Ian Brady, Moors Murders

A very recent BBC documentary on the serial killer Ian Brady was posted to YouTube and is well worth a watch. It is called “Endgames of a Psychopath.”

If you remember, Ian Brady and his girlfriend Myra Hindley, raped and murdered 5 children and teenagers between July 1963 and October 1965. They were arrested and tried for the crimes and were sentenced to life in prison because, as their luck would have it, the death penalty in England was abolished right before their crimes were discovered.

The Moors where the bodies were buried.

I first became acquainted with the Moors Murders after reading what I still maintain is the best true crime book ever written: Emlyn Williams’ Beyond Belief, written in 1970.

Hindley died in prison in 2002 at the age of 60 but Brady still is alive, even after maintaining a 13-year hunger strike (he is being force-fed through a tube). Brady is now 74 and reportedly in ill health, making international news again after suffering a seizure.

Why the interest now? One of their victims’ mother, Winnie Johnson, who vowed to try to find her son’s body before she died, was reported to be ill and Brady wanted to torture her some more. He released a letter, sealed, with the instructions it only be opened upon his death, to his social worker advocate, in which it was speculated he finally revealed the location of little Keith Bennett’s body. But, sadly, Winnie died just three days before the documentary aired, going to her grave without being able to give her son a proper burial.