A Brutal Case of Murders

The Moors Murders:

A Case Of A Notorious Couple and Their Young Prey

In 1960:

Ian Brady, a slender 27-year-old stock clerk, a horrible man, and a pompadour, and his girlfriend, Myra Hindley, a 23-year-old typist with dyed blond hair, were suspected of murdering five kids. Horrible facts of kidnapping, torture, beatings, and sexual abuse were uncovered in court, turning the couple into the most disliked in Britain.

 

Mr. Brady expired on Monday, May 15, 2017, at Ashworth Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool, England, at the age of 79. Here are facts about the case and the couple’s preys.

 

Background:

 

Five children were reported missing, but the corpses of just three were discovered by the time the couple was charged in 1965. The murders were named "the Moors murders" because the couple practiced burying preys on the isolated Saddleworth Moor in northwestern England.

 

The nation was stunned by revelations that some of the children had been tortured and sexually abused before they were murdered and that in one example, the couple had made a video recording of a kid begging for her life.

 

 How were they arrested?

 

In his report, David Smith, a brother-in-law of Ms. Hindley, saw Mr. Brady kill Edward Evans, 17, and assisted the couple to clean the corpse. But out of fear, he then ran home and informed his spouse, Ms. Hindley’s younger sister, what had taken place, and the two phoned the police.

 

The arrest was made a year after Parliament eliminated capital sentence in Britain, so the worst punishment the couple could receive was life imprisonment. During their prosecution, they exhibited what psychologists called no capacity for empathy.

 

Who were the victims:

 

Edward Evans, 17-years-old :

In his statement, Mr. Brady said Mr. Smith had arrived at his house with a letter from Mr. Brady’s landlord asking for money that he owed. He said Mr. Smith had recommended “rolling a queer,” a phrase defining a hate crime in which a gay man would be targeted, tortured, and robbed. They went to Manchester, in northwestern England, where they found Edward at a railway station and attracted him to Mr. Brady’s home in Hyde, an industrial suburb of Manchester.

 

When Mr. Brady attempted to rob him, Edward fought back. Mr. Smith started beating him, Mr. Brady told, a charge that Mr. Smith rejected in his statement. Rather, Mr. Smith told, he was alone in the kitchen when he listened to a “very loud, shrill” shout and ran into the living room to discover Mr. Brady, Ms. Hindley, and “this lad lying half on and half off the couch.” Mr. Brady kept saying Edward to stop screaming, he told, and when the boy would not, Mr. Brady picked up a hatchet and hit him until he was quiet.

 

Mr. Brady then rolled a cushion cover around the boy’s skull, Mr. Smith told, wrapped a “piece of the cord” around his neck, and strangled him. Mr. Smith said Mr. Brady then looked up at Ms. Hindley and remarked: “That’s it. It’s the messiest yet.”

 

Mr. Smith said he assisted cover up the corpse and clearing “the mess” because he was “scared stiff” and needed only to get out of the room “in one piece.” Later, they all had tea together. When Mr. Smith got back to his flat, he and his spouse phoned the authority.

 

Edward Evans’s corpse was discovered in Mr. Brady’s home in October 1965.

 

Lesley Ann Downey, 10-years-old 

She was picked from a fairground in December 1964. Her murder was the most notorious because of the facts about her death that were submitted in court. Images of Lesley, along with books on torture, were discovered in a bag belonging to the two, according to prosecutors. The pictures showed “a young girl in the nudity in several pornographic positions,” the prosecutor explained. She had been strangled with a scarf but was still wearing her shoes and socks.

 

The most dramatic and terrifying proof, also discovered in the bag, was tape recordings the two had made, clearly of Lesley’s killing. Jurors heard the voices of a man and a woman, and also of a girl, understood to be Lesley, shouting for her mother and begging God to help her before she was murdered.

 

Her corpse was discovered in a shallow grave on Saddleworth Moor in October 1965.

 

John Kilbride, 12-years-old:

He vanished from a marketplace in Ashton-under-Lyne, a village near Manchester, when Ms. Hindley offered him a lift and then made a detour to the moor, where Mr. Brady sexually abused him and strangled him with a piece of chain in November 1963.

 

His painfully decomposed corpse was discovered in October 1965, not far from Lesley’s grave.

 

Pauline Reade, 16-years-old:

She was kidnaped on her way to a club in 1963. Mr. Brady and Ms. Hindley admitted in 1985 to killing her, and her corpse was discovered on Saddleworth Moor.

 

Keith Bennett, 12-years-old:

He vanished in June 1964 while on his path to his grandmother’s home in Longsight, an area in Manchester, after Ms. Hindley requested him for help loading boxes into her car. In 1985, Mr. Brady and Ms. Hindley admitted to his killing. A letter from Keith’s mother urged Ms. Hindley in 1986 to help the police in searching for his gravesite on the moor, but despite an intensive investigation by more than 100 police officers, his remains were never discovered.

 

What  happened to Myra  Hindley?

 

Ms. Hindley told that her role in the murders was to kidnap the kids and that she had no role in the killings or sexual attacks. She was charged in the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey, and as an addition in the killing of John Kilbride.

 

In jail, she announced Mr. Brady had tortured and blackmailed her and terrorized to murder her family if she did not assist him.

 

Source: New York Times