The 14-year-old girl had suffered a turbulent childhood. [102] At the committal hearing on 6 December, Brady was charged with the murders of Evans, Kilbride, and Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Evans and Downey, as well as with harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed Kilbride. [15], In January 1959, Brady applied for, and was offered, a clerical job at Millwards, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton. [35] The dock was fitted with bullet proof glass to protect Brady and Hindley because it was feared that someone might try and kill them. [132] It ended: "I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie's Hospital. Almost 20 years after being sent to prison, he confessed to killing two more. I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady. [50] Hindley hired a vehicle a week after Kilbride went missing, and again on 21 December, apparently to make sure the burial sites at Saddleworth Moor had not been disturbed. [178], Although Brady refused to work with Ashworth's psychiatrists, he occasionally corresponded with people outside the hospitalsubject to prison authorities' censorship[179] including Lord Longford, writer Colin Wilson, and various journalists. Smith then went to the police with his story, including Brady having mentioned that more bodies were buried on Saddleworth Moor. At first, Smith refused to name the newspaper, risking contempt of court; when he eventually identified the News of the World, Jones, as Attorney General, immediately promised an investigation. [148], In April 1987, news of Hindley's confession became public. [26] At 17, she became engaged after a short courtship, but called it off several months later after deciding the young man was immature and unable to provide her with the life she wanted. Cairns was sentenced to six years in jail for her part in the plot. He complained bitterly about conditions at Ashworth, which he hated. [82], Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Stalybridge police division went to Wardle Brook Avenue, accompanied by a detective sergeant. "[133], Police visited Hindley then being held in HM Prison Cookham Wood in Kent a few days after she received the letter, and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help by looking at photographs and maps to try to identify spots she had visited with Brady. They were convicted of three murders in 1966, and confessed to two further. Myra Hindley did not have a child at the time. She was never released and died in prison in 2002. According to Wilson, "it was because these attempts to express remorse were thrown back at him that he began to contemplate suicide". She divorced Smith in 1973,[235] and married a lorry driver, Bill Scott, with whom she had a daughter. Hindley, along with her boyfriend Ian Brady . Following the first . Brady and Hindley killed five children - Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans all aged between 10 and 17, and at least four of whom were sexually. [166] In 2017, the police asked a court to order that two locked briefcases owned by Brady be opened, arguing that they might contain clues to the location of Bennett's body; the application was declined on the grounds that no prosecution was likely to result. [146] Hindley made her second visit to the moor in March 1987. [222] Just prior to this, on 15November 2002, Hindley, aged 60 and a chain smoker, died from bronchial pneumonia at West Suffolk Hospital. They were both jailed for life. [149], Over the next few months interest in the search waned, but Hindley's clue had focused efforts on a specific area. The two couples began to see each other more regularly, but usually only on Brady's terms.[59][60]. Even on her death bed, Hindley refused to give . The trip to the Lake District was the first of many outings. [120] Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims. Since her daughter's death, she had campaigned to ensure that Hindley remained in prison, and doctors said that the stress had contributed to the severity of her illness. Four months later, 12-year-old John Kilbride disappeared, never to be seen again. Myra Hindley died in 2002. In November 1986, Bennett's mother wrote to Hindley begging to know what had happened to her son, a letter that Hindley seemed to be "genuinely moved" by. Childkiller Myra Hindley was a b*tch and I slapped her for singing, says 'Black Widow' Keith Bennett, 12, was on his way to his grandmother's house on June 16, 1964, when Hindley enticed him. She was only a toddler when her young mother, Mary, left home, married again, and began to raise a new family. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) reopened the investigation, now to be headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, head of GMP's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Child killer Myra Hindley accused fellow Moors Murderer Ian Brady of drugging, raping and beating her. [5] Aged 9, he visited Loch Lomond with his family, where he reportedly discovered an affinity for the outdoors and a few months later the family moved to a new council house on an overspill estate at Pollok. Each was brought before the court separately and remanded into custody for a week. [170] After seeing a photograph of a jaw bone, a spokesperson for the police said, of the identity of the remains, that it was "far too early to be certain". [35] She expressed concern at some aspects of Brady's character; in a letter to a childhood friend, she mentioned an incident where she had been drugged by Brady, but also wrote of her obsession with him. "Suffer Little Children" is a song by the English rock band the . Brady was also convicted of the murder of. [208], Hindley was told that she should spend twenty-five years in prison before being considered for parole. She was present, under heavy sedation, at the funeral of her daughter on 7 August 1987. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. On his release from prison, Smith moved in with a 15-year-old girl who became his second wife and won custody of his three sons. He once offered to donate one of his kidneys to "someone, anyone who needed one",[193] but was blocked from doing so. She worked as a clerk at an . He was regarded by his colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. March 3, 2023 2:01am. [112][113], Smith was the chief prosecution witness. He made it clear that he never wished to be released and repeatedly asked to be allowed to die. Maureen managed to repair the relationship with her mother, and moved into a council property in Gorton. [215] She rejected the idea and in early 1998 was moved to the medium-security HM Prison Highpoint;[216] the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom. They drove to Brady and Hindley's home at Wardle Brook Avenue, where they relaxed over a bottle of wine. Subjected to whispering campaigns and petitions to remove her from the estate where she lived, Maureen received no support from her familyher mother had supported Myra during the trial. On 26th December 1964, another child, Lesley Ann Downey, ten years of age, went missing from the local fair and was never found. To help date the photos, detectives had a veterinary surgeon examine the dog to determine his age; the examination required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover. Hindley plead not guilty to all of the murders. [228][229] The Manchester Evening News reported on possible fears that this would result in visitors choosing to avoid or vandalise the park. [202][203], Hindley lodged an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction immediately after the trial. In June 1964, 12-year-old Keith Bennett followed. [224][225] Camera crews "stood rank and file behind steel barriers" outside, but none of Hindley's relatives were among the small congregation of eight to ten people who attended a short service at Cambridge crematorium. Ian Brady was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, as Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 to Margaret "Peggy" Stewart, an unmarried tea room waitress. In 2011, he co-authored the book Witness with biographer Carol Ann Lee. [108] National and international journalists covering the trial booked up most of the city's hotel rooms. Myra Hindley was born on the 23rd of July, 1942. [115] During the trial, the judge and defence barristers repeatedly questioned Smith and his wife about the nature of the arrangement. [70] When they reached the moor Brady took Kilbride with him while Hindley waited in the car; Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and tried to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before strangling him with a shoelace or string. She died in 2002 in West Suffolk Hospital, aged 60, after serving 36 years in prison. In 1987, Hindley again became the center of media attention, with the public release of her full confession, in which she admitted her involvement in all five murders. The child had been earning some pocket money in the market, and was offered a lift home by Hindley. He called Brady "wicked beyond belief" and said he saw no reasonable possibility of reform for him, though he did not think the same necessarily true of Hindley once "removed from [Brady's] influence". [159][160] Hindley told Topping that she knew nothing of these killings. [99] They made a two-minute appearance on 28 October, and were again remanded into custody. I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible. [186] Brady subsequently went on hunger strike, but while English law allows patients to refuse treatment, those being treated for mental disorders under the Mental Health Act 1983 have no such right if the treatment is for their mental disorder. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. What they were doing was out of the scope of most people's understanding, beyond the comprehension of the workaday neighbours who were more interested in how they were going to pay the gas bill or what might happen in the next episode of Coronation Street or Doctor Who. When she denied that she had a husband or that a man was in the house, Talbot identified himself. The story tells a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case, two young men from well-to-do families who attempt to commit the perfect murder of a 12-year-old boy, and who escape the death penalty because of their age. In partnership with Ian Brady, she committed the rapes and murders of five small children. Brady, who said that he did not want to be released, was rarely mentioned in the news, but Hindley's insistent desire to be released made her a figure of public hateespecially as she failed to confess to involvement in the Reade and Bennett murders for twenty years. Deciding to "better himself", he obtained a set of instruction manuals on book-keeping from a local public library, with which he "astonished" his parents by studying alone in his room for hours. [100], The investigating officers suspected Brady and Hindley of murdering other missing children and teenagers who had disappeared from areas in and around Manchester over the previous few years, and the search for bodies continued after the discovery of Kilbride's body, but with winter setting in it was called off in November. Once Kilbride was inside Hindley's hired Ford Anglia car, Brady said they would have to make a detour to their home for the sherry. [220] Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered the GMP to find new charges against Hindley to prevent her release from prison. Brady read books, including Teach Yourself German and Mein Kampf, as well as works on Nazi atrocities. After the drowning death of a close male friend when she was 15, Hindley left school and converted to Roman Catholicism. At some point Brady sent Hindley to fetch Smith, her brother-in-law. After work he instructed her to drive a borrowed van around while he followed on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight. [93][94] Downey's mother later confirmed that the recording, too, was of her daughter. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered Kilbride. [195], The mother of the remaining undiscovered victim, Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within 20 yards (18m) of her son's body but the authorities would not allow it. Characterised by the press as "the most evil woman in Britain",[1] Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but was never released. [83] Talbot explained that he was investigating "an act of violence involving guns" that was reported to have taken place the previous evening. [134] She showed particular interest in photos of the area around Hollin Brown Knoll and Shiny Brook, but said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor. [107], The 14-day trial began in a specially-prepared court room at Chester Assizes before Justice Fenton Atkinson, on 19 April 1966. Their next victim, John Kilbride, was killed on 23 November. [233] After declining to prosecute the News of the World, Attorney General Sir Elwyn Jones came under political pressure to impose new regulations on the press, but was reluctant to legislate on "chequebook journalism". The bodies of two of the victims were discovered in 1965, in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; a third grave was discovered there in 1987, more than twenty years after Brady and Hindley's trial. Hindley's 17-year-old brother-in-law tipped off the police about her crimes. The book, Brady's analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in the UK. There were always suspicions there may have been more. [12] As he was still under 18, Brady was sentenced to two years in a borstal for "training". [187][189], Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight simply to die. In private documents handed over hours before her death, Hindley describes violent. Once presented with some of the details that Hindley had provided of Reade's abduction, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but on one condition: that immediately afterwards he be given the means to commit suicide, a request with which it was impossible for the authorities to comply. [86] She refused to make any statement about Evans's death beyond claiming it had been an accident, and was allowed to go home on the condition that she return the next day. She also asked to join a pistol club, but she was a poor shot and allegedly often bad-tempered, so Clitheroe told her that she was unsuitable; she did though manage to purchase a Webley .45 and a Smith & Wesson .38 from other members of the club. [121], The sixteen-minute tape recording[97][c] of Downey, on which the voices of Brady and Hindley were audible, was played in open court. Brady returned alone after about thirty minutes, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying; Reade's clothes were in disarray and she had been nearly decapitated[67] by two cuts to the throat, including a four-inch incision across her voice box "inflicted with considerable force" and into which the collar of her coat and a throat chain had been pushed. Their living situation deteriorated further when Hindley's sister, Maureen, was born in August 1946, and the following year five-year-old Myra was sent to live nearby with her grandmother. [30] Hindley began a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady, to whom she eventually spoke for the first time on 27 July. I'm only sorry I didn't do it decades ago, and I'm eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin. Brady got introduced to Myra in the early 1960s, and she quickly fell in love with him. [84] As Brady was getting dressed, he said, "Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand. It was simply beyond the realms of most people's comprehension, and this is why they managed to get away with it for so long. Brady later claimed that he had picked up Evans for a sexual encounter. [20] He had been known as a hard man while in the army and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her to fight and insisted that she stick up for herself. MOORS Murderer, Myra Hindley was dubbed "the most hated woman in Britain" after her crimes. [238] Downey's mother died in 1999 from cancer of the liver. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,.css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}contact us! [2] The trial judge, Justice Fenton Atkinson, described Brady and Hindley in his closing remarks as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity". So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic. [267][268], According to the 2020 television documentary Rose West & Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story with Trevor McDonald, Hindley and another British serial murderer, Rosemary West, "grew close in jail, bonding over their similar crimes, then had an affair, which cooled as they became rivals to be 'prison royalty.'"[269]. Finally, in October 1965, police were alerted to the duo by Hindley's 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith. By 2 December, Brady had been charged with the murders of Kilbride, Downey and Evans. It was displayed at the Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy of Art in London from 8 September to 28 December 1997. [176], The trial judge recommended that Brady's life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries agreed with that decision. She ran errands, typed, made tea, and was well liked enough that when she lost her first week's wage packet, the other girls took up a collection to replace it. I don't think anything could hurt me more than this has. She was the first child of Bob Hindley and his wife, Hettie. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, but in January 1985 Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased her tariff to thirty years. [145], At about the same time, Johnson sent Hindley another letter, again pleading with her to assist the police in finding the body of her son Keith. Smith later told the police: I waited about a minute or two then suddenly I heard a hell of a scream; it sounded like a woman, really high-pitched. [77] Throughout the previous year Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith, who had become "in awe" of Brady, something that increasingly worried Hindley as she felt it compromised their safety.[78]. Brady had a girlfriend, Evelyn Grant, but their relationship ended when he threatened her with a flick knife after she visited a dance with another boy. [157], Soon after his first visit to the moor, Brady wrote a letter to a BBC reporter, giving some sketchy details of five additional deaths that he claimed to have been involved in: a man in the Piccadilly area of Manchester, another victim on Saddleworth Moor, two more in Scotland, and a woman whose body was allegedly dumped in a canal. [209] In February 1985, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Brittan that his proposed minimum sentences of thirty years for Hindley and forty years for Brady were too short, saying, "I do not think that either of these prisoners should ever be released from custody. After confessing to these additional murders, Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist in the search for the graves. "[85], Though Hindley was not initially arrested, she demanded to go with Brady to the police station, taking her dog. In 1960s Britain, people did not kidnap and murder children for fun. [174] He spent nineteen years in mainstream prisons before being diagnosed as a psychopath in November 1985 and sent to the high-security Park Lane Hospital, now Ashworth Hospital, in Maghull, Merseyside;[175] he made it clear that he never wanted to be released. I hope she goes to Hell. Then I heard Myra shout, "Dave, help him," very loud. Brady and his partner, Myra Hindley, tortured and murdered five children, aged 10 to 17, between July 1963 and October 1965, burying some of their victims' bodies on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester. [151], Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Reade and Bennett, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted. Instead, the pair took them to Saddleworth Moor, an isolated area some 15 miles outside of Manchester. At the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forcibly posed for photographs before being raped and killed, perhaps strangled with a piece of string. He was picked up by a police car from the phone box and taken to Hyde police station, where he told officers what he had witnessed in the night. In 1980, Maureen suffered a brain haemorrhage; Hindley was allowed to visit her in hospital, but arrived an hour after her death. [243] He remarried and moved to Lincolnshire with his three sons,[231][244] and was exonerated of any participation in the Moors murders by Hindley's confession in 1987. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. [104] The proceedings continued before three magistrates in Hyde over an eleven-day period during December, at the end of which the pair were committed for trial at Chester Assizes.[35][105]. [266] Manchester band The Smiths' song "Suffer Little Children", from their 1984 self-titled debut album, was also inspired by the case. In partnership with Ian Brady, she committed the rapes and murders of five small children. Brady and Hindley became friendly with Patricia Hodges, an 11-year-old girl who lived at 12Wardle Brook Avenue. [52], In 1964, Hindley, her grandmother, and Brady were rehoused as part of the post-war slum clearances in Manchester, to 16Wardle Brook Avenue in the new overspill estate of Hattersley, Cheshire. [87], Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue found an old exercise book with the name "John Kilbride", which made them suspect that Brady and Hindley had been involved in the disappearances of other young people. Hindley, 60 . Brady met Myra in the mid-1960s, and she immediately developed passionate feelings for him. By then, he claimed, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles. He died in 2017, at Ashworth, aged 79. [261] Given Hindley's status as co-defendant in the first serial murder trial held since the abolition of the death penalty,[262] retribution was a common theme among those who sought to keep her locked away. Stewart had little support and after a few months was forced to give her son into the care of Mary and John Sloan, a local couple with four children of their own. A number of authors stated that as a child he tortured animals, although Brady objected to these accusations. [61], On 12 July 1963, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to commit the "perfect murder". [39] They also read works by the Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche[39] and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. [124] Throughout the trial Brady and Hindley "stuck rigidly to their strategy of lying",[125] and Hindley was later described as "a quiet, controlled, impassive witness who lied remorselessly". [142] The tape recording of her statement was over seventeen hours long; Topping described it as a "very well worked out performance in which, I believe, she told me just as much as she wanted me to know, and no more". The family home was in poor condition and Hindley was forced to sleep in a single bed next to her parents' double bed. Smith had told police that Brady had boasted of "photographic proof" of multiple murders, and officers, struck by Brady's decision to remove the apparently innocent landscapes from the house, appealed to locals for assistance finding locations to match the photographs. [19], Hindley's father had served with the Parachute Regiment and was stationed in North Africa, Cyprus and Italy during the Second World War. He left the academy aged 15 and took a job as a tea boy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. The murders of Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade were not attributed to Myra Hindley and Ian Brady until 1985, after "Suffer Little Children" had already been released. 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". Brady was an amazing individual with a lawbreaker background, which she knew. One such victim was Stephen Jennings, a three-year-old West Yorkshire boy who was last seen alive in December 1962; his body was found buried in a field in 1988, but the following year his father, William Jennings, was found guilty of his murder. Brady was an unusual person with a criminal background, which she was aware of. He was taken to the moor on 3 July but seemed to lose his bearings, blaming changes in the intervening years; the search was called off at 3:00 pm, by which time a large crowd of press and television reporters had gathered on the moor. [48], By June 1963, Brady had moved in with Hindley at her grandmother's house in Bannock Street, and on 12 July, the two murdered their first victim, Pauline Reade, who had attended school with Hindley's younger sister Maureen, and had also been in a short relationship with David Smith, a local boy with three criminal convictions for minor crimes. Now a new . Fisher persuaded Hindley to release a public statement, which touched on her reasons for denying her guilt previously, her religious experiences in prison, and the letter from Johnson. [197] At a mental health tribunal in June the following year, he claimed that he suffered not from paranoid schizophrenia, as his doctors at Ashworth maintained, but a personality disorder. [106] Hindley wrote to her mother: I feel as though my heart's been torn to pieces. At various times Hindley gave conflicting statements about the extent to which she, versus Brady, was responsible for Reade being selected as their first victim,[65] but said she felt that there would be less attention given to the disappearance of a teenager than of an 8-year-old. [136] Writing in 1989, Topping said that he felt "quite cynical" about Hindley's motivation in helping the police. Smith had witnessed Brady killing 17-year-old Edward Evans with an axe, concealing his horror for fear of meeting a similar fate. "[139], On 19 December, David Smith, then 38, spent about four hours on the moor helping police identify additional areas to be searched. Before the trial, the News of the World newspaper offered 1,000 to Smith for the rights to his story; the American People magazine made a competing offer of 6,000 (equivalent to about 20,000 and 120,000 respectively in 2021). [117], Both Brady and Hindley entered pleas of not guilty;[118] Brady testified for over eight hours, Hindley for six. In 1970, Hindley severed all contact with Brady and, still professing her innocence, began a lifelong campaign to regain her freedom. Eight days after he failed to return home, 2,000volunteers scoured waste ground and derelict buildings. [227] Four months later, her ashes were scattered by her ex-partner, Patricia Cairns, less than 10 miles (16km) from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. Hindley and Brady were brought to trial on April 27, 1966, where they pleaded not guilty to the murders of Evans, Downey and Kilbride. Hindley claimed that when Downey was being undressed she herself was "downstairs"; when the pornographic photographs were taken she was "looking out the window"; and that when Downey was being strangled she "was running a bath". [180] In one letter, written in 2005, Brady claimed that the murders were "merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964". Myra Hindley, July 23, Myra Hindley was born 23rd July 1942, to Bob and Nellie Hindley, She was born in Crumpsall, in the United Kingdom, and grew up in Gorton which was part of Manchester.
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