The Mystery of the Moors Murders

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​They were lovers, sadists and serial killers. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were predators that from 1963 to 1965, killed five young victims.

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Police hope to find some trace of Keith Bennett who disappeared in 1964

The children were Pauline Reade, 16; John Kilbride, 12; Lesley Ann Downey, 10; and Edward Evans, 17. They were arrested after the death of Evans. All the victims' remains have been recovered except Keith Bennett, 12, who was taken on his way to his grandmother's house in 1964.

Hindley died in 2002, and Brady in 2017. Until the end he refused to say where the remains of Keith Bennett could be found.

Throughout the years Bennett's family held out hope they would find Keith's bones somewhere out on Saddleworth Moor in Manchester, however his mother Winnie died in 2012 with that wish unfulfilled.

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Moorcock Inn on Saddleworth Moors where another grisly murder took place in 1832.

Saddleworth Moor is a lonely expanse named for a nearby parish. The moorland is acres of grazing land and peat bogs.

In 1832, another notorious murder took place on the moors. There was A public house known as Bill's o'Jacks situated in the valley amongst the Saddleworth Hills. 

One of the victims was William Bradbury, 85, who went by the name of Bill o' Jacks who owned the tavern. The other victim was his son Thomas, who was 47 years old. They were discovered by a young girl while they lay dying in a pool of their blood.

Thomas had his skull broken, and he had 15 wounds on his head. His father received blows on the head, legs and hands. Before he died he said they were attacked by five Irishmen. It's believed they  were beat with pokers, sword sticks and a horse pistol. The men took money and several suits of clothes.

A passerby who came upon the scene, said the floor was covered with blood like a butcher's slaughterhouse. The walls of the room were splattered with human blood. A wooden staircase was covered with blood, from the footmarks of the person who had come from the lower room. There he found both men dying and bruised. The surgeon which had been called said he could not render aid.
The perpetrators of this crime were never caught. The Moorcock Inn as the tavern was also known, was eventually demolished.

In 1949, a plane crashed on Saddleworth Moor scattering bodies on the hillside. There were only 8 survivors—24 died.

In 2014, a man who was not identified until a year later as  David Lytton, 67, had taken strychnine and was discovered near a hill known as Indian's Head. He had taken a train from London just to commit suicide on the moors. It was never known why he did this.

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Photograph taken by Brady in November 1963, Hindley crouches over John Kilbride's grave on Saddleworth Moor with her dog, Puppet.

In 2022, author Russell Edwards, an amateur sleuth claimed he found what he believed was a "makeshift grave" with a skull nearby. The police responded to the area, hoping to find the grave.

Supposedly Edwards has been searching the moors for several years, especially in an area known as Eagle Rock, which was visited by Brady in 1966, after he had been arrested.

On September 29, 2022 the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) searched the moors once again based on Edwards' claims. The remains were never found. Alan Bennett, Keith's brother slammed the bogus report from Edwards, which had falsely raised the hopes of the family.

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The 5 victims of the Moors Murderers

Keith was last seen on June 16, 1964 when he was staying with his grandmother. Hindley lured the child to a van by asking for some  help with boxes.

Of the five children taken by Brady and Hindley, four were sexually molested. Their first victim Pauline Reade, 16, was not found until 1987. John Kilbride was found in 1965, since Brady had taken a photo of the child standing on the edge of his grave. Their third victim was Keith Bennett. Next was Lesley Ann Downey, only 10 years old who was taken from a fair ground in 1964. She was strangled, but not before being forced to pose for explicit photographs. They also recorded her final moments. The 16-minute tape was played at the trial of the murderous pair. Her body was the first to be discovered, as her arm was protruding from the ground.

The final victim was Edward Evans, 17, who was lured to the couple's home, along with David Smith, Myra's brother-in-law. He was also 17, and forced to watch as Brady hit Edward with an ax, used a cushion to smother him and then strangle him with an electrical cord.

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Winnie Johnson (left) and her daughter Margaret talking to Sheila Kilbride (mother of then-missing boy John Kilbride). Neither were yet aware that their children had been killed by Brady and Hindley c.June 24, 1964

David was married to Myra Hindley's sister Maureen, and they were hoping he would join them. He had his own troubled past, and had been groomed by the pair prior to Evans' murder.

What the pair hadn't counted on was that David actually had a conscience, and was horrified by what he saw they had done. Fearing for his life, he helped Brady carry Evan's body into a spare bedroom. Once he had a chance he ran home, told his wife what happened and then called the police, describing in detail what he had witnessed.

The police found Evans' body wrapped in plastic. At a Manchester train station suitcases were found. Inside were porno photos of Lesly, as well as the recording of her murder. There was also a notebook in Brady's handwriting with instructions on how to dispose of a body.

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Search for bodies on the moors c.1965

The pair were convicted on May 16, 1966 of the murders of Kilbride, Downey and Evans. They escaped execution by hanging by only a few months due to a change in the laws. Instead they were to be imprisoned for life.

​In 1985, the investigation was reopened when they confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett.

Myra Hindley served her sentence at Holloway Prison. She died behind bars in November, 2002, age 60, from complications following a heart attack. Her remains were cremated.

A banner was left at the entrance to the crematorium which read, "Burn in hell".

Ian Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985, and moved to a high-security hospital in Merseyside where he went on a hunger strike in 1999, which didn't end until 2017, when he pulled out his nasal feeding tube three days before his death. Prior to this he had been kept alive by being force-fed a liquid nutrition mix. He was known to routinely mock and abuse his nurses. His cause of death was listed as severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A judge ruled that his body was to be disposed of without any type of ceremony. His ashes were sealed in an urn and scattered in the Irish Sea.

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Search on Saddleworth Moors c.1965

If there was any doubt that Brady was a psychopath, what followed his death should settle that question. Moments before he died, Brady gave his lawyer, Robin Makin, two locked Samsonite suitcases with instructions that only until after his death should they be opened. He'd kept them in his room all these years.

However a district judge stopped police from accessing them, pointing out that since Brady and Hindley could not be tried for the murder of Pauline or Keith. The point was moot since all the parties were deceased. This is unusual since the contents of the suitcases are unknown. The authorities were wondering if perhaps there was evidence of more victims. 

According to the book The Lost Boy (2013) author Duncan Staff spoke to forensic psychiatrist Malcolm McCulloch who interviewed Brady with the hope of learning where Keith Bennett was buried, and he received this reply from the killer: "I know. You don't know. You want to know. And I'm not going to tell you."

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Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (Source - SWNS)

In 2023, recovered long-lost letters written by Keith Bennett's mother Winnie to Myra Hindley, reveal she agreed to take pentathol in order to find the boy's grave. This never took place, nor was she placed under hypnosis in an effort to jog her memory.

Hindley helped find Pauline Reade's body in 1987. However both killers could not remember where they had buried Keith.

Sheffield University’s Professor Tom Clark, who found the letters, said: “But by January 1993, she was ‘very adamant’ she would not subject herself to the truth drug because ‘she had been warned by Greater Manchester Police it could be harmful’. She neglected to inform Winnie Johnson, and the Home Office chose not to break her confidence.”

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