Their search was aided by the use of sophisticated modern equipment, including a US satellite used to look for evidence of soil movement. The BBC reported on 1 July that Greater Manchester Police had officially given up the search for Keith Bennett, saying that "only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart".
Detectives were also reported as saying that they would never again give Brady the attention or the thrill of leading another fruitless search on the moor where they believe Keith Bennett's remains are buried.
Donations from members of the public funded a search of the moor for Bennett's body by volunteers from a Welsh search and rescue team that began in March Perpetrators' backgrounds.
The identity of Brady's father has never been reliably ascertained, although his mother claimed he was a reporter working for a Glasgow newspaper, who died three months before Brady was born. 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.
Brady took their name, and became known as Ian Sloan. His mother continued to visit him throughout his childhood. As a young child he took pleasure in torturing animals; he broke the hind legs of one dog, set fire to another, and decapitated a cat. Aged nine, Brady 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. He was accepted for Shawlands Academy, a school for above average pupils.
As he grew older Brady's "brutality escalated", and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself. At Shawlands his behaviour worsened; as a teenager he twice appeared before a juvenile court for housebreaking. He left the academy aged 15, and took a job as a tea boy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. Nine months later he began working as a butcher's messenger boy. He 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.
He again appeared before the court, this time with nine charges against him, and shortly before his 17th birthday a court put him on probation on the condition that he went to live with his mother, who had by then moved to Manchester and married an Irish fruit merchant named Pat Brady, who got him a job as a fruit porter at Smithfield Market. Within a year of moving to Manchester, Brady was caught with a sack full of lead seals he had stolen and was trying to smuggle out of the market.
Because he was still under 18, he was sentenced to two years in borstal for "training". He was initially sent to Hatfield but after being discovered drunk on alcohol he had brewed he was moved to the much tougher unit at Hull.
Released on 14 November Brady returned to Manchester, where he took a labouring job, which he hated, and was dismissed from another job in a brewery. Deciding to "better himself", Brady 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.
In early , just three months after being released from borstal, Brady applied for and was offered a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton. He was regarded by his work colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. He rode a Tiger Cub motorcycle, which he used to visit the Pennines. Myra Hindley born 23 July was brought up in Gorton, then a working class area of Manchester, the daughter of Nellie and Bob Hindley.
Her mother and alcoholic father beat her regularly as a young child. The small house the family lived in was in such poor condition that Hindley and her parents had to sleep in the only available bedroom, she in a single bed next to her parents' double.
The family's living conditions deteriorated further when Hindley's sister, Maureen, was born in Shortly after the birth, Hindley, then aged five, was sent by her parents to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby. He had been known in the army as a "hard man" and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her how to fight, and insisted that she "stick up for herself". When Hindley was aged 8, a local boy approached her in the street and scratched both of her cheeks with his fingernails, drawing blood.
She burst into tears and ran into her parents' house, to be met by her father, who demanded that she "Go and punch him [the boy], because if you don't I'll leather you! As she wrote later, "at eight years old I'd scored my first victory". Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has suggested that the fight, and the part that Hindley's father played in it, may be "key pieces of evidence" in trying to understand Hindley's role in the Moors murders:.
The relationship with her father brutalised her [ When this happens at a young age it can distort a person's reaction to such situations for life. One of her closest friends was year-old Michael Higgins, who lived in a nearby street. In June he invited her to go swimming with friends at a local disused reservoir. A good swimmer, Hindley chose not to go and instead went out with a friend, Pat Jepson.
Higgins drowned in the reservoir, and upon learning of his fate Hindley was deeply upset, and blamed herself for his death. She collected for a funeral wreath, and his funeral at St Francis's Monastery in Gorton Lane—the church where Hindley had been baptised a Catholic on 16 August —had a lasting effect on her.
Hindley's mother had only agreed to her father's insistence that she be baptised a Catholic on the condition that she was not sent to a Catholic school, as her mother believed that "all the monks taught was the catechism". Hindley was increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church after she started at Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception into the Church soon after Higgins's funeral.
She took the confirmation name of Veronica, and received her first communion in November She also became a Godparent to Michael's nephew, Anthony John. It was also at about this time that Hindley first began bleaching her hair. Hindley's first job was as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm. She ran errands, made tea, and typed. She was well liked at the firm, enough so that when she lost her first week's wage packet, the other girls had a collection to replace it.
She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas , and became engaged aged The engagement was called off several months later; Hindley apparently thought Sinclair immature, and unable to provide her with the life she envisaged for herself.
Shortly after her 17th birthday she changed her hair colour, with a pink rinse. She took judo lessons once a week at a local school, but found partners reluctant to train with her, as she was often slow to release her grip. She took a job at Bratby and Hinchliffe, an engineering company in Gorton, but was sacked for absenteeism after six months.
In , the year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards as a typist. She soon became infatuated with Brady, despite learning that he had a criminal record. She began a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady, whom she eventually spoke to for the first time on 27 July Over the next few months she continued to make entries, and grew increasingly disillusioned with him, until 22 December when Brady asked her on a date to the cinema, where they watched a film about the Nuremberg Trials.
Their dates together followed a regular pattern; a trip to the cinema, usually to watch an X-rated film, and then back to Hindley's house to drink German wine. Brady then gave her reading material, and the pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities.
Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, bleaching her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick. 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.
A few months later she asked her friend to destroy the letter. In her 30,word plea for parole, written in and and submitted to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Hindley said:. Within months he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion. The couple were regulars at the library, borrowing books on philosophy, as well as crime and torture.
Although she was not a qualified driver she passed her test on the third attempt, late in , Hindley often hired a van, in which the two planned bank robberies. Hindley befriended George Clitheroe, the President of the Cheadle Rifle Club, and on several occasions visited two local shooting ranges. Clitheroe, although puzzled by her interest, arranged for her to buy a. 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.
Brady and Hindley's plans for robbery came to nothing, but they became interested in photography. Brady already owned a Box Brownie, which he used to take photographs of Hindley and her dog, Puppet, but he upgraded to a more sophisticated model, and also purchased lights and darkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other that, for the time, would have been considered explicit. For Hindley, this demonstrated a marked change from her earlier, more shy nature. Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about "committing the perfect murder" in July , and often spoke to her about Meyer Levin's Compulsion , published in The novel, a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case, tells the story of two young men from well-to-do families, who attempt to carry out the perfect murder of a year-old boy, and who escape the death penalty because of their age.
By June , Brady had moved in with Hindley at her grandmother's house in Bannock Street, and on 12 July the two murdered their first victim, year-old Pauline Reade. Reade 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. Police could find nobody who had seen Reade before her disappearance, and although the year-old Smith was questioned by police he was cleared of any involvement in her death.
Their next victim, John Kilbride, was killed on 23 November A huge search was undertaken, with over statements taken, and "missing" posters printed. Eight days after he failed to return home, 2, volunteers scoured waste ground and derelict buildings. Hindley hired a vehicle a week after Kilbride went missing, and again on 21 December , apparently to make sure the burial sites had not been disturbed. In February , she bought a second-hand Austin Traveller, but soon after traded it for a Mini van.
On 16 June , year-old Keith Bennett disappeared. His stepfather, Jimmy Johnson, became a suspect; in the two years following Bennett's disappearance, Johnson was taken for questioning on four occasions.
Detectives searched under the floorboards of the Johnsons' house, and on discovering that the houses in the row were connected, extended the search to the entire street. Maureen Hindley married David Smith on 15 August The marriage was hastily arranged and performed at a register office. None of Hindley's relatives attended; Myra did not approve of the marriage, and her mother was too embarrassed—Maureen was seven months pregnant.
The newlyweds moved into Smith's father's house. The next day, Brady suggested that the four take a day-trip to Lake Windermere. This was the first time Brady and Smith had met properly, and Brady was apparently impressed by Smith's demeanour. The two talked about society, the distribution of wealth, and the possibility of robbing a bank. The young Smith was similarly impressed by Brady, who throughout the day had paid for his food and wine.
The trip to the Lake District was the first of many outings. Hindley was apparently jealous of their relationship, but became closer to her sister. In Hindley, her grandmother, and Brady were rehoused as part of the post-war slum clearances in Manchester, to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in the new overspill estate of Hattersley. Hodges accompanied the two on their trips to Saddleworth Moor to collect peat, something that many householders on the new estate did to improve the soil in their gardens, which was full of clay and builder's rubble.
She remained unharmed; living only a few doors away, her disappearance would have been easily solved. Early on Boxing Day , Hindley left her grandmother at a relative's house and refused to allow her back to Wardle Brook Avenue that night. On the same day, year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a funfair in Ancoats.
Despite a huge search she was not found. The following day Hindley brought her grandmother back home. Brady gave Smith books to read, and the two discussed robbery and murder.
On Hindley's 23rd birthday, her sister and brother-in-law, who had until then been living with relatives, were rehoused in Underwood Court, a block of flats not far from Wardle Brook Avenue. The two couples began to see each other more regularly, but usually only on Brady's terms. During the s, Hindley claimed that she took part in the killings only because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic pictures he had taken of her, and had threatened to kill her younger sister, Maureen.
In a television documentary series on female serial killers broadcast on ITV3, Hindley's solicitor, Andrew McCooey, reported that she had said to him:.
I ought to have been hanged. I deserved it. My crime was worse than Brady's because I enticed the children and they would never have entered the car without my role I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady. Following his conviction, Brady was moved to Durham prison, where he asked to live in solitary confinement. He spent 19 years in mainstream prisons before he was declared criminally insane in November and sent to the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital; he has since made it clear that he never wants to be released.
The trial judge had recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision.
In , the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane said of Brady: "this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies". In contrast to the common belief that serial killers often continue with their crimes until they are caught, Brady claimed in that the Moors murders were "merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December ".
By then, he went on to claim, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles. Winnie Johnson, the mother of undiscovered victim, year-old Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within 20 yards 18 m of her son's body but the authorities would not allow it.
Brady did not refer directly to Keith by name and did not claim he could take investigators directly to the grave, but spoke of the "clarity" of his recollections. In early , prison authorities intercepted a package addressed to Brady from a female friend, containing 50 paracetamol pills, a potentially lethal dose, hidden inside a hollowed out crime novel.
The death, in November , of John Straffen, who had spent 55 years in prison for a triple child murder, meant that Brady became the longest serving prisoner in England and Wales. As of , he remains incarcerated in Ashworth. After Brady began a hunger strike in he was force-fed, fell ill, and was transferred to another hospital for tests.
He recovered, and in March asked for a judicial review of the decision to force-feed him, but was refused permission. Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight simply to die. I have had enough. I want nothing, my objective is to die and release myself from this once and for all. So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic.
I'm only sorry I didn't do it decades ago, and I'm eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin. Immediately following the trial, Hindley lodged an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction. Brady and Hindley corresponded by letter until , when she ended their relationship. The two remained in sporadic contact for several months, but Hindley had met and fallen in love with one of her prison officers, Patricia Cairns. A former assistant governor claimed that such relationships were not unusual in Holloway at that time, as "many of the officers were gay, and involved in relationships either with one another or with inmates".
Hindley successfully petitioned to have her status as a category A prisoner changed to category B, which enabled Governor Dorothy Wing to take her on a walk round Hampstead Heath, part of her unofficial policy of reintroducing her charges to the outside world when she felt they were ready.
The excursion caused a furore in the national press and earned Wing an official rebuke from the then Home Secretary Robert Carr. With Cairns' assistance and the outside contacts of another prisoner, Maxine Croft, Hindley planned a prison escape, but it was thwarted when impressions of the prison keys were intercepted by an off-duty policeman.
Cairns was sentenced to six years in jail for her part in the plot. While in prison, Hindley wrote her autobiography, which remains unpublished. Hindley was told that she should spend 25 years in prison before being considered for parole. By that time, Hindley claimed to be a reformed Roman Catholic.
Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, was at the centre of a campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released from prison, and until West's death in February , she regularly gave television and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley's release was rumoured. In , then Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life tariff on Hindley, after she confessed to having a greater involvement in the murders than she had previously admitted.
Hindley was not informed of the decision until , when a Law Lords ruling obliged the Prison Service to inform all life sentence prisoners of the minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole. In , the Parole Board ruled that Hindley was low risk and should be moved to an open prison. She rejected the idea and was moved to a medium security prison; the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom.
Between December and March , Hindley made three separate appeals against her life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.
When in another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary's power to set minimum terms, Hindley and hundreds of others, whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released from prison. Hindley's release seemed imminent and plans were made by supporters for her to be given a new identity. Lord Longford, a devout Roman Catholic, campaigned to secure the release of "celebrated" criminals, and Myra Hindley in particular, which earned him constant derision from the public and the press.
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". Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered Greater Manchester Police to find new charges against her, to prevent her release from prison.
The investigation was headed by Superintendent Tony Brett, and initially looked at charging Hindley with the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, but the advice given by government lawyers was that because of the DPP's decision taken 15 years earlier, a new trial would probably be considered an abuse of process.
David Smith became "reviled by the people of Manchester", despite having been instrumental in bringing Brady and Hindley to justice. While her sister was on trial, Maureen—eight months pregnant—was attacked in the lift of the building in which she and David lived. Their home was vandalised, and hate mail was regularly posted through their letterbox. Maureen feared for her children: "I couldn't let my children out of my sight when they were little.
They were too young to tell them why they had to stay in, to explain why they couldn't go out to play like all the other children. After knifing another man during a fight, in an attack he claimed was triggered by the abuse he had suffered since the trial, Smith was sentenced to three years in prison in That same year his children were taken into the care of the local authority.
His wife Maureen moved from Underwood Court to a single-bedroom property, and found work in a department store. Subjected to whispering campaigns and petitions to remove her from the estate where she lived, she received no support from her family—her mother had supported Myra during the trial.
On his release from prison, David Smith moved in with the girl who became his second wife and won custody of his three sons. Maureen managed to repair the relationship with her mother, and moved into a council property in Gorton. She divorced Smith in , and married a lorry driver, Bill Scott, with whom she had a daughter. Maureen and her immediate family made regular visits to see Hindley, who reportedly adored her niece.
In Maureen suffered a brain haemorrhage; Hindley was granted permission to visit her sister in hospital, but she arrived an hour after Maureen's death. Sheila and Patrick Kilbride, who were by then divorced, were present at Maureen's funeral, believing that Hindley might make an appearance.
Patrick Kilbride mistook Bill Scott's daughter from a previous relationship, Ann Wallace, for Hindley and tried to attack her before being knocked to the ground by another mourner; the police were called to restore order. Shortly before her death at the age of 70 Sheila Kilbride said: "If she [Hindley] ever comes out of jail I'll kill her.
In , David Smith was acquitted of the murder of his father, who had been suffering from an incurable cancer. Smith pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to two days detention. He remarried and moved to Lincolnshire with his three sons, and was exonerated of any participation in the Moors murders by Hindley's confession in She was present, under heavy sedation, at the funeral of her daughter on 7 August Five years after their son was murdered, Sheila and Patrick Kilbride divorced.
Ann West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey, died in from cancer of the liver. 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.
Winnie Johnson, mother of Keith Bennett, continues to visit Saddleworth Moor, where it is believed that the body of her son is buried. The house in which Brady and Hindley lived on Wardle Brook Avenue, and where Edward Evans was murdered, was demolished by the local council. Hindley died from bronchial pneumonia caused by heart disease, at the age of 60, on 15 November Cameras "crowded the pavement" outside, but none of Hindley's relatives were among the congregation of six who attended a short service at Cambridge crematorium, as they were living anonymously in Manchester under assumed names.
Such was the strength of feeling more than 35 years after the murders that a reported 20 local undertakers refused to handle her cremation. Four months later, Hindley's ashes were scattered by a former lover, a woman she had met in prison, less than 10 miles 16 km from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. Fears were expressed that the news might result in visitors choosing to avoid the park, a local beauty spot, or even in the park being vandalised.
Less than two weeks after Hindley's death, on 25 November , the Law Lords agreed that judges, not politicians, should decide how long a criminal spends behind bars, and thus stripped the Home Secretary of the power to set minimum sentences.
A BBC television debate discussed arguments for and against Myra Hindley's release, with contributions from the parents of some of the murdered children. Hindley "shouldered the greater public outrage" because of her gender, and she was popularly assumed to be "the devil incarnate".
The photographs and tape recording of the torture of Lesley Ann Downey, demonstrated in court to a disbelieving audience, and the cool responses of Brady and Hindley, helped to ensure the lasting notoriety of their crimes.
Then drop her again. He was grooming her. Brady was her first lover. Their first sex was brutal and violent. As he took her virginity, he bit her repeatedly. But still Myra dressed and styled herself to please him. Decades before mobile phones and the internet made the practice commonplace, she posed for pornographic photos for him. Her unquestioning acceptance encouraged Brady to become more extreme. The supreme pleasure would be found by the rape and murder of others.
He and Myra would drive to their homes and either beat them up or put a brick through their window. He was showing Myra a world where only their rules mattered. The novel was intended to be an argument against capital punishment. The plan was for the perfect murder. They started to rehearse abductions. Brady had found his sick soul mate. Family and friends, however, noticed the cumulative effect that Brady had on her.
She became increasingly surly and secretive. In Brady tested her blind allegiance by pretending to plan a bank robbery. He was gratified when she took all the steps necessary to execute the plan without question. Hindley would assist him in making his perverted ideas of pain and pleasure a reality. Given the same solicitor, the couple met together and were able to exchange notes. In these they would detail sick fantasies. Brady was so deluded by this point that he looked forward to his moment in the public eye.
His over confidence and narcissism actually made him think that everyone would believe what he said. Hindley and Brady were brought to trial at Chester Assizes on 27 April where they pleaded "not guilty" to all charges. Their tactic was to blame David Smith for everything. This one slip fatally implicated Hindley. The trial lasted 15 days. Brady only escaped the death sentence by a few months as the death penalty had only been abolished four weeks before their arrest.
The killer couple were both jailed for life, with a minimum recommended tariff of 30 years. Brady would not be seen in public again for another 46 years. He's a paedophile. He's a child murderer. He's a coward. Brady's nothing. And he had David do surveillance on the Electricity Board showroom for a robbery that never happened. Brady took him for shooting practise on the Moors. And both couples often picnicked there.
Maureen and he went to a public phone box armed with a carving knife for protection. Maureen accompanied David to the police station on 7 October Brady denied the murder was pre-meditated. People walked out of pubs if he came in, nobody would speak to him, and that kind of thing. Just 24 hours after his arrest the police had enough evidence to charge Brady with murder. The boy had been missing for two years.
Brady had dreamt of committing the perfect murder. But he had left damning circumstantial evidence. They started questioning Brady about Keith Bennett and the other suspected victims.
The naked body of Lesley Ann Downey was found on 10 October , followed eleven days later by the body of John Kilbride. The police charged both Brady and Hindley. But despite intensive police searches of the Moors there was little evidence of other crimes. So the police re-interview David. David recalled being asked to do surveillance for a robbery.
But all the incriminating notes to do with it were packed away in two suitcases. The police phoned all the left luggage railway stations. First the body of Lesley was discovered and then John Kilbride.
But his body was too decomposed to ask the family to identify him. He lost his job in autumn , after a young person reported that Brady had had sex with him, and he was moved back to Parkhurst the following year. How was it possible for a prisoner like Brady to be given such treatment? Part of it has to do with his personality - he was often described as manipulative and arrogant by prison staff. For years he campaigned, complained and threatened in order to get his way.
It usually failed, but occasionally it worked. Brady also benefited from support from the penal reformer, Lord Longford, a former Labour cabinet minister. The Home Office papers reveal how Longford lobbied ministers, including the home secretary, on Brady's behalf. When Brady first arrived at Durham on 6 May he was described as "a fairly tall person with a tendency to break into a cold smile without apparent reason… Quite unemotional.
He succeeded in getting a degree of special treatment. He persuaded the prison's welfare officer to get him homoerotic novels, as well as the works of Machiavelli - the Italian Renaissance writer who described how a ruler could maintain his grip on power by unscrupulous means. He was also given private tutoring in German by academics from Durham University - until the prison education service was asked to pay for it.
But Brady didn't achieve his main aim at that time, which was to see Myra Hindley for "conjugal" visits. She was in Holloway prison, over miles away. In protest, Brady isolated himself and refused to associate with other prisoners. He even asked for dark glasses and ear plugs so he could shut out the world entirely. In , , he went on hunger strike.
None of it worked. After Myra Hindley stopped writing to Brady, he changed his campaign. Instead, he started lobbying to get to Broadmoor, the secure hospital. Doctors were reluctant. They considered him a psychopath, who would not benefit from treatment.
It was at this time, , that Brady enlisted Lord Longford's help - but the peer couldn't persuade politicians to move him. Four years later, Brady began a new hunger strike at Wormwood Scrubs. Once moved to the prison hospital he allowed himself to be "artificially fed" even though his "hunger strike" formally continued. He told Lord Longford in September that he found conditions in the prison "more pleasant and civilised" than in the segregation unit, and on 16 December Longford met Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to relay Brady's request to stay there.
Jenkins responded that "Brady could be assured that he would stay in the prison hospital for as long as he needed to for his health. Ten days later, according to the prison records, Ian Brady ended his hunger strike.
Peter Meakings, now in his 80s, was an assistant governor at Wormwood Scrubs at the time. The papers were personally handed over by Hindley as she was escorted from HMP Highpoint to the West Sussex Hospital where she died later that day in They formed part of an appeal to reduce her life sentence - which motivated Brady to write to Home Secretary Jack Straw in a bid to scupper her efforts.
He claimed the pair were "a unified force, not two conflicting entities" and that Hindley regarded "periodic homicides" as "binding us ever closer". Hindley and Brady murdered five children, aged between 10 and 17, in the Greater Manchester area between July and October In the letter to lawyers, Hindley claims that Brady coerced her into the murder by threatening her if she backed out. 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.
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