Hollin Brow Knoll, close to where Pauline Reade had been buried.
Describing the Lesley case years later, Hindley told police: 'She went with us
like a lamb to the slaughter. All the children did. When they saw a woman with
Ian they lost all fear. They were sure nothing evil would happen to them if they
were with a woman as well as a man.' |
|
|
[
Maureen Hindley & David Smith ]
Four years younger than her sister Myra, Maureen imitated the way Myra
dressed and did her hair. She also smoked and swore like Myra. Her boyfriend,
David Smith, was considered a good catch by the girls, but regarded as a trouble
maker by the adults - even Myra did not approve of him. |
|
|
It was the Moors Murderers fifth murder that was
to bring them down. By October 1965 Brady was feeling the pangs of the killing
urge once more. But this one was to be different. This was not to be able sexual
gratification or the need to dominate anyone directly. This was to be more
subtle.
Once again the choice of victim was to be incidental. But the aim behind it was
to be far more devious. This was to be an act of bonding between Brady and
another young man he wanted to have complete power over, Hindley's seventeen
year old brother in law, David Smith.
Smith had married Myra's younger sister Maureen, who was nineteen, when she fell
pregnant. The baby had died in infancy. Over the previous two years the two
couples had spent much time together.
Smith was another violent tearaway with several convictions for wounding, theft,
and burglary already under his belt. This impressionable young delinquent was in
awe of Brady, whom he thought was smart, sophisticated, daring - an accomplished
criminal who had guns and bragged about plans for spectacular robberies.
Brady was turned on by Smith's adulation. He took him to the moors to practice
with his revolvers and fantasise about the big stick ups they planned to do.
Brady boasted to him that he had already killed, telling him how easy it was.
Now Brady decided to drag Smith into the plot that would give him power over him
forever. He would implicate Smith in the murder. |
|
|
[
Edward Evans ]
This good-looking fashionable seventeen year old lived with his parents and
younger brother in the Ardwick district of Manchester. He worked as an
appreciate with AEI, a large electrical company. On the night of his murder, he
had told his parents that he was planning to go with a friend to a football
match at the Old Trafford ground. But his friend never turned up. Finding Evans
hanging around at Manchester Central Station, Brady persuaded him to get into
Hindley's car and drive back with them to their home, where the murder took
place. At the trial Brady claimed that Evans, whom he had met on previous
occasions, was homosexual - although Evan's parents always denied this. |
|
|
On 6th October 1965 Brady decided to pick up his
young apprentice, Edward Evans, in a bar in central Manchester and bring him
back to the house in Hattersley for the evening. The plot was to get back to the
house at the same time, murder the unfortunate Evans in front of him to
implicate him and make him subservient to Brady for ever.
Hindley lured Smith back to the house by saying Brady had laid in several
bottles of wine for him. At the house he witnessed a scene of unmitigated
savagery. As he waited in the kitchen he suddenly heard a terrible scream from
the living room. Then he heard Myra shout: 'Dave, help him.' Thinking it was
Brady who was under attack he rushed into the room to see Ian Brady raining
blows upon a blood soaked young stranger with a hand axe.
Smith was later to tell the police: 'It was a horrible scene. The lad was
screaming and trying to get away. Ian just kept hitting him terrible blows on
the head, neck and shoulders with the axe. I was frightened to death, my stomach
was churning. There was blood everywhere, on the walls, the fireplace, all
over.'
Eventually Brady finished the job by strangling Evans with a length of electric
flex. Then he turned to Hindley who had witnessed the whole attack, and said:
'Well, its done. It's the messiest yet. Normally it only takes one blow.'
Brady then told Smith to help him clear up the mess. They carried Evans upstairs
in a plastic sheet.
As they did so, Brady laughed and made jokes. He quipped: 'Eddie's a dead
weight, isn't he?' Then peering into the gashes in the man's skull, he joked:
'He sure is brainy, isn't he?' |
|
|
[
David Smith ]
Although far from being an innocent, Smith knew that he had to talk to the
police. It was his terrified phone call that gave the police their long awaited
break in the cases of several missing children. |
|
|
When they got the dead man into a square bedroom
Brady again told Smith how he was surprised it had taken so long to dispatch of
Evans.
'I mean, just feel the weight of that,' he said, handing Smith the axe. Smith
was naive, but not a complete fool. He realised he was the victim of a set up.
Brady was now trying to get Smith's fingerprints on the axe, too, to fully
implement him. Brady said the body should be taken to Saddleworth Moor to be
buried straight away. But in the ferocity of the attack, he had sprained his
ankle and he told Smith to be back to help him with the job of disposal the next
day.
Smith, now in sheer terror and convinced Brady might fly at him with the hatchet
at any moment, decided on a desperate plan. He ran home and woke his wife,
Myra's sister Maureen. At 6.10 the next morning police received a 999 call from
a phone box on the council estate at Hattersley. Five minutes later a patrol car
pulled up and found a terrified young man and his frightened wife begging for
help. The man was clutching a carving knife and a screwdriver to defend himself.
It was David and Maureen Smith.
They were taken to Hyde police station. There they blurted out a horrific story
of murdered children, guns and axe attacks to startled detectives.
Superintendent Bob Talbot was sure something was seriously wrong at the Brady
house. Smith was still shaking in terror from the bloody slaying he had
witnessed just hours before.
Talbot decided to investigate. He was particularly worried about the talk of
guns in the house. If police came openly to the door it might provoke a bloody
confrontation. So, disguised as a baker's roundsman, complete with a basket of
loaves, Superintendent Talbot knocked at the back door of the house at 8.40 in
the morning. Hindley, who was getting ready to leave for work, opened the door.
The unarmed officer, backed up by a burly sergeant, quickly pushed past her into
the house. In the front room they found Brady lying on a sofa bed in his pyjamas,
writing a sick not to his boss explaining he had sprained his ankle.
Upstairs they found a locked bedroom. When Brady was asked to open it he was
reluctant to do so. When the officers told him to open it or they would kick it
down, he gave way. There on the floor, trussed with string, was the butchered
body of Edward Evans. The detectives quickly found the axe in a brown carrier
bag. In a box nearby were Brady's Webley and Smith and Wesson handguns - fully
loaded.
Brady was arrested and charged with murder. Hindley was taken in for
questioning, but it would be another five days before she was charged with
murder.
At first detectives found no immediate clues about other murders, but as on CID
man mused over a list of names in an exercise book belonging to Brady one name
jumped out at him. John Kilbride. |
|
|
[
Ian Brady ]
Many books on the Moors Murders case imply that Brady's attitude towards
Hindley was cold and manipulative. In fact, their relationship seems to have
been exceptionally close. Brady is on record as saying that the relationship was
so
close that they were virtually telepathic. |
|
|
He was the young lad who had mysteriously vanished
from the Ashton market two years before. If Brady had killed Kilbride, could he
have murdered Lesley Ann Downey and Keith Bennet as well? At Brady's house the
detectives soon found something else interesting. A huge collection of
photographs. Some were of Hindley and her pet dogs. Some were rather badly done
home pornography starring Hindley and Brady. But there were scores of scenes of
the moors between Manchester and Leeds. Why?
Smith had already told them Brady had taken him there for target practice with
his revolvers and had also claimed to him to have hidden the bodies of his
murder victims there.
There was also a strange tape recording. In it a woman - Hindley - read out loud
to a young girl the newspaper reports about the hunt for a missing girl called
Lesley Ann Downey. The police asked for the help of the BBC to enhance the
tapes, eradicating static and background noise. They had to find out who the
little girl was.
Within days they had the answer. It was a young neighbour of Myra Hindley, who
had been taken for a ride to Saddleworth Moor on Christmas Eve 1964, just two
days before Lesley Ann's body had been taken there to be buried.
She showed detectives the spot where she had been taken. The area tallied
closely with the area pointed out to them by David Smith, who had been to the
moors to practice shooting with Brady's guns.
A huge search of the area was ordered using 150 officers and tracker dogs. They
were told to look for any signs of the ground having been disturbed or dug over. |
|
|
[
Myra Hindley ] |
|
|
On 16th October 1965, a constable made a startling
discovery. There was a length of white bone sticking up from the soil. It was a
human arm bone, part of Lesley's remains. Her body, naked, lay less than two
feet down close to the A635 road from Holmfirth to Greenfield. Her clothes were
piled at her feet.
But could the detectives link her murder with Hindley and Brady?
Two days later detectives were to get the breakthrough that was to sink the
Moors killers once and for all. An officer checking through a prayer book
belonging to Hindley entitled The Garden of the Soul found left luggage receipts
hidden in the spine.
The murder team remembered that Smith had explained how Brady had taken
suitcases of belongings he considered might incriminate him to the left luggage
lockers of Manchester Central Station on the eve of every murder. Brady saw it
as a form of insurance against the police finding anything at home should he be
arrested while actually committing a murder.
Within hours the squad had found the cases. They contained a gold mine of
information. There was the paraphernalia of armed robbery, coshes, wigs, masks,
details of banks, spare ammunition for Brady's guns. There were books about
sadism and torture, and amateurish photos of Hindley in obscene poses. There
were scores more pictures taken on the moors, some featuring Hindley and the
couple's two dogs. But the worst was yet to come.
There were pictures of a young girl, about ten years old, naked, gagged being
subjected to vile sex abuse. And there were spools of tape. |
|
|
[
Myra Hindley ]
Hindley in a school photo. She failed her 11-plus examination so was sent to
Ryder Brow Secondary Modern,
where her attendance record was poor, but otherwise she did well. Her favourite
subject was English, and she loved poetry. Her male schoolmates nicknamed her
'Square Arse' on account of broad hips. |
|
|
The tapes contained the pitiful sounds of Lesley
Ann Downey being subjected to her ordeal by Brady. For thirteen minutes
detectives listened as she sobbed and begged Brady to let her go, implored him
to stop molesting her, and pleaded for her life. At the end of the recording
hardened officers who thought they had seen it all, wept openly. The tape was
later to provide the most devastating evidence ever produced in an English court
of law.
Meanwhile the search of the moors for more graves continued, aided by the albums
of scene shots from Brady's own collection.
Five days after the discovery of Lesley's remains, on 21st October, they were
rewarded when they found the grave of John Kilbride. He had been buried on the
opposite side of the A635 stream bed, about 400 yards from Lesley Ann. The
detectives realised that one picture in the Brady collection, of Hindley and her
dogs sitting on top of an earthy mound, was in fact of her sitting on John
Kilbride's grave. |
|
|
[
Ian Brady ]
Ian Brady's violent prison rages in prison saw him transferred first to
Broadmoor and then to Broad Green maximum security hospitals for the criminally
insane. |
|
|
The search for more bodies continued, but by
November weather conditions on the moors grew so atrocious that the police could
not continue. Detectives decided they had enough to charge both Brady and
Hindley with murdering all three of the victims whose bodies had been
discovered, Edward Evans, John Kilbride and Lesley Ann Downey.
The trial began at Chester Assizes, held in the city's most famous castle,
beginning on 19th April 1966. At their previous court hearing before magistrates
in Manchester scores of police had struggled to hold back a crowd of hundreds of
ordinary men and women baying for the blood of the Moors Monsters. |
|
|
[
Myra Hindley ] |
|
|
In jail on remand both had to be held in solitary
confinement under permanent guard after other prisoners swore they would lynch
them. Their food was even tested for poison before being brought from the
kitchens. No killer in Britain in modern times have caused such a storm of
hatred among the general public.
Former Detective Superintendent Joe Mounsey of Lancashire police who worked on
the case said: 'The public hatred for them had to be experienced to be believed.
There were serious worries about them being got at before they even stood trial.
If the mob had got to them there is no doubt they would have ripped Brady and
Hindley limb from limb.'
Following anonymous threats to shoot them even as they stood trial, the dock
surrounding the couple was encase in four inch thick bullet proof glass. |
|
|
[
David Smith & Maureen Hindley ]
David Smith leaves court with his wife, Myra Hindley's sister, Maureen. Smith
was taken on as a kind of 'apprentice' by Brady, but was sickened by the older
man's actions. |
|
|
When asked to swear on the Bible, they refused to
do so, saying they were atheists. Both pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Despite the fierce prosecution questioning from the Attorney General, Sir
Frederick Elwyn-Jones QC, both Brady and Hindley stuck to their guns, and denied
any involvement. He took the witness stand for eight hours and she for six. Both
tried to shift the blame to David Smith, the man who had finally turned them in
and who was now chief witness for the prosecution.
In his summing up, the judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, told the jury: 'If
what the prosecution has said is right then you are dealing with two sadistic
killers of the utmost depravity... could anyone be as wicked as that?'
It took the jury only a few hours to decide that Hindley and Brady were indeed
as wicked as that. They found them unanimously guilty on all charges bar one.
They accepted that Hindley had not killed John Kilbride. Brady was guilty of all
three murders, Hindley to the murders of Evans and Lesley Ann, and to harbouring
her lover after the murder of John Kilbride.
He was sentenced to three terms of life, she to two of life imprisonment plus
seven years for the harbouring sentence. Hanging for murder had been abolished
only a few months earlier.
With huge crowds still howling for vengeance outside the court, they were
whisked away in armoured prison vans - he to Durham jail, she to the women's
jail at Holloway, London. Neither is likely ever to be released. |
|
|
[
Ian Brady ] |
|
|
After the trial in 1965, Brady was sent to Durham
and placed in solitary confinement for his own protection. Here, he studied
German, obtaining a GCE 'O' Level, and also learned to use a braille machine for
the benefit of the blind. Despite police pressure over the unsolved murders of
Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, he continued to remain silent. He campaigned
vigorously for visiting rights for Myra Hindley, even commencing a series of
hunger strikes in 1969 - but the Home Office denied him his requests. From 1985
he was held at Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital in Merseyside. Increasing
psychotic tendencies were reflected in his hallucinations and his paranoid
believe that the Home Office was intent on poisoning him. |
|
|
[
Myra Hindley ] |
|
|
After Myra Hindley was sent to Holloway Prison in
1965, her enforced separation from Brady gradually broke down their
relationship. On 12th September, she was escorted by the Governor, Dorothy Wing,
on a stroll across Hampstead Heath, which gave rise to fierce public hostility,
fuelled by the media. In 1974, she attempted an escape with help of prison
officer Patricia Cairns, who had become her lover. Increasing attempts to show
that she was a reformed character were evident in her return to Catholicism as
well as her studies, which earner her a BA degree in Humanities from the Open
University in 1980. But in August 1985, she was refused parole - and the case
was not to be reviewed for another five years. In February 1987, she confessed
to Topping her involvement in the murder of the two missing children, Pauline
Reade and Keith Bennett, who were buried on Saddleworth Moor, and even helped in
the search in July 1987 - although only Pauline Reade's body was found. Her
denunciation of Brady was sealed by an article which she wrote in her own
defence, published in The Guardian on 19th December 1995. Meanwhile, the
controversial issue remains whether Hindley should be released. It seems
unlikely, however, that any Home Secretary would risk taking an action that
could create public hostility, as well as endanger Hindley's safety. |
|
|
[
David Smith ]
David Smith never managed to shake off the slur on his character that
resulted from his association with the Moors Murderers, despite making every
effort to help the police recover the bodies. He has vowed to keep helping until
all the murders are solved. |
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Ostracized and confronted with hostility from
fellow citizens in Hattersley, David Smith was unable to get any work. In 1969,
he was provoked into repeatedly stabbing a neighbour, William Lees, for which he
was sent down for three years. On his release, despite the fact that he felt he
was a changed man, his wife Maureen left him and his three sons. In 1972, he
administered an overdose of sleeping pills to his father, who was suffering from
cancer. Smith was found guilty of manslaughter, but given a nominal two day
prison sentence. David later married Mary, with whom he had another child. |
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 [
Pauline Reade's Funeral ] |
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For Pauline Reade's mother, Joan, the twenty four
years of suspense had taken its toll, while an inpatient at Springfield Mental
Hospital in Manchester, she attended her daughter's funeral at Gorton cemetery
in August 1987. |
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[
John Kilbride's father, Patrick Kilbride ] |
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John Kilbride's mother, Sheila, who was divorced
five years after the loss of her son, has been grief-stricken ever since, while
John's brother Patrick, and father, Patrick, have sworn that they will kill
Brady or Hindley if they are ever released. |
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