On the afternoon of the Boxing Day holiday, , year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a local fairground, and again a huge police effort, bolstered by volunteers, unearthed no clues as to her whereabouts.
October 7, proved the turning point for the police, when Hindley's year-old brother-in-law, David Smith, arrived at Hyde Police station with a horrific tale of violence. Knowing Brady through the family connection, Smith was initially beguiled by Brady's unorthodox and violent politics, but this changed when he arrived at Hindley and Brady's home, on the evening of October 6, to witness Brady killing year-old Edward Evans with an axe.
After Evans was finally throttled with a length of electrical flex, Hindley and Brady joked about the mess, and also told Smith of other victims buried on the Moors. Concealing his horror for fear of meeting a similar fate, Smith assisted them with the clean up, before returning home to tell his wife and alert the police.
Convinced by Smith's tale, police and reinforcements arrived at Brady's home, found the body of Evans in an upstairs bedroom, and arrested Brady immediately. Brady claimed that there had been an argument between himself, Evans and Smith that had got out of hand, denying that Hindley had anything to do with the murder.
She remained at liberty until four days later, when police found a document in her car describing in detail how she and Brady had planned to carry out the murder. The investigation would probably have gone no further than the death of Evans, if Smith had not mentioned Brady's claim that other bodies were buried on Saddleworth Moor.
Already familiar with the various unexplained disappearances, police were able to pinpoint the area favored by Brady and Hindley, and began digging for the bodies of the children who had gone missing in the area over the previous two years. The naked body of Lesley Ann Downey was found on October 10, , followed eleven days later by the body of John Kilbride. Despite discovering the two bodies, the police had only circumstantial evidence against the pair.
Fortunately, a more thorough search of their home led to the discovery of a left luggage ticket, which led in turn to a locker at Manchester Central Station. There, Police found sadistic gadgets and pornography, including photographs of Lesley Ann, bound and gagged in Hindley's bedroom. A tape recording was also found, on which the little girl could be heard crying and begging for her life, as well as the voices of Brady and Hindley.
Her mother, Ann Downey, was forced to identify the voice on the tape as that of her daughter. Even with the mounting evidence against them, Brady and Hindley denied murdering Lesley Ann, trying again to implicate David Smith. They claimed that Lesley Ann had left their home unharmed, and that Smith must have murdered her later. The evidence linking Brady and Hindley with John Kilbride's murder was not as strong, but proved sufficient to charge them, with the result that they were charged with the murders of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride.
Despite exhaustive searches, the bodies of the other two victims could not be found, and no charges were brought. Hindley and Brady were brought to trial at Chester Assizes on April 27, , where they pleaded "not guilty" to all charges. Media interest was intense, and the pair's failure to show any remorse served to make public revulsion even greater. They were both jailed for life, with a minimum recommended sentence of 30 years for what are today known as the 'Moors Murders'.
Ian Brady went on a hunger strike at the high security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital in October , demanding the legal right to starve himself to death, rather than serving the remainder of his life in prison. Hindley grew up with her grandmother in Manchester, England. A close friend died when she was fifteen, causing her to leave school and take up Roman Catholicism.
She met Ian Brady in Brady was recently released from prison and worked as a stock clerk when the two met. Brady tested her blind allegiance by including her on plans to rape and murder someone, and Hindley agreed.
Pauline Reade, 16, was the first victim that they raped and murdered. Hindley, a neighbour of Pauline's, claimed she "began to shake and cry" after reading a missing appeal by the youngster's parents and was subsequently throttled by Brady. The then year-old said Brady drove her down a "small winding country lane" on his motorbike at dusk and told her to get off.
He armed himself with a "sharp-bladed Stanley knife Hindley wrote: "All the time we were talking, he was still running the knife across his fingers, and I honestly thought he was going to stab me. I'd tried to fight him off strangling me and biting me, but the more I did the more the pressure increased. Hindley refers to life in her relationship as being in "Brady's prison" - and gives a graphic account of being urinated over as the letter closes. Hindley even claimed Brady drugged her grandmother by putting nembutal - a popular sleeping pill in the 50s and 60s - in her tea and later threatened to push the frail pensioner down a staircase to her death.
She describes how Brady sent her to Manchester central library to collect a series of books with a dark theme, including one called 'Sexual Murders'. He also asked her to buy books by the Marquis de Sade, a writer famed for his libertine sexuality.
I didn't know if it was loaded or not, but it petrified me, until one day I said 'Shoot me and put me out of my misery'. He just laughed. She also states: "I couldn't go to the police about him for there was no proof of anything, and whilst I feared and often hated him, I was so emotionally obsessed with him I just couldn't change my feelings for him.
It coincided with a High Court appeal against a ruling that his accomplice should never be released. He wrote: "[Myra] regarded periodic homicides as rituals of reciprocal innervation, marriage ceremonies theoretically binding us ever closer. He said he lied to cover for his former lover for "20 years" before she began to "fabricate" stories about the way he treated her.
Brady was also convicted of the murder of John Kilbride with Hindley found guilty of acting as an accessory. In Brady and Hindley confessed to two further murders - those of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett whose remains have never been found. At least four of the children were sexually assaulted.
Two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor - and a third grave was discovered there in The body of fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also thought to be buried there but remains undiscovered. A never-before-seen autobiography chapter by Hindley is included in the documents, as is her will and a letter from missing victim Keith Bennett's brother, Alan, dated January - 34 years after the youngster's death.
There is also a letter from Hindley's lesbian lover, Dutch criminologist Nina Wilde, who met the killer at Cookham Wood prison, Kent in In her autobiographical notes, Hindley writes: "When I grew older and used to babysit for neighbours, I often taught babies to walk with the aid of a kitchen chair turned upside down.
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