Moors Killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
By James Donahue
It was in 1963 that Hindley, 21, and Brady, 23, moved in together in Manchester, England, because of their mutual fascination with killing and death. They shared an interest in books of the macabre, collected guns, and talked about launching a life of crime, possibly as bank robbers. Hindley even used money she earned from various menial jobs to purchase a van that they planned to use for the robberies.
Anyone who might have known this odd couple at that time might well have guessed that they were heading for a life of serious trouble.
It was on October 7, 1965, that 17-year-old David Smith, the brother-in-law to Hindley, called the police from a telephone booth in Manchester to report a murder. He said he had watched his sister’s boyfriend, Ian Brady, kill Edward Evans with an ax in the house Brady and Hindley were sharing. He said Brady then asked Smith to help him hide the body because Brady had sprained his ankle in his murderous struggle with Evans.
Police showed up at the house, questioned Brady and Hindley, and eventually found Evan’s body wrapped in plastic behind a locked door to a spare bedroom. Thus began one of England’s more sensational serial murder investigations.
It turned out that Evans was the last of at least five random killings of children between 10 and 17 that had occurred in the Greater Manchester area between 1963 and 1965. The problem was that confessions of the other murders were only slowly leaked, either by things the two told police or news reporters who came to the jail to do interviews.
Three other victims were discovered in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. They were Pauline Reade, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The fifth victim’s body, that of Keith Bennett, has never been found. All were sexually assaulted by Brady before they were either strangled or bludgeoned to death.
The bodies were slowly recovered after days of digging possible burial sites in the moor by literally hundreds of police officers.
Later, after both Brady and Hindley were sentenced to life terms in prison, Brady began confessing to even more killings. Police said they had no records of such people even going missing and dismissed the confessions as some kind of game Brady was playing.
Hindley died of pneumonia in prison in 2002. Brady, now 77, was declared criminally insane. He is still confined in high security at Ashworth Hospital.
By James Donahue
It was in 1963 that Hindley, 21, and Brady, 23, moved in together in Manchester, England, because of their mutual fascination with killing and death. They shared an interest in books of the macabre, collected guns, and talked about launching a life of crime, possibly as bank robbers. Hindley even used money she earned from various menial jobs to purchase a van that they planned to use for the robberies.
Anyone who might have known this odd couple at that time might well have guessed that they were heading for a life of serious trouble.
It was on October 7, 1965, that 17-year-old David Smith, the brother-in-law to Hindley, called the police from a telephone booth in Manchester to report a murder. He said he had watched his sister’s boyfriend, Ian Brady, kill Edward Evans with an ax in the house Brady and Hindley were sharing. He said Brady then asked Smith to help him hide the body because Brady had sprained his ankle in his murderous struggle with Evans.
Police showed up at the house, questioned Brady and Hindley, and eventually found Evan’s body wrapped in plastic behind a locked door to a spare bedroom. Thus began one of England’s more sensational serial murder investigations.
It turned out that Evans was the last of at least five random killings of children between 10 and 17 that had occurred in the Greater Manchester area between 1963 and 1965. The problem was that confessions of the other murders were only slowly leaked, either by things the two told police or news reporters who came to the jail to do interviews.
Three other victims were discovered in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. They were Pauline Reade, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The fifth victim’s body, that of Keith Bennett, has never been found. All were sexually assaulted by Brady before they were either strangled or bludgeoned to death.
The bodies were slowly recovered after days of digging possible burial sites in the moor by literally hundreds of police officers.
Later, after both Brady and Hindley were sentenced to life terms in prison, Brady began confessing to even more killings. Police said they had no records of such people even going missing and dismissed the confessions as some kind of game Brady was playing.
Hindley died of pneumonia in prison in 2002. Brady, now 77, was declared criminally insane. He is still confined in high security at Ashworth Hospital.