Ian Brady- research

Birth name: Ian Duncan Stewart

A.K.A.: "The Moors Murderer"

Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Rape
Number of victims: 5
Date of murder: July 1963 - October 1965
Date of arrest: October 7, 1965
Date of birth: January 2, 1938
Victim profile: Pauline Reade, 16 / John Kilbride, 12 / Keith Bennett, 12 / Lesley Ann Downey, 10 / Edward Evans, 17
Method of murder: Cutting the throat / Strangulation with a piece of string
Location: Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment on May 6, 1966


Moors Killings

Brady was responsible for the murders of five children during the 1960s. In August 1987 he claimed to police that he had carried out another five killings and even said where he had buried the bodies, but the police were never able to prove whether these claims were true.

The five murders that Brady admitted carrying out were committed with Hindley as his accomplice. These were the infamous Moors Murders, which are still some of the most reviled crimes in Britain decades after they happened. As a result, Brady and Hindley became two of the most hated individuals in British criminal history.

On July 12, 1963, the couple claimed their first victim. 16-year-old Pauline Reade was enticed into Hindley's minivan while Brady followed behind on his motorcycle. They drove up to Saddleworth Moor where Hindley asked Pauline to help her look for a lost glove. They were busy "searching the moors" when Brady pounced upon Pauline and raped her. He then smashed her skull in with a shovel and slashed her throat so violently that she was almost decapitated. Brady then buried Pauline's body on the moor, where it remained for over 20 years.

On November 23, Hindley lured 12-year-old John Kilbride into her car from a market place in Ashton-under-Lyne, and drove him to Saddleworth Moor. Brady was waiting there and ordered Hindley to wait for him in a nearby village in their hired Ford Anglia. While Hindley waited in her car, Brady attempted to stab the boy with a knife, but the weapon was too blunt. Brady lost his temper and strangled him to death with a string before burying his body in a shallow grave.

On June 16, 1964 their third victim was another 12-year-old boy, Keith Bennett, whom they enticed from a street in Chorlton and drove to Saddleworth Moor. Hindley stood and watched from the top of an embankment while Brady sexually assaulted Keith in a ravine before strangling him to death with a piece of string and burying his body. It has never been found.

The fourth victim, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, was lured from a fairground in Ancoats. Brady took nine obscene photographs of her, showing her naked, bound and gagged (which were later found in a suitcase in a left luggage locker). Hindley recorded the scene of the child's rape and torture by Brady on audio tape. The tape clearly records the voices of Brady, Hindley and the child, who is heard to scream and protest and asks to be allowed to go home and plead for her life. It is believed she was killed by Brady. The following morning, Brady and Hindley drove Lesley's body to Saddleworth Moor where it was buried in a shallow grave.

On October 6, 1965, the couple claimed their fifth and final victim, 17-year-old Edward Evans. They enticed him from Manchester Central Railway Station to their house in Hattersley, where Hindley's 18-year-old brother-in-law David Smith was visiting. Brady then crept up on Edward in the kitchen and smashed his head in with an axe. He ordered Smith to help him carry the corpse to an upstairs bedroom and tie it up ready for disposal, but Smith then ran home and contacted the police. Smith explained later that, while apparently giving assistance to cleaning up, his sole concern was to escape the house alive.

Sentencing

The death penalty was abolished just one month after Brady and Hindley were arrested. By the time they went on trial the following April, the punishment for murder was life imprisonment. This meant that a murderer was liable to be detained for the whole of his or her natural life, but could be released on life licence when no longer judged to be a risk.

On 6 May 1966, Brady was found guilty on three counts of murder and sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment. Hindley was found guilty of murdering Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans and given two life sentences; she also received a concurrent seven-year sentence for harbouring Brady in connection with the murder of John Kilbride.

The key evidence against the couple included the tape recordings of Downey's made while they photographed her naked; the name of John Kilbride in a notebook; and a photograph of Hindley standing on top of the shallow grave where Kilbride was buried. Brady immediately admitted the murder of Edward Evans, but adamantly insisted that Hindley had no part in it. Brady finally confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett in November 1986.

Imprisonment

Brady spent 19 years in a mainstream prison (at one point befriending serial poisoner and fellow Nazi aficionado Graham Frederick Young) before he was declared mentally disordered in 1985 and sent to a mental hospital.

The trial judge spoke of his doubt that Brady could ever reform, describing him as "wicked beyond belief" - and effectively giving him little hope of eventual release. Successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision, while Lord Lane (the former Lord Chief Justice), set a 40-year-minimum term in 1982. In 1990 he was told by Home Secretary David Waddington that both he and Hindley should never be freed.

His successor Michael Howard agreed with this judgement in 1994 and told Brady so. Although home secretaries can no longer decide the minimum length of a life sentence, and a European Court of Justice case currently in the process could soon see lifelong imprisonment outlawed, but Brady always insisted that he never wants to be released. He has had to be force-fed since going on hunger strike in September 1999, after the High Court refused him the right to starve himself to death.

In early 2006, various newspapers reported that Brady was hospitalised and doesn't have much longer to live. He is, however, still alive at present, and currently being held at Ashworth Hospital in Liverpool. In the extremely unlikely event of Brady ever being released, he would almost certainly be immediately arrested, tried and convicted for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, two murders which he was never charged with.

In 2001 Brady published a book called The Gates of Janus, which was published by the underground American publishing firm Feral House. The book, Brady's analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in Britain.

Despite his incarceration, Brady (and his murders) still provide headlines for the UK tabloid press. Fellow prisoner Linda Calvey recently told the The Daily Mirror that, before her death in November 2002, Hindley confessed their killing of a young female hitch-hiker.

It has been reported that Brady devised a secret code to stop the police from finding out where the body of Keith Bennett is buried, and that he is furious that a drama documentary based on the murder was shown on ITV1 in May 2006. He has bragged to various newspapers that he has stopped four previous films from being made.

In early 2006, it was reported that a woman tried to smuggle 50 paracetamol tablets to Brady at the prison hospital. The amount would have been sufficient for a successful suicide attempt. Hospital employees foiled the attempt using X-ray screening, which revealed the pills in two sweets tubes inside a hollowed out crime novel.

Winnie Johnson, the mother of Brady's one undiscovered victim, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 claiming that he could take police to within 20 yards of her son's body, but the authorities would not allow it.

It has been reported that Brady has written his autobiography and has given his solicitor instructions that it may only be published after Brady's death.