The Moors Murders
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The Moors serial killings took place in Manchester, England from years 1963 to 1965. The victims were five children aged 10-17 who were each brutally murdered at the hands of deranged couple, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

If you are sensitive to cases that involve children, please skip this one.

On January 2nd, 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland, Ian Brady was born to a single mother. It is unknown if Brady’s father passed or if he simply abandoned the family in the first place. Some believe that Brady was the product of a one night stand.

Either way, being a single mother in the early 1940s was not easy. Brady’s mother couldn’t afford much, as she rented out one small bedroom in someone else’s home for herself and her baby.

As time went on, it was becoming more and more clear to the young mother that she could not afford to support her son.

However, she still wanted her child, so she decided to put up an ad in the window of a shop. This ad offered for someone to “unofficially” adopt her child. She would pay whoever took him one pound a week in order for her to still be able to see the baby.

A family called the Sloans finally saw the advertisement. They had four children of their own and had struggled with money in the past. They felt terrible for this poor mother, and so they decided to take up the offer and still allow her to visit her child.

At the time of his “adoption”, Brady was only around four months old, so he grew up knowing only the Sloanes as his mother and father. However, they never lied to him. He always knew they weren’t his biological parents.

This made him feel a bit like an outsider in the family, having four siblings who are all actually related, and being the odd one out. Despite this, Brady was a well behaved child. He read often, he was shy, soft spoken, and alarmingly intelligent.

Brady’s mother visited him every single Sunday, bringing him gifts and spending time with him each visit. For years, Brady was unaware that this woman was his biological mother, and when he was finally told, it brought him happiness. He finally felt like he had someone.

This feeling was short lived, however, because by the time Brady had turned 12 years old, his biological mother met a new man and moved away with him to Manchester.

This meant that Brady could no longer see his mother weekly the way he was used to, and it was so soon after he’d learned just who she was. The young boy was devastated.

He felt alone and isolated once more, despite the Sloans’ best efforts to help him feel loved and included. This was when Ian Brady began acting up.

He started stealing from shops and peoples homes, getting into fights at school, and it was around this time when he started to take a fascination with nazis as well.

Considering the time period, his infatuation with nazis was far more concerning than it might be today. This was only shortly after the first world war, most children didn’t have extensive knowledge on the nazis, but for some reason, Ian researched them religiously.

He even taught his friends about them so that they could reenact battles on the school playground.

There are conflicting reports on the topic of Brady’s animal abuse. He is adamant that he never, ever harmed an animal, but several sources say otherwise. Years after the murders, Brady’s childhood neighbor claimed to have seen him throw a cat off of a tower block.

Of course, because it was years later, it is possible that this story was made up by his neighbor simply for publicity. But other sources claim that Brady’s animal abuse is far from an isolated incident.

Sources say that these attacks started at around age 10 and that he stoned dogs, decapitated rabbits, and even burned a cat alive.

As these violent tendencies erupted, Brady had a close group of friends that he was sort of the “leader” of. These boys pretty much did anything Ian told them to while they played together. Eventually, Brady introduced a new game to his friends.

Each day, he would pick a ‘victim’ within their group. That victim would be bullied and teased by all of the other boys for the entire day.

One day while Brady and his friends were playing this game, things took a much darker turn than usual. While bullying their ‘victim’ of the day, Brady ordered the group to tie the boy up to a pole. And they did.

Once that was done, Brady instructed his friends to pile newspapers around the boys feet, which they also complied with.

Ian soon began making comments about how he was going to set the boy on fire and watch him burn to death. All of his friends thought he was only joking until he lit a match and threw it at the kid’s feet.

This snapped the other boys back into reality and they hurried to save their friend.

This story has only ever been told by the victim child himself, so it’s possible that it is untrue. Brady will not admit to this, and because of that, many people believe it is untrue, as this seems like something Brady would be proud of, especially after he was convicted.

As Brady got older, his stealing habits grew more and more intense. He was in and out of trouble with police, managing to slip away with a warning or community service each time.

After one of these incidents, Brady was informed by one boy at his school that another boy who attended their school had been the one that told on Ian for his most recent theft.

Of course, this sparked rage in Brady and he immediately began hunting this other boy down. In the classroom, when he finally found him, Brady recounts storming across the classroom, glaring at this boy and when their eyes finally met, Brady saw pure terror in them.

He felt powerful in the fact that he was able to strike that kind of fear into someone.

Later, Ian would claim to have murdered this boy and buried his body on a bomb site in the Gorbels. No one believed him, and this has never been confirmed.

At 17 years old, Brady made the mistake of breaking into yet another house and stealing from it. This got him into another situation with police and they found that their lenience with Brady was getting them nowhere. He went to court and was given two options.

He could serve prison time for his crimes, or he could move to Manchester with his biological mother. He chose the latter, of course, and with that, set off to England.

Looking back on Brady’s life these days, many psychiatrists believe that Ian Brady was entirely sociopathic by the age of 17. However, thanks to the horrible knowledge of mental health back then, no one could’ve known before he did what he did.

In Manchester, Brady’s thefts went a little more smoothly and he was able to avoid police interactions for the most part. He got along well with his mother and step father, even taking on his step father’s last name, Brady.

However not long after his move, Ian began working in a produce shop, where he helped one of his coworkers steal some lead seals. The coworker was caught with these stolen objects and implicated Brady in the theft, landing Ian two years in a Borstal.

Borstals aren’t around anymore, but they’re these british “prisons” for juveniles. It’s less of a prison and more of a reformation holding area for petty, underage criminals. Borstals were meant to teach troubled children how to become fully functioning members of society.

However, Brady didn’t want anything to do with a functioning society. He pretended to have been changed during his time in those establishments, but he was just biding his time until he could return to his life of crime without suspicion.

In 1959, Brady earned a job at Millwards Merchandising with the skills he had learned in the borstal. He was described by his coworkers as a quiet loner with a short temper. He read books through almost all of his breaks, only socializing in order to keep from looking suspicious.

Two years later in 1961 at Millwards Merchandising, Ian Brady would meet Myra Hindley when she accepted her own job there.

Myra Hindley ‘the most evil woman in Britain’ was born on July 23, 1942 in Manchester, England to a working class family. Her father was away fighting in the war while she was a baby, so Myra lived with her mother and grandmother.

After her father’s return, the Hindley family had another baby girl. Myra’s younger sister Maureen.

Due to serving in the war, Myra’s father had turned to alcoholism and he eventually began to abuse his wife. Myra’s mother was not a woman to just take the abuse, so these drunken rages would turn into awful fights between the couple.

It got so bad that each time their parents started to fight, Myra would take her baby sister and walk with her down the street to their grandmother’s house.

This happened so often that their grandmother came up with a plan. She would ‘adopt’ the girls. They would sleep at her house, but have all three meals each day with their mother and father. That way, the girls saw them at their good points and not the bad.

The entire family was happy with this plan and for years it worked well.

As she grew up, Myra’s father’s drinking problem worsened, and he began to beat his daughters as well as his wife. Myra’s testimony on this is hard to follow and constantly changing.

Sometimes she says he constantly beat them nearly to death and other times he says he only beat them when they really deserved it.

Either way it’s terrible, I just find it weird that she would lie about this.

She did seem to have a decent relationship with her father. There are reports of Myra having been young, playing with a few neighborhood boys in the street when one of them started to pick on her.

She was so upset by whatever he said that she ran home crying, and her father decided that he was going to show her how to defend herself.

He took her out and showed her some basic boxing techniques. A few days later, Myra was playing with these same boys and the teasing started once again, but this time Myra was ready. She used what her father had taught her and fought this kid.

Apparently, this was the proudest her father had ever been of her.

Obviously, being young and having a parent encourage violence like that can be very damaging. Especially by only showing pride in your child after they’ve hurt someone.

Regardless, this earned Myra a ‘tough girl’ reputation among her peers, and people knew not to mess with her.

In her early teens, Myra babysat around the neighborhood. Terrifying considering who she turned out to be, she was known to be a great babysitter. She loved kids during this time.

At school one day, Myra witnessed a younger boy being picked on. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but for some reason, Myra felt compelled to stick up for this particular boy, so she did. She told the bully to leave the boy alone, and he did.

A few days later, she saw the same boy being picked on again. So, she approached the bully and threatened him, resulting in him finally leaving the kid alone. From this day on, Myra and the little boy she defended became like best friends.

One day, this little boy asked Myra if she wanted to come swimming with him at the reservoir, like they often did. On this day, Myra, strangely, turned him down. She’d had plans with some other friends, so the boy decided to go alone.

A few hours later, Myra overheard some other kids talking about an accident that had happened at the reservoir, and she knew instantly. She ran all the way there, arriving to see a crowd of people, police officers, and paramedics.

They pulled a body from the water, and it was her best friend.

Myra blamed herself for this poor boy’s death. She thought that if she’d just gone with him that day, like normal, she would’ve been able to prevent this.

Shortly after this tragic event, Myra left school and went to work at a factory. Things went well at this job. Myra was well liked by her coworkers, at least in the beginning.

On payday at this factory, it is reported that Myra had left the factory after receiving her paycheck, then came back a few hours later, crying and looking devastated. She’d lost her paycheck.

Out of sympathy for the girl, her coworkers all gave a small amount from their own earnings to make up Myra’s lost money.

Everything was fine until a few days later, Myra tried the same trick. This time, no one helped her, and many of them suspected she’d even been lying the first time.

It was at this job that Myra Hindley first dyed her hair bleach blonde and started wearing heavy eye makeup. This wasn’t a common look for the time period, so it garnered a lot of attention from men, which Myra wasn’t used to.

Hindley began to love the attention she received from men, not really engaging with any of them, but just enjoying the fact that she was desired. Shortly after this, Hindley was reintroduced to a boy she’d gone to school with named Ronnie.

Myra and Ronnie immediately hit it off, and soon enough they were engaged. Hindley was only around 17 at this point, and she was starting to panic. Her entire life had already been planned out for her. She would marry this man, become his housewife, and have his children.

And suddenly, that wasn’t what Myra wanted anymore.

this was the groundwork for the perfect storm. Her unrest landed her at several different jobs until 1961 when she was employed with Millwards Merchandising, where she met Ian Brady.

Brady caught Hindley’s attention immediately, however the attraction was entirely one sided at first. She was used to male attention, and Brady withholding his interest only made Hindley more obsessive.

Myra remained infatuated for over a year, keeping a diary in which she would write exclusively of her interactions with Brady, which were very limited. He would ignore her for weeks, and then smile at her or ask her a question, and the obsession would reignite.

Somehow, Hindley discovered Brady’s home address, and she would often just walk down his street, hoping to bump into him. And when she and her friends went out, she made them go to the bar closer to Brady’s house than to their usual bar.

This was all while she still had a fiance, by the way.

None of these little attempts at bumping into Ian ever worked, and Myra was getting desperate. She finally got an idea. Taking note of the books that Brady read in the break room, Hindley decided to go to the library and check out a book by one of Brady’s favorite authors.

She took it to work, and instead of socializing on break like usual, she read this book. Brady noticed her, and struck up a conversation with her about the book. Myra was shocked and, of course, ecstatic.

She hurriedly finished this book, and chose another by the same author. Once again, she caught Ian’s attention. Their interactions continued this way until their company christmas party, where Brady asked Hindley to dance.

After this, they went on a ‘real’ date a few days later. This was a date to the movies, and fittingly enough for Ian Brady, they went to see the Nuremberg Trials.

Their relationship grew and eventually they were a steady couple. They often visited a peaceful area of land in Manchester called Saddleworth Moor. Hindley would bring her dogs, the couple would sit on a picnic blanket, snacking and drinking wine.

This was the place where they would have their deepest conversations.
At first, these talks were normal. About things like work or things they wanted to do together someday. But eventually, things got darker. crimes, their shared hatred of people, and ultimately, death.

Myra Hindley was roman catholic, but Ian Brady was an atheist. When they discussed the topic of religion, Brady often overpowered Hindley intellectually. And eventually, Myra abandoned her faith entirely for Brady’s. This gave him the confirmation he needed.

Myra Hindley was going to give herself up to him, she was entirely willing to become a reflection of him, in order to make him happy.

After this, Brady began expressing his desires to commit crimes with Myra. He felt that they had complimentary traits and that this would aide them in committing this ‘perfect crime’ in which they would never be caught.

At first, Ian’s suggestions were petty crimes that he was used to. And maybe even a bank robbery in the works. Myra was on board with all of these ideas, but their only problem with these crimes was that they needed a getaway car.

Neither of them drove, and thanks to his criminal history, Ian Brady could never drive.

That meant it was up to Myra to get her license, which she did, solely for the purpose of eventually committing these crimes with Brady.

Shortly after this, Brady loaned Hindley a book titled Compulsion. This book detailed the abduction and murder of a young boy carried out by two adult men. The characters in this book almost perfectly get away with their crime, but one mistake threw off everything.

Brady thought that he was capable of doing something similar, but actually successfully. He wanted to prove that he could outsmart police and detectives and forensic analysts, and he was going to do it. As long as he had Hindley’s help, which she offered.

After they’d reached their decision to abduct and murder a child, Brady and Hindley would drive around in Hindley’s van, photographing school children and discussing which “type” of child would be their best first victim.

On July 12th, 1963, Pauline Reade was on her way to a social club for a dance. Normally, she’d attend dances with her group of friends, but this particular dance was known to have alcohol at it, and none of the other girls parents would let them attend, so Pauline went alone.

Wearing a pink dress, blue coat, and a locket her mother had given her just before her departure, Pauline Reade set off, never to be seen again.

Pauline was a very shy girl, so the fact that she had the courage to go alone filled her friends with a sense of pride. So, as Pauline walked out of her neighborhood, her friends stood in their lawns and at their windows, waving and cheering her on.

Two of these girls decided they would go further along the route to pop out and surprise Pauline as she approached. They waited and waited and waited but Pauline never showed.

The girls just assumed that maybe their friend had gotten cold feet and decided not to go alone after all, so they simply returned home.

In town, Myra Hindley was driving her van and Ian Brady was riding behind her on his motorbike. Hindley had been given the task of picking up a child, as Brady was concerned that if he were in the van with her, he might scare the child away.

But, of course, Brady still wanted control of the situation. He wanted to pick the child. So, he told Hindley that he would flash his headlights at the van when he spotted a child he wanted. This flash would inform Hindley to pull over, and offer a ride to their victim.

As they drove, Brady spotted an 8 year old girl who he thought would be their perfect victim. He flashed his lights, but Hindley didn’t stop.

After they’d passed the child, Hindley pulled over and allowed Brady to question her on her disobedience. Hindley explained that she recognized the little girl as a neighbor of hers. She felt that if that girl were to go missing, she could be a suspect.

She also explained that she felt they should find an older child, as there would be more public outrage over an 8 year old girl.

So, the couple continued driving around and shortly after 8pm, Brady spotted his second choice. A girl in a pink dress and blue coat.
He flashed his lights, and Myra stopped this time and offered a ride to Pauline Reade, who knew Myra.

Pauline was a friend of Maureen’s, Myra’s younger sister. Obviously, Pauline assumed that taking a ride from someone she knew would be safe, so she accepted.

They started toward the social center, but Myra soon began talking about an expensive glove she’d lost out on Saddleworth Moor. She asked for Pauline’s help in going to look for it, and promised to drop her off at the dance afterwards. Pauline agreed.

Once they got to the Moors, Brady arrived on his motorbike. Hindley explained to Pauline that this was her boyfriend and that he was there to help them find the glove.

From here, the stories differ slightly. Hindley claims that she watched Brady and Pauline walk away from her, down a slight hill, and she couldn’t see them anymore, so she got back into the van.

There, she waited for about half an hour before Brady returned and knocked on the window. He then took her to Pauline Reade’s body.

The 16 year old showed obvious signs of sexual assault. Her clothes were disheveled, which prompted Hindley to ask Brady if he had raped the girl, to which he allegedly replied “Of course I did.”

Pauline’s throat had been cut twice, so deeply that she was almost decapitated and her spinal cord was severed. Her blue coat had been purposefully pushed into one of her gashes. She had trauma to her head and multiple signs of torture before she died.

Brady’s story is only slightly different, but he says that Hindley never returned to the van. He says she participated in the rape, torture, and murder of Pauline Reade.

Brady claims that Hindley was more vicious than he was, that she saw the locket on Pauline’s neck and she ripped it off of her, stating “You wont be needing this anymore.”

Ian also says he had to slap Myra to get her out of this blind rage she’d entered during Reade’s murder.

After this, Brady dug a hole on the Moors and buried Reade in a shallow grave, where she would remain for years, unnoticed. Hindley gathered up grass and placed it over the freshly turned dirt, in order to make it blend in with its surroundings a little better.

Hours had passed and Pauline still hadn’t returned home, so her mother drove to the social club to pick her up, but by this hour the party was over, and all of the staff members said they hadn’t seen a young girl in a pink dress and blue coat at all that night.

Panicked, Pauline’s mother and several other family members began searching the streets, calling her name. Eerily, Hindley and Brady drove past Reade’s family members on their way home from the murder.

In the early hours of the next morning, Hindley and Brady spent hours cleaning the van they had used to abduct Pauline. They changed clothes and burned the clothes they’d worn during the murder, as well as a knife.

After they’d cleaned up to Brady’s standards, Hindley got a bottle of wine, and the couple sat in front of the fire as it consumed their clothes and the murder weapon.

While they sat, they talked about what they had just done and how they were never going to be caught. This was like a celebration to the couple, Brady claims he felt euphoric, like he truly had proven he was smarter than anyone else.

Months passed and police were unable to find any trace of Pauline Reade. Her family was losing hope. Her mother had become inconsolable and eventually ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

Meanwhile, Brady and Hindley were living life just like normal. They had another date on the Moors with their picnic blanket, a bottle of wine, and their dogs. But this time, they placed their blanket over Pauline’s shallow grave.

Eventually, the couple grew restless, and they decided that they were ready to strike again.

On November 23, 1963, 12 year old John Kilbride was in the marketplace at Ashton-Under-Lyne. He often visited the market with his friends and all of the boys would go to different stalls, offering their help to the stall owners in order to earn a bit of pocket change.

While John earned his money, Hindley and Brady stalked the marketplace, searching for their next victim.

In order to avoid much attention, Hindley wore a headscarf or a black wig to cover her bleach blonde hair, as this was an uncommon hair color for the time and it made her stand out in a crowd, which obviously isn’t what you want when you’re abducting a child.

After his odd jobs were complete, Kilbride leaned against the side of a shop, eating a cookie he’d been given by one of the stall owners he had helped when he was approached by Myra Hindley.

Hindley began to tell John that it was getting late and that his parents would be worried about him, so he should allow her to give him a ride home.

Kilbride accepts the offer and goes back to Hindley’s van, where Brady is waiting. Myra explains that this is her boyfriend, and Kilbride gets in.

They start toward Kilbride’s house, but Brady suddenly mention’s Hindley’s lost glove on the Moors. Myra pretends to have been reminded, and she asks John to go out to the Moors with them and help them find it.

Kilbride is reluctant at first. It is getting dark, and his mother was probably expecting him home. But Hindley promised she’d give him a bottle of sherry on the way home if he helped, and he accepted.

On the Moors, the stories differ once again. Hindley claims she watched Brady and Kilbride disappear over one of the hills and she went back to the car to wait.

Brady insists she was there for this murder as well. He says that she held the young boy down while he sexually assaulted him.

Brady attempted to cut Kilbride’s throat with a six inch serrated blade, but ended up strangling John with his own shoelaces instead.

When he returned to the car, he took one shoe with him, and later burned it along with their clothes and the shoelace.

Brady and Hindley dug another shallow grave in the Moors near Pauline Reade’s body and buried Kilbride there. When his body was finally discovered, 2 years later, his family was only able to identify him by the single shoe Brady had left behind.

After cleaning up, Hindley and Brady celebrated this murder just as they had the last, by sitting on a blanket, drinking wine, and discussing their atrocities.

Meanwhile, John Kilbride’s mother had noticed his absence. As John’s curfew came and went with no sign of him, she called police. They went door to door asking John’s friends if anyone had seen him, and none of them had.

As days passed, it was becoming more and more apparent that John wasn’t coming home. Despite this, his mother continued to make an extra plate of food each meal and set it out at the table, just in case her baby ever returned home.

As a source of sick entertainment, Brady and Hindley would park their car outside of the Kilbride’s home. They would watch police and neighbors and family members leave the house and search for John. They were proud of what they had done.

Not only that, but they did the same to John’s grave as they did to Pauline’s. They took their blanket, spread it out over the grave, drank wine, took pictures, and bragged about what they had done to that poor child.

On June 16th, 1964, the couple struck once more.

12 year old Keith Bennett and his siblings had decided on this day that they would spend a night with their grandmother. Keith’s younger siblings had gone ahead together while he hung back and spoke to their mother.

His mother decided she would walk Keith halfway to his grandmother’s house, so he wouldn’t make the entire walk alone. Once she’d seen him off, she returned home.

But Keith never made it to his grandmother’s house. He was stopped by a woman, who asked for his help loading some boxes into her car. He agreed, and she offered to drive him the rest of the way to his grandmother’s house afterward.

Keith accepted and got into the van. There, Brady mentioned the lost glove charade, and Hindley asked for the boy’s help.

Once they’d gotten to the Moors, Hindley once again claims that she waited in the car while Brady took Bennett to a stream where he sexually assaulted and strangled the boy to death. This only took 30 minutes.

They buried Bennett in another shallow grave, that has still not been uncovered to this day.

Bennett’s disappearance was not reported until the next day, as his grandmother simply assumed he was staying back with his mother. And when the disappearance was reported, it wasn’t thought to have been linked with any of the previous disappearances.

This was the only murder that the couple did not celebrate after, because they’d grown bored. They wanted a change. The rush murdering gave them had started to fade when the couple became so certain that they wouldn’t get caught.

They wanted to raise the stakes, so they decided that they would murder their next victim inside their own home.

On the day after Christmas in 1964, 10 year old Lesley Ann Downey was at the fair with her brother. The children had run out of money and could no longer go on the rides, so Lesley’s younger brother wanted to return home.

Lesley wanted to stay and look at the lights. She just enjoyed the atmosphere of the fair, even if she didn’t have money to ride the rides.

So, she told her brother to go ahead home, and that she would be there soon. This was the last time she would be seen alive.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were prowling the area, carrying several shopping bags with the plan of dropping them in front of a child they wanted to abduct in the hopes that the kid would help them pick everything up.

When they spotted Lesley standing alone, they decided to try this trick on her, and it worked. After Lesley had helped, Myra asked if the girl would return with them to their home and help carry the items in, as all of the bags had broken, and Lesley went along.

By the time the couple had taken Lesley, her mother was already looking for her. When Lesley’s brother had returned home without her, their mother immediately set out for the girl, not wanting her young child out alone. But it was too late.

Once they made it to the house, Brady went in ahead of Hindley and Downey and up to the couple’s bedroom to set up, starting and placing the tape recorder Myra had gotten him for christmas the day before under their bed.

Hindley led Lesley inside and they put the items away together. Hindley then took Downey upstairs, and her friendly demeanor shifted.

She began to get forceful with Lesley, pushing her into the bedroom and locking the door behind them. As the tape recorder captured everything, Brady and Hindley held the young girl down on the bed, undressed, bound, and gagged her, snapping pornographic photographs of her.

All the while, Lesley begs for her mother through the gag, crying and screaming. Lesley must have been trying to defend herself, because Brady told her at one point that if she didn’t put her arm down, he would slit her throat.

The 16 minute audio recording details every sound as Hindley and Brady rape and strangle Lesley Ann Downey. The recording has only ever been played in court and once to Downey’s mother, who had to confirm it was her child’s voice. It has never been released to the public.

After they had killed Downey, the couple left her body upstairs while they celebrated yet another murder.

After their celebration, the couple took Lesley’s body to the Moors, where they buried her naked in a shallow grave, her clothes at her feet.

Shortly after this murder, Ian Brady started to grow close with Myra Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith.

Myra hated her sister’s husband and couldn’t understand why Brady was getting close with him. But Brady had other plans. He was hoping to bring Smith in on the murders. He was getting bored of always doing the same thing when he killed.

Smith and Brady had similar childhoods, both of them being troubled children and having criminal records due to theft. The two of them began discussing crime, just as Brady had done with Hindley.

The pair decided that they were going to carry out a bank heist, which Smith planned extensively.

But Brady was worried. He didn’t want Smith to back out and try to alert authorities, so he wanted to see just how much Smith could handle. Brady bragged to David about his murders, giving him gruesome details without incriminating himself too much.

David, of course, didn’t believe him. This enraged Brady. He didn’t like that Smith thought he was incapable of murder, so he devised a plan to prove it.

The plan for the murder that took place on October 6th, 1965 was conceived and executed within only 5 hours.

the purpose was to prove to David Smith that Brady was capable of murder, and as a test for him, to see if he really had the guts to follow through with the bank heist the pair had planned.

Ethan Evans, a 17 year old boy, is the last victim of the Moors murders. He ran into Brady at a bar, who struck up a conversation with him.

strangely, Brady was the one to lure Evans in because he’d recognized the boy as someone he’d seen in a manchester gay bar before, but the two had never spoken.

At this bar, Brady suggested that Evans return home with him for a drink, which Evans agreed to due to the fact that none of his friends had shown up to the bar with him.

When the men returned home, Brady instructed Hindley to go and get David so that he could witness the murder. She did so, going to her sister’s house in the middle of the night to tell her something unimportant, just so she could use the excuse of needing David to walk her home.

Hindley and Smith stood in the kitchen upon returning to the house. David reports to have heard loud, piercing screams coming from the living room before Myra instructed, “Help him, David.”

When Smith entered the living room, he saw a young man sitting on the floor in front of the couch, slouched against it. The boy was bleeding badly, and Brady stood over the boy with an axe.

Brady hit Evans with the axe 14 times, until his skull had split open, he then strangled the boy with electrical wire.

David recounts that the boy had been crying for his mother throughout the attack.

After Evans was dead, Brady remarked “That’s it. That’s the messiest yet.”

Fearing he would meet a similar fate, David stayed and helped the couple clean up their mess and take Evans’ body upstairs. Smith stayed and had tea afterward, listening to the couple discuss and brag about the murder.

When he felt it was safe, David said he was going to go home. When he was sure he was out of their line of sight, he ran the entire way home. Shortly after, he informed police of the murder he had wittnessed.

Police searched the house, finding evidence linking Hindley and Brady to the murders of Downey, Kilbride, and Evans.

Initially, the couple was only convicted for these three murders, however after years in prison, Brady admitted to the murders of both Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade, implicating Hindley in both of them, to which she confessed.

but at this point they were both already serving life in prison, so it, sadly, didn’t make much of a difference in their lives.

Oh, also, while Brady was in prison, he wrote letters to Keith Bennett’s brother, creepily enough.

There are two survivors of Hindley and Brady’s attacks, Tommy Rhattigan and David Grey.

Grey was 10 years old when he was approached by Brady outside of a shop, during the height of their murdering spree. Brady told the boy that he was a police officer, and that he needed to come with him.

In response, Grey asked to see some form of identification. Brady laughed and responded, “You watch too much telly, son.” Grey took a step back, bumping into the shop door and triggering the bell alarm, alerting at least one person that he was there.

Hindley, who was hiding on the side of the building, came out at this point and told Ian that they had drawn too much attention and should just leave.

Grey spent the next few days terrified, but he didn’t realize who these people were until he had seen their pictures in the paper after their arrest.

Tommy Rhattigan, a 7 year old impoverished boy, was sitting on a park bench one day when Myra Hindley approached him and offered to take him to her grandmother’s house for some bread and jam.

Rhattigan was an obviously starved boy, as he had alcoholic parents and 12 siblings, so he easily agreed to this offer.

In her house, When Hindley brought out the bread and jam, Rhattigan noticed that it had been made without butter and that it was a very lazy job. It seemed like something she had to do, rather than something she had done out of the kindness of her heart.

This caused Tommy to panic. He ran to the window and tried his best to force it open. At first, it appeared to be stuck at only about four inches open, but he kept trying and it suddenly flew open, hitting the top of the frame with a loud bang.

Hindley appeared in the doorway and shouted “He’s getting away”, running toward the small boy just as he dove out the window, but she caught hold of his ankle.

Tommy kicked and eventually managed to get away, but he now lives with survivor’s guilt, because this incident took place only one week before the abduction and murder of John Kilbride.

The Moors Murders are among the most tragic cases I have ever researched, and the only thing that brings me comfort is knowing that these monsters will never, ever hurt anyone else.

I’m so glad to be back and i really hope you guys enjoy this thread!! i worked on it for hours and it probably wouldn’t be finished yet if my girlfriend ( @ghostadvcntures ) hadn’t helped me!! thank you so much for reading