The Moors Murderers - Who Were They?

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley became notorious criminals in England, receiving the nickname "Moors Murderers". The level of outrage over the couple's crimes had not been seen since Jack the Ripper terrorized prostitutes.

Ian Brady's trouble with the law began at age thirteen. He also seemed to enjoy torturing animals. A childhood acquaintance told authorities Brady once put a cat in a pit, and then blocked the pit with a stone, just to see how long it would take the cat to starve.

As Brady grew up, he became obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and Hitler. He began collecting Nazi paraphernalia. He soon met Myra Hindley, who became his slave-like follower. Hindley indulged all of his dominatrix sex slave fantasies. He began calling her Myra Hess, after Hitler's henchman Rudolph Hess.

As a young child, Myra had been sent to live with her grandmother. She developed a close bond to her grandmother but had no such bond with her father. This lack of a bond may have made her vulnerable. She later had a close bond with a male teen, and was devastated when he drowned.

Following Brady's obsession with torture, the couple kidnapped and murdered at least four kids in the early to mid 60s. Hindley would lure the child into a car, and Brady took over from there. It is debated how much Hindley participated in the torturing and killing.

Their last victim was ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey. She was bound, stripped, and forced to pose for adult pictures. Her screams and cries were tape-recorded. Downey and the other victims were buried on the moors, leading to the couple's nickname the Moors Murderers.

Surprisingly, the notorious couple was not caught until they tried to recruit David Smith, Brady's brother-in-law in 1965. Brady brought home a homosexual and bludgeoned him to death with an axe in front of Smith. Things did not go according to plan when Smith was so shocked he contacted the police.

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady went to trial in 1966. Public outrage was so strong that the couple had to be placed behind bulletproof shields during trial. They both received life sentences. In 2002 Hindley died in prison of respiratory failure. In 1999, Brady went on a hunger strike and officials put him on a feeding tube. In following years, he continually petitioned for his right to starve himself. He is currently in high-security Ashworth Hospital.

Sources:
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers; Schechter, Harold and Everitt, David; Pocket Books, 2006.
www.crimelibrary.com
www.wikipedia.com