# 32: The Moors Murders (Ian Brady & Myra Hindley) Part 2

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 3 Aug 2023, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880349/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851605-44100-2-c1d2e309c08e1bbd.mp3

Today's episode is part two of the Moors Murders carried out by UK serial killers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Please note that there is a short description of audio from a distressing tape recording of abuse endured by a child at 57:13 - 59:37. Trigger Warning: child death, disappearance, sexual assault Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] So today's video is going to be Part 2 of the Mars Murders
[0:42] series. Part 2 of 3 videos on Ian Brady
[0:46] and Myra Hindley. Just for a little bit of a recap
[0:49] on Part 1, we went through both the childhoods of Ian Brady and
[0:53] Myra Hindley and how the two of them met.
[0:55] Myra's childhood was rather uneventful, whereas Ian Brady's
[0:59] had a few kind of missed warning signs, potentially missed
[1:04] warning signs, if you believe the eyewitness testimonies that
[1:07] people have given since then. Myra Hindley met Ian Brady when
[1:11] she started working at Millwood's merchandising company
[1:14] and she fell for him as soon as she saw him, but he didn't feel
[1:18] the same way for a long time. She tried for a full year
[1:22] relentlessly to get this man's attention and eventually it did
[1:26] work. They went on a few dates and she
[1:28] broke off the engagement with her fiance Ronnie and the two of
[1:32] them, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley got together overtime.
[1:35] Brady expresses to him his desire to commit what he called
[1:40] the perfect crime. A crime done so well thought
[1:44] through so meticulously that police could never solve it and
[1:48] they would never be caught. And to him, this perfect crime
[1:52] was to abduct and murder a child, and Hindley supported him
[1:56] in that and said that she would help him.
[1:58] So the two of them went out looking for a victim and found
[2:01] 16 year old Pauline Reed on her way to a dance.
[2:04] She was walking alone at night and that was the perfect time
[2:08] for them to abduct her, take her up to saddle with Moore's and
[2:12] torture her, sexually assault her and then murder her.
[2:15] And we just left off where Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had
[2:19] buried Pauline Reed's body in a shallow grave on saddle with
[2:23] Moore. They packed up the van and they
[2:24] would just leave in the murder site.
[2:27] All in all, as they set off driving back to their kind of
[2:31] hometown in Manchester, it had been about 3 1/2 hours since
[2:36] Pauline Reed had left to go to the dance, and as Ian Brady and
[2:42] Myra Hindley are driving back into town in this van, they pass
[2:46] Pauline Reed's mother and her brother out searching for her.
[2:50] When she didn't return home after the end of the dance,
[2:53] Pauline's mother got really worried and she went to the
[2:57] social club to go and collect her daughter.
[2:59] However, at that point, everyone had already gone and none of the
[3:03] staff recalled seeing a girl in a pink dress and blue coat.
[3:07] Her mother and brother, along with different family members,
[3:10] spent hours running around the streets screaming her name and
[3:15] that is what Ian Brady and Myra Hindley ended up driving
[3:18] through. However, it wasn't looking like
[3:21] they were going to find Pauline and so they eventually called
[3:24] the police and reported him missing.
[3:26] At this point, it was the early hours of the morning and Brady
[3:29] and Hindley were back at Hindley's grandmother's house,
[3:32] meticulously cleaning the inside of this van, making sure that
[3:36] there was no evidence anywhere. So they cleaned the van.
[3:39] Ian then made Myra, Hindley and himself strip off all their
[3:44] clothes and get changed. He then cut up all of their
[3:47] clothes that they were wearing that day and burnt them on the
[3:50] fire, along with one of the knives that he used.
[3:53] Actually, I think he only used one knife, but he burnt that in
[3:56] the fire as well. After they finished all of these
[3:58] cleanup efforts, Myra went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of
[4:02] wine, and she and Ian laid in front of the fire in blankets
[4:08] and watched their clothes and the murder weapon burn as they
[4:12] drank wine and talked about how they'd just committed perfect
[4:16] crime. Brady recalled in that moment,
[4:19] feeling like a God, as if he didn't already have enough of a
[4:23] superiority complex. He felt like he was untouchable.
[4:27] He felt like he'd just outsmarted every single police
[4:30] officer, every single detective. But the next morning, one of
[4:33] them confessed to the other that they'd actually made a mistake
[4:37] in committing this perfect crime.
[4:40] One of them had stolen from Pauline Reed.
[4:44] They'd taken 4 half crowns out of her pocket, which is the
[4:47] equivalent of like 9 lbs today. But The thing is, both of them
[4:51] say that it was each other that stole it.
[4:55] So Brady, as he's telling these stories to police much, much
[4:59] later on in his life, he says that it was Hindley that stole
[5:02] this money from Pauline Reed and he freaked out because he
[5:05] thought that they would get caught.
[5:06] However, Hindley, when she's recalling this whole story, she
[5:10] says it was Brady that stole the money and she freaked out
[5:13] because she thought that they were going to get caught either
[5:16] way. We don't know who it was, but
[5:18] whoever didn't steal the money was fuming.
[5:21] And they were scared that this was going to, you know, foil the
[5:24] whole plan. So they knew they had to get rid
[5:26] of this money. And so they went and spent it on
[5:29] cigarettes and food and chocolate and wine.
[5:33] And then Hindley confessed to still having Pauline's Lockett,
[5:38] her necklace, and Brady was absolutely fuming about that as
[5:43] well. Because that is something that
[5:45] can get, you know, a trace back to Pauline Reed is her Locket.
[5:49] And so the two of them that day went back to the Mars and and
[5:53] dug a little bit of a hole next to where they buried Pauline
[5:57] Reed and they buried her Locket as well.
[6:00] Meanwhile, it had almost been 24 hours since Pauline Reed was
[6:04] last seen and there was very little that police had to go on.
[6:09] Obviously there were no witnesses and back in those days
[6:12] there was number CCTV cameras. There was absolutely nothing
[6:16] that they could really go on. They just had to all go out
[6:19] manually looking for Pauline and asking around.
[6:23] For weeks after Pauline's disappearance, her mother would
[6:27] just get on the bus anywhere and just ride it until the last
[6:32] stop, just looking out of the window, trying to find her
[6:35] daughter. This was generally a very safe
[6:38] neighborhood. No one ever really got into
[6:40] trouble, especially Pauline. And so police theorized that
[6:44] maybe she'd run away. But Pauline's family weren't
[6:47] having that for a second. Remember, she was a very, very
[6:50] shy girl. She couldn't run off on her own.
[6:53] And Pauline's mother just kept spiraling.
[6:57] She fell into a really deep depression.
[6:59] She never stopped crying. All she wanted to do was go out
[7:03] and look for her baby. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't
[7:05] eat. All she wanted to do was be out
[7:08] on the streets shouting for her baby.
[7:10] And eventually she was admitted into a psychiatric ward.
[7:14] Her son, Pauline's brother, claims that he always had a bad
[7:19] feeling about this. He knew from the second that he
[7:22] found out that Pauline was missing that he was never going
[7:25] to see her again. He knew that something bad had
[7:27] happened to her. Of course he couldn't put his
[7:30] finger on it, but he just had a feeling.
[7:33] A couple of days after the murder, Myra and Ian went back
[7:37] up on to saddle with more. They took their blankets, they
[7:40] took their wine, and this time they set it up on top of
[7:44] Pauline's shallow grave. And there they sat and they
[7:49] talked about the murder once again.
[7:51] They took pictures together on top of this grave.
[7:54] They took pictures of the dogs on the grave.
[7:56] A week or so later, it was Myra Hindley's 21st birthday and her
[8:01] boyfriend Ian Brady gifted her a gold watch while her neighbor
[8:06] gifted her the van. Up until now, this van that
[8:09] they'd been using, the one that they used to pick up Pauline
[8:12] Reed, was actually not theirs. It was a neighbour's van that
[8:15] they'd been borrowing. However, he recently got a new
[8:19] car and so he thought he might as well gift it to Myra for her
[8:23] birthday. However, he did warn Myra that
[8:26] this van needed an MOT. It needed taxing, it needed a
[8:30] lot of checks doing to it, and she didn't care.
[8:33] She didn't care as long as it drove her.
[8:36] She didn't care about the legal side of it, and she continued
[8:39] using this van until one day she got a knock at the door and it
[8:44] was a police officer. However, it wasn't about Pauline
[8:47] Reed. It was actually about her
[8:50] illegal driving of this van. He'd been sent to check out this
[8:54] van to force Myra to do these checks and taxing and everything
[8:59] like that. And as he was looking at this
[9:01] van, he realized that he actually really liked it and
[9:05] wanted it for himself. And he also took a liking to
[9:09] Myra as well. He expressed to Myra that he was
[9:12] really interested in buying this van off of her, but he legally
[9:16] could not exchange money while he was on the job, so he still
[9:20] wanted the van, but he would have to meet her on his own
[9:23] time. And so he asked Myra out for a
[9:26] drink. Myra accepts this date and when
[9:29] she tells Ian Brady about it, he thinks it is hilarious that a
[9:33] police officer wants to purchase a van that a murder was
[9:38] committed in or a van that helped to carry out a murder.
[9:44] So Hindley went On this date with this police officer and it
[9:48] actually led to an affair. She began sleeping with this man
[9:53] all behind Ian Brady's back. He had no idea that this
[9:56] continued after the first date. He thought that it was simply
[10:00] just for him to buy the van and then Myra was going to forget
[10:03] about it. But no, she carried on seeing
[10:06] him. And as Myra was seeing this guy,
[10:08] he told her that she was very intelligent and he thought that
[10:12] she would be a good addition to the police force.
[10:15] She had a natural kind of strictness about her that wasn't
[10:20] too intimidating, and he thought that she was a natural.
[10:24] And Hindley kind of liked the idea of being a police officer
[10:27] for some reason. And so she came home one day and
[10:31] she told Brady about this. She told Brady that she was
[10:34] debating starting, you know, like a course to become a police
[10:39] officer. And Brady loved that idea.
[10:42] He thought it would be really good to have someone on the
[10:45] inside, someone that could leak information on the
[10:49] investigations and maybe dispose of evidence if need be.
[10:53] And so he encouraged Myra Hindley to go through with this
[10:56] course. And so she started it and
[10:58] everything, and she began really enjoying her training to become
[11:02] a police officer. But it was around that same time
[11:05] that Ian Brady found out about her affair, and he went insane.
[11:10] He trashed the whole house. He told Myra that she was not
[11:13] going to be a police officer for as long as he lived.
[11:16] He would make sure of it. She wasn't going back to that
[11:18] training. She wasn't going to see that man
[11:20] ever again. To be fair, I think she was
[11:22] expecting this. I don't think she thought she
[11:24] could hide this affair forever. And so, you know, she accepted
[11:28] it. She stopped seeing this guy.
[11:31] Ian Brady was more important to her than police officer guy.
[11:35] Four months later, in November, the Pauline Reed case seemed to
[11:39] have gone cold. And Ian Brady was on such a
[11:42] high. He felt like he had one.
[11:46] He felt like he'd outsmarted the police.
[11:48] And he was also getting a bit bored.
[11:52] He was ready to commit a second murder.
[11:54] However, Hindley claims to police now that she wasn't
[11:59] willing to do a second murder. The first one, OK, maybe she was
[12:04] willing, but she wasn't willing to do it again.
[12:07] So Myra Hindley went out and rented another van, obviously,
[12:11] because they sold the last one to police Officer Guy.
[12:14] And on November 23rd, 1963, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley headed to
[12:20] a local market to find a victim there.
[12:23] Brady made sure to switch things up.
[12:25] If they picked up a second child from the side of the road, it
[12:29] would look suspicious and the two murders or the two
[12:32] disappearances would very quickly be connected.
[12:36] And so instead he chose to take a child from a different
[12:40] setting. But still, a market is very busy
[12:43] and there's a lot of children there and people might not
[12:47] notice if a child goes missing. They also did things like Myra
[12:51] would sometimes wear a headscarf or a black wig to hide her
[12:56] bleach blonde hair, because like I said, it was quite unique.
[12:59] Not a lot of women had bleach blonde hair.
[13:02] It was something that drew attention to her, which she
[13:05] loved for the most part, but when you're trying to abduct a
[13:08] child, you don't want to be drawing attention to yourself.
[13:19] Meanwhile, on this day in November, 12 year old John
[13:22] Kilbride was helping out at the local market.
[13:26] John was the oldest of seven siblings and he was very well
[13:30] behaved, but he was also kind of a cheeky little boy.
[13:33] Not in a bad way, just sometimes a little bit mischievous, but
[13:35] not necessarily badly behaved. He was just like a lovely little
[13:40] boy. He had a lot of friends.
[13:41] He was very likable among his peers and among like adults.
[13:46] Adults tend to like him as well. He was always playing out with
[13:49] his friends. He was a really sweet and
[13:51] helpful kid as well. He was always helping out around
[13:53] the house. He adored his grandmother.
[13:56] He always helped his grandmother.
[13:57] She needed shopping. He'd help her go and get the
[14:00] shopping. If she needed anything, he was
[14:02] there. And on this particular day, John
[14:04] and his friends had been out at the cinema watching a movie and
[14:08] then on their way home, they decided to stop off at the
[14:11] market. Now this was something that they
[14:13] did often. They would go down to the market
[14:16] and go to all the different stalls and ask the people on the
[14:19] stalls if they needed any help, and if they did they'd give them
[14:23] a little bit of pocket money for helping out.
[14:25] And so John and his friends went to the market on the way home
[14:28] from the cinema and that put John Kilbride in the market at
[14:32] the same time as Brady and Hindley.
[14:34] Obviously one stall didn't need all four boys helping out.
[14:38] So the four boys spread out and went to different stalls and
[14:42] worked their own little shifts and and then they all obviously
[14:46] finished at different times and they all just went home at
[14:49] different times. And this meant that when John
[14:51] Kilbride finished working, the guy on the stall no longer
[14:55] needed him. He was alone And so he went and
[14:59] sat on a wall and he was sat eating some biscuits that the
[15:02] guy at the stall had given him. And it was then, when he was sat
[15:05] on this wall that he was approached by a woman, Myra
[15:09] Hindley. And she seemed very concerned.
[15:12] She was telling him, oh, I'm sure your parents are worried,
[15:14] like they'll be wanting your home.
[15:16] It's getting dark, It's getting late.
[15:17] Let me drop you off at home. And so John Kilbride accepts the
[15:21] lift home. They go back to the van, and
[15:23] Myra says, oh, don't mind my boyfriend.
[15:25] He's just going to sit in the back.
[15:27] And so they set off. And after they'd been driving
[15:30] for a little bit, Ian Brady mentioned to Myra Hindley quite
[15:34] loudly about the glove that she lost on the maw and that they
[15:39] need to go and find. And so Hindley says, oh, yeah.
[15:42] She turns to John, and she says, would you mind coming and
[15:45] helping us look for this glove again?
[15:47] She gives it the whole it's really sentimental.
[15:49] It means a lot to me. Lost it out on the Moors.
[15:52] And John, being the very helpful, kind little boy that he
[15:55] was, he said, yeah, OK. He did seem a little bit
[15:59] reluctant at first, though, because, of course, it was
[16:02] getting late and it was getting dark, and his mother would have
[16:05] expected him home. And so Myra Hindley says, if you
[16:08] do, I'll give you a bottle of Sherry on the way home, and John
[16:12] Kilbride accepts. So they drive up onto the Moors.
[16:15] And once again, there are two different versions of this
[16:18] story, Brady's version and Hindley's version.
[16:21] Hindley's version is very similar to the first.
[16:23] She says she watches as Ian Brady and John Kilbride walk
[16:27] over the Moors and down one of the hills until they're out of
[16:30] her eye line. And then she goes and gets in
[16:33] the van and waits for Brady to return.
[16:35] Myra says she recalled watching John and Brady walk over the
[16:38] hill and she remembered thinking how small he was.
[16:41] He really was like a helpless child.
[16:44] She likened him to a little lamb being led to slaughter and he
[16:48] was so unaware of it all. But of course, Brady's version
[16:52] of events contradicts that. He said that Myra once again was
[16:55] there the whole time and joined it.
[16:57] Brady claims that he sexually assaulted 12 year old John
[17:01] Kilbride and Hindley actually held him down as Brady did so.
[17:06] Brady actually wanted to slit John's throat to kill him.
[17:11] However, he left the knife at home and so instead he just had
[17:15] to strangle him with some cord. Once again, Brady dug A shallow
[17:20] grave, this time by a river as Hindley kept lookout, and then
[17:24] they buried John Kilbride in there.
[17:26] Hindley and Brady once again get back in the van, drive back to
[17:30] their home and clean the whole thing.
[17:32] They get rid of anything that might connect them to the
[17:35] murder. They burn their clothes again.
[17:37] They get rid of absolutely everything.
[17:40] Meanwhile, John Kilbride's mother is starting to think that
[17:43] something is wrong. John had a strict curfew.
[17:46] He had to be home by 5:00 PM every single night.
[17:49] And he very rarely went over this.
[17:53] He did occasionally. Like I said, he was a
[17:55] mischievous little boy. Sometimes he stayed out until
[17:58] 5:10 or 5:20 if he was with a friend.
[18:02] But it was getting lit and dark. His mother began thinking of
[18:07] reasons why he might be staying over his curfew.
[18:10] Maybe he was helping out on the market as he normally was.
[18:13] Maybe he'd gone to his grandmother's.
[18:15] But as time was going on, these reasons were seeming less and
[18:19] less likely, as John would never stay out this late.
[18:22] Even if he had a valid reason, he would come home.
[18:24] Eventually his mother got so worried that she just called the
[18:27] police. The police came around and she
[18:30] joined them as they went to every single one of John's
[18:33] friends houses that he'd been with that day that he'd gone to
[18:37] the movies with, that he'd gone to the market with afterwards.
[18:40] And every single one of those friends said that they hadn't
[18:43] seen him since the market, since they all split up and went to
[18:46] all their different stalls. They'd all gone home at
[18:49] different times and none of them had seen John.
[18:51] Meanwhile, John Kilbride's older brother was going door to Door,
[18:55] St. to St., knocking on every single door, asking anyone and
[18:59] everyone if they'd seen his little brother.
[19:02] And no one had. As the weeks went on, naturally
[19:05] the Kilbride family lost a lot of hope in this investigation.
[19:10] It seemed as though John probably wasn't coming home.
[19:13] Although they continued to pray for him every single night and
[19:17] every single tea time, his mother would still make an extra
[19:21] plate of food and leave it at the table in case John came
[19:24] home. And Hindley.
[19:25] And Brady were loving every second of this.
[19:29] They would watch the Kilbride family, they would go and park
[19:32] the van on the Kilbride St. and watch people watch police watch
[19:38] the family go in and out of their home between searches and
[19:42] they found it entertaining. They'd also go up onto the Moors
[19:45] once again taking blankets and wine, taking the dogs.
[19:49] They would go and sit by John Kilbride's grave and drink wine
[19:53] and take photos on top of his gravesite.
[19:56] By this point Brady and Hindley got a new puppy together and
[20:00] this puppy was called Puppet and they would take this new little
[20:05] puppy out up onto the Moors and take pictures holding it while
[20:09] they were crouching on. The graves of murdered children
[20:14] The search for John Kilbride was one of the largest missing
[20:17] children searches in the whole of Manchester at that time.
[20:21] There'd never been so many police on one case, there'd
[20:25] never been so many sniffer dogs and people on horseback.
[20:30] And you know, it was such a huge investigation.
[20:33] They even drafted in a psychic to help.
[20:35] This psychic said she believed John Kilbride to be passed on,
[20:40] and she said that she believed that his resting place was a
[20:44] very open space with a big long skyline.
[20:47] There was number trees. It was just very open.
[20:51] And that's eerily accurate. And this psychic even got it so
[20:55] accurate that she said that there was a road the side of his
[20:59] resting place. And there was.
[21:02] And it's up to you whether you believe that kind of thing or
[21:04] not. But, I mean, objectively, she
[21:06] did get it pretty accurate. Whether it was a guess or, you
[21:09] know, genuine, like, talent is up to you.
[21:12] Ian Brady supposedly found out what this psychic had said about
[21:16] John Kilbride's resting place. And he said to Hindley that if
[21:21] this psychic said anything else, then she would have to meet the
[21:24] same fate. Meanwhile, police were looking
[21:28] into John Kilbride's own father as a prime suspect.
[21:32] They really went in on him. They brought him in for
[21:35] questioning multiple times. They were really suspicious of
[21:38] his father and in turn, the neighbors started to get
[21:43] suspicious of the father. They noticed that he was going
[21:46] to the police station a lot and John Kilbride's father was seen
[21:50] as guilty before he was even charged with anything.
[21:54] But this really took a toll on him, as I'm sure you can
[21:57] imagine. Not only is he grieving the loss
[22:00] of his son and not knowing the circumstances, being scared that
[22:04] maybe his son is still in danger, wondering what he's
[22:07] going through. Not only that, but he is being
[22:10] suspected doing that to his own son of killing his own son.
[22:16] The next murder would come almost eight months after the
[22:19] last on June 16th, 1964. Twelve year old Keith Bennett
[22:24] was the oldest of five siblings, living with his mother Winnie
[22:28] and stepfather Jimmy. Keith Bennett was an adventurous
[22:31] little guy. He loved nature.
[22:33] He loved, you know, being out and climbing trees and swimming
[22:37] in rivers and playing football. He just loved being outside and
[22:42] doing things. He was a very active little guy.
[22:45] He was also very family orientated.
[22:47] His best friend was his step sister.
[22:50] He adored his grandmother. He was always over at his
[22:53] grandmother's house. All the children would actually
[22:56] go for sleepovers at the grandma's house where there was
[22:58] more room, more toys, everything like that.
[23:02] And on this particular day, the kids were doing exactly that.
[23:05] They were going for a sleepover at their grandmother's house.
[23:08] Now. All the other kids had already
[23:10] set off to the grandmother's house, but Keith had hung back
[23:13] and he was talking with his mother, Winnie, and she decided
[23:16] to walk him halfway to the grandma's house.
[23:18] She walked him to the main road and saw him across safely and
[23:22] then he got to the other side, turned back around, waved and
[23:26] then turned and ran to his grandmother's house.
[23:30] And Winnie never saw her son again.
[23:32] His grandmothers house was literally only a couple more
[23:35] streets. He had a very very short walk to
[23:38] get there, otherwise his mum wouldn't have let him do it by
[23:41] himself. And in that very short time,
[23:43] when Keith was alone and vulnerable, Myra Hindley and Ian
[23:48] Brady were driving in their van looking for their next victim.
[23:52] They'd only been driving for a matter of seconds.
[23:54] They'd literally set off from Hindley's grandmother's house,
[23:57] which was like 2 streets away. And then they found Keith
[24:01] Bennett. And Ian Brady told Myra Hindley
[24:03] to pull over and offered this little boy a lift.
[24:07] She asked Keith Bennett if he would come with them to the
[24:09] local off license and help them to load some boxes into their
[24:13] van. And then after that, she would
[24:16] give him a lift back to his grandmothers.
[24:17] And Keith Bennett being the helpful little boy that he was,
[24:21] he said yes. Okay.
[24:23] And once again, as they set off driving, Ian Brady makes a
[24:27] comment to Myra Hindley about her missing glove.
[24:30] And Myra Hindley says, oh, yeah. She turns to the little boy and
[24:34] she says, do you mind coming and helping us look for this glove?
[24:37] And of course, Keith Bennett says, yes.
[24:40] OK, Again, the same story. Myra Hindley claims she waited
[24:43] at the car. She watched them walk over the
[24:45] Mars, Then she went and waited in the car.
[24:47] But I, of course, along with every other person that's ever
[24:51] looked into this case, I don't believe that for one minute.
[24:54] And so I'm just going to tell Brady's version of events.
[24:57] As they walked up onto the Mars, Ian Brady called Keith Bennett,
[25:01] being rather concerned. It was dropping dark.
[25:04] And his grandmother expected him there within a matter of
[25:08] seconds. And so she was obviously going
[25:10] to start getting worried at this point.
[25:12] And Myra Hindley actually became rather nurturing in this moment.
[25:18] And she was calming him down, saying, look, it's all right.
[25:20] Like, if you really want, I'll come to your grandma's house and
[25:23] I'll explain where you've been. I'll explain that you've been
[25:25] really helpful. They carried on walking for a
[25:27] while and then Ian Brady began whistling a particular song to
[25:34] Myra Hindley. Now this song was like their
[25:37] song. They had a lot of their song.
[25:41] I'll talk more about that towards the end of the video
[25:43] about how Myra and Ian had a lot of sick little things between
[25:49] them during these murders. However, their song at the time
[25:52] of this murder, Ian Brady began whistling it, and that was Myra
[25:56] Hindley's cue to attack Keith Bennett and pin him down onto
[26:01] the floor. Ian Brady once again sexually
[26:04] assaulted the boy and then strangled him to death.
[26:07] He then dug A shallow grave, but this time, before putting the
[26:11] body into the shallow grave and covering it up and just leaving,
[26:15] he took photos of Keith Bennett's body.
[26:18] They then filled in the grave, went home in the van, they burnt
[26:22] all their clothes. They cleaned out the van as they
[26:24] always did, but differently this time.
[26:27] They didn't stay together when they got home.
[26:30] Normally, after the murders, they would curl up in front of
[26:33] the fire, get a bottle of wine and talk about the murder.
[26:36] But this time, they both went back to their own houses.
[26:39] They didn't even stay together. This was the first time that
[26:42] they hadn't celebrated the murder together, which shows the
[26:46] novelty of it all wearing off. It was becoming a normal
[26:50] activity for them to do. It wasn't special anymore.
[26:54] Meanwhile, Keith Bennett actually hadn't been discovered
[26:57] missing yet. His grandmother hadn't noticed.
[27:01] Well, she had noticed that he hadn't turned up, but she
[27:04] thought it was just because he decided to stay home.
[27:07] She just assumed that his mother knew where he was and that he
[27:11] was at home. But of course, his mother,
[27:12] Winnie assumed that he made it to his grandmother's.
[27:16] There was a lack of communication there, but
[27:19] honestly, that was normal for the time.
[27:20] They didn't need to ring each other and make sure that every
[27:22] single child got there because in that time you would just
[27:26] assume that they did. But of course, Keith Bennett
[27:29] didn't. It wasn't until the next morning
[27:31] when the grandmother walked all the other children round to the
[27:34] house and Winnie opened the door and she looked at the children
[27:38] and she said, well, where's Keith?
[27:40] And the grandmother said, well I thought it was with you.
[27:42] Immediately they called the police because he'd been missing
[27:45] for way over 12 hours at this point and it was very, very
[27:48] concerning. And immediately this time police
[27:52] drew a connection between the disappearance of Keith Bennett
[27:57] and the disappearance of John Kilbride 8 months prior to 12
[28:01] year old boys missing from Manchester after just being out
[28:05] alone. At this point they weren't
[28:08] really linking the disappearance of Pauline Reed because she was
[28:11] a 16 year old girl. They were kind of concerned that
[28:15] there were so many disappearances, but at the same
[28:18] time she didn't seem to fit the victim profile of whatever was
[28:23] going on here. A search began for Keith
[28:25] Bennett, and just like with the John Kilbride case, Keith
[28:28] Bennett's stepfather Jimmy was focused on again, rather
[28:32] harshly, and they took this one like they were digging up the
[28:37] garden. They were pulling up the
[28:38] floorboards, thinking that he'd killed his own stepson and
[28:42] buried his body under the floorboards.
[28:44] They were checking everywhere. Although Keith and Jimmy were
[28:47] known to have a good relationship, they barely
[28:50] argued. Keith even called him dad, and
[28:53] Keith's mother Winnie was so torn apart by this.
[28:56] Of course, so was his stepfather, Jimmy, because he
[28:59] knew he hadn't done this. But Winnie, you could really
[29:02] tell it was taking a toll on her to the point where she actually
[29:05] went to the police station one day and told them to stop
[29:09] accusing her husband, Jimmy. And she said if they didn't
[29:13] start looking for the real killer, not only would she kill
[29:17] herself, but she would also kill her other four children.
[29:21] And it was even worse when Keith's little sister, the one
[29:24] that was his best friend, like I say, she was very young and she
[29:28] didn't understand. She couldn't understand why her
[29:31] brother wasn't at home anymore and why people were always
[29:34] talking about him, but they would never tell her where he
[29:37] was. She didn't understand that he
[29:40] wasn't coming home. She would constantly ask where
[29:42] is he? Like when's he coming home?
[29:44] And no one knew what to say to her.
[29:46] They tried to explain it, but she was too young to understand
[29:49] it. And she would constantly ask
[29:51] questions. She would constantly bring it up
[29:53] and it must have been so painful for his family.
[29:57] Of course, it's not her fault. She was too young to understand
[29:59] and she was trying to understand, but it must have
[30:02] been so hard for everyone. And Winnie, Keith's mother was
[30:05] actually heavily pregnant at the time of his disappearance.
[30:09] And with all the stress of, of course, losing her son but also
[30:13] her husband being accused of it, she actually went into an early
[30:17] labor. Luckily, she gave birth to a
[30:19] healthy baby and Winnie herself was all physically well and
[30:23] everything. Although it must have been so
[30:26] hard to not only function as a human being and an existing
[30:31] mother, but also a mother to a newborn baby as well.
[30:35] While going through all of this. Not only have you lost your son,
[30:39] but your husband's being accused and now you've got a newborn
[30:41] baby to look after. You've already got four other
[30:44] children to look after. Winnie often had hallucinations
[30:54] where she thought she saw her son and she thought she heard
[30:57] his voice and she thought she heard him call him for her.
[31:00] Although this did stop after a couple of months.
[31:03] And doctors just kind of put it down to, of course, the stress,
[31:06] but also the hormones of, you know, just giving birth and
[31:09] everything. And her brain just must have
[31:12] been really messed up at that point.
[31:14] A few months down the line, Winnie actually made friends
[31:17] with John Kilbride mother Sheila, Although at the time the
[31:21] cases weren't publicly linked. Police had only looked at that
[31:25] behind the scenes and never really given much time to it
[31:29] either. But they just kind of bonded
[31:31] over the fact that they were the only two people in the world
[31:33] that could understand their situation.
[31:36] Not only had their 12 year old sons gone missing, but their
[31:39] partners were being accused of it.
[31:42] Weeks after the murder of Keith Bennett, Ian Brady developed the
[31:46] picture that he took of Keith's body before he buried it and and
[31:51] he found that it was very blurry, wasn't a good picture
[31:53] because it was night time. And because of this, they
[31:56] decided to destroy the picture. It wasn't good enough to give
[32:00] them some kind of sick satisfaction every time they
[32:03] looked at it. So why keep that kind of
[32:06] evidence around? So they just burnt it and the
[32:08] next murder would happen another six months down the line.
[32:12] And that is something, another thing to note about Ian Brady,
[32:17] he was very particular about when he would commit these
[32:20] murders. A lot of serial killers get a
[32:22] momentum and they get addicted and it becomes like an urge that
[32:26] they have to satisfy. But not Ian Brady.
[32:29] He wasn't killing to kill, he was killing to commit a crime
[32:34] and prove that he was more intelligent than everyone else.
[32:37] I don't think he really cared so much about the actual murder
[32:40] itself, and he knew that he could only keep getting away
[32:43] with these crimes if he paced them well enough.
[32:47] If he did them every six months, or every eight months or
[32:50] whatever, they were less likely to be linked.
[32:53] But this way, because he waited a certain amount of months
[32:55] between each one, it took police a long time to link all all of
[33:00] the murders. But in that six months between
[33:03] the third murder and the fourth murder, Ian Brady and Myra
[33:07] Hindley were introduced to someone that would get caught up
[33:11] in this sick world with them. And this person was Hindley
[33:17] brother-in-law, so her sister Maureen's husband and his name
[33:22] was David Smith. Maureen and David married in the
[33:25] summer of 1964, so a month after the last murder of Keith Bennett
[33:30] and Ian Brady took a liking to David Smith immediately, whereas
[33:34] Myra Hindley hated David Smith. Smith was younger than Brady by
[33:40] I think nearly a decade. And so he really looked up to
[33:44] Brady. He was like an older brother,
[33:46] but also kind of like a dad, but also kind of like a best friend.
[33:49] He was all of those elements all in one person, and David Smith
[33:54] was fascinated by him. Brady, of course, was very
[33:57] cultured. He read books.
[33:58] He dressed smartly. He listened to records in his
[34:01] spare time. He was nothing like David
[34:05] Smith's friends. David Smith had never met a
[34:07] person like Ian Brady before. And of course, this just fed Ian
[34:11] Brady's superiority complex. He loved being looked up to by
[34:16] these people. That's what drew him to Myra
[34:18] because she was so obsessed with him.
[34:20] She looked up to him just like David Smith now did.
[34:24] Hindley, on the other hand, like I said, did not like David
[34:27] Smith. But she tried to get along with
[34:29] him for the sake of her sister because, you know, they were
[34:32] married now. He was around to stay.
[34:34] So in an attempt to get to know David Smith a little bit more,
[34:38] Myra Hindley invites her sister and her new husband round for
[34:42] drinks one night and all four of them share a couple of bottles
[34:46] of wine. Naturally, due to Myras dislike
[34:50] of David Smith and Bradys love of David Smith, the group split
[34:55] into two pairs, obviously the girls and the boys, and this was
[35:00] how it would be pretty much every single time they hung out
[35:03] as a fall. Brady was interrogating David
[35:06] Smith about his life and his upbringing and his criminal
[35:10] history and everything. David Smith was raised by his
[35:13] grandparents after his biological mother passed away
[35:16] shortly after he was born and his father, the grandparents
[35:20] son, was working away. I believe he was in the army and
[35:24] David Smith grew up thinking that his grandparents were his
[35:28] biological parents. And as I'm sure you can imagine,
[35:32] it must have been a huge event in his childhood when he found
[35:35] out that the people that he thought were his parents the
[35:38] whole time had been lying to him and that he actually had other
[35:42] parents out there. Well, the fact that his mother
[35:44] passed away when he was young and they never told him.
[35:47] But apart from that, you know, the big surprise of finding out
[35:50] that your parents aren't actually parents.
[35:52] He lived quite a happy childhood.
[35:54] His grandparents had legally adopted him and they treated him
[35:58] as any other parent would treat a child.
[36:01] His grandmother spoiled him. She adored David Smith and she
[36:05] gave him anything and everything he ever wanted.
[36:08] Although they were kind of a poor family.
[36:12] So they started off quite poor. And then his grandfather started
[36:16] gambling and they would get in sudden surges of money and then
[36:21] his grandfather would gamble it all the way and then they would
[36:23] get all the money back and then he would gamble it all the way
[36:25] again. So they were constantly
[36:27] fluctuating between having money for luxuries and, you know,
[36:31] getting whatever they wanted and then only being able to afford
[36:34] basic necessities. They were never so much so in
[36:37] poverty that they couldn't feed themselves or they couldn't, you
[36:40] know, keep the lights on or anything.
[36:41] But, you know, sometimes they could afford a toy for David and
[36:46] sometimes they couldn't. When David was around 7 or 8
[36:49] years old, his father came back into his life when he got a
[36:53] proper like stationary job around where he lived and he
[36:57] would see his father often. He'd bring him gifts whenever he
[37:00] saw him. But he suddenly stopped coming
[37:03] all together after a year or two, which must have been very
[37:06] hard for David. He finally got his biological
[37:09] father back and then he just abandoned him.
[37:11] But life carried on for David without his father.
[37:14] It wasn't a major loss because he still had his grandmother and
[37:17] grandfather and he was really, really close with his
[37:20] grandmother. He was like a mummy's boy.
[37:23] It was his mum, like he called her mum, so it was his mum and
[37:27] he would have done anything for his grandmother as she would for
[37:30] him and behind the scenes. So this was a very respected
[37:34] family where David Smith and his grandparents and behind the
[37:38] scenes his grandmother was actually an alcoholic.
[37:41] However, she never let this slip into her public image.
[37:45] She didn't want anyone to know the neighbors, no one.
[37:48] And so she didn't want to be seen going into a shop and
[37:51] buying multiple bottles of alcohol every day.
[37:54] And so instead, David Smith would go and buy the alcohol for
[37:58] his grandmother so she didn't have to risk her public image
[38:02] like that. And like I said, his grandmother
[38:04] would spoil him when they had money.
[38:06] She would spoil him with, you know, material goods.
[38:08] She would buy him whatever he wanted.
[38:11] But when they didn't have money, when his grandfather had gambled
[38:13] it all the way, she would just spoil him with affection and
[38:17] attention. And she really babied him.
[38:19] And then one day, David Smith came home from school one day
[38:22] and asked to speak with his grandmother.
[38:24] He'd had a realisation when he was at school that day that
[38:28] after a couple of odd comments from his friends, David Smith
[38:31] was part of the free school meals program, which is a thing
[38:35] that we've got in the UK, that if a family earns under a
[38:39] certain amount of money, their children can eat free at school
[38:42] just to make sure that they get a proper meal every day.
[38:45] This is for particularly low earning families, but David knew
[38:49] that his grandparents weren't poor or low earning.
[38:53] They had money, and occasionally they had a lot of money.
[38:57] So he was confused why he was getting free school meals.
[38:59] He never thought about it too much until this point when a few
[39:03] of his friends asked why he was getting free school meals when
[39:06] he had money. And then he actually probably
[39:09] started thinking about it. And he was like, I don't
[39:11] actually know why I'm getting free school meals.
[39:13] And so he went home and asked his grandmother this.
[39:15] And his grandmother seemed very serious about it.
[39:19] And he wasn't expecting a serious answer.
[39:22] He thought his grandmother was just, you know, kind of somehow
[39:25] getting him free school meals. But his grandmother sat him down
[39:28] and said she had something to tell him.
[39:30] She told David Smith that his mother hadn't actually passed
[39:35] away when he was young, and she was still alive and she was
[39:39] still out there, but she was very, very poor, and she lived
[39:42] alone. And this whole time, his mother
[39:44] had been in on it. She knew that they'd told him
[39:48] that she was dead, but she was still alive.
[39:50] And she had told the school that David Smith still lived with her
[39:54] and so he could get free school meals, which would help out the
[39:57] grandparents a little bit. As you can imagine, David was
[40:00] absolutely crushed that he had had a mother this whole time and
[40:06] that everyone was just lying to him.
[40:08] His grandmother had lied to him. All his life, he felt like he'd
[40:13] been abandoned as a child because his mother hadn't even
[40:16] visited once, hadn't even tried to contact him.
[40:19] She it seemed as though she didn't care about him, and he
[40:22] began resenting his grandmother for lying to him for so long, so
[40:26] much so that he actually began calling her Mrs. Smith.
[40:30] She was no longer mother to him. And then one day, when David was
[40:34] still very young, his father came in the middle of the night
[40:39] and came into his bedroom and just picked him up out of bed,
[40:42] took him outside, put him in a taxi and abducted him.
[40:45] His father didn't pack him any clothes.
[40:47] He didn't pack him any of his belongings.
[40:49] Literally all David had was the pajamas he was wearing and a
[40:52] cuddly toy that he was clinging to the whole time.
[40:55] And his father took him to his house.
[40:59] This house was just a bedroom that he rented from a woman.
[41:02] And his father told David that that was where he was going to
[41:05] live from now on. He was going to live with him.
[41:08] And this bedroom was the living conditions were horrendous.
[41:13] It smelled, it was damp, it was cold, it was dark, it was dirty.
[41:19] The landlady that they rented this room off was horrible to
[41:22] them both, especially David, and David actually at points
[41:27] physically attacked her because she was so horrible.
[41:29] And this was a real contrast to what David was used to.
[41:33] Like I said, his grandmother and grandfather, while they went
[41:36] well off, they weren't poor and so this was a huge contrast to
[41:41] the nice comfy bed that he once had and the nice clothes he once
[41:45] had. Now he was slinging on a
[41:47] mattress on the floor in a dirty bedroom.
[41:50] This really affected David's mood and in turn he began acting
[41:55] up at school. And this is very reminiscent of
[41:59] Ian Bradys childhood. His grades dropped, he got into
[42:03] fights, he began stealing things and eventually ended up in a bar
[42:07] stall. Just like Ian Brady.
[42:09] When he was at the bar stall, it seemed like he really was
[42:13] changing. He was becoming a good, you
[42:16] know, citizen. He began channeling his anger
[42:18] into boxing, which helped him get it all out in a safe way
[42:23] without hurting people. However, he eventually gave up
[42:26] boxing. He just lost interest.
[42:27] He never really cared for it in the first place.
[42:30] He only did it because the boss still made him.
[42:32] And as soon as he was released from the barstool, he went back
[42:35] to being the bad boy and he was known as the bad boy.
[42:39] He looked like James Dean. He dressed like James Dean, much
[42:43] like Ian Brady. He was known as the
[42:44] heartbreaker. He played a lot of girls.
[42:47] He got in a lot of fights. He was tough.
[42:49] He was, he stole things like he was the local bad boy.
[42:54] Like I said, he was a heartbreaker.
[42:55] He bounced between girls a lot, and one of these girls that he
[42:59] was seeing for a while was actually Pauline Reed, the first
[43:02] victim of the Mars murderers. He and Pauline were never
[43:05] official. They were just kind of seeing
[43:07] each other for a while. But everyone knew that they had
[43:10] a thing. It wasn't secretive.
[43:11] It wasn't, you know, everyone knew that there were a thing,
[43:15] but other girls still tried it because it wasn't official.
[43:18] And the two were actually so close that David Smith was
[43:20] actually questioned when Pauline disappeared, although at this
[43:24] point he was already dating Maureen Hindley.
[43:27] He hadn't really spoken to Pauline in a while, but he was
[43:30] an ex-boyfriend. And so, you know, part of the
[43:33] investigation, they questioned him.
[43:34] He told police the exact same as Pauline's friends did, that she
[43:38] was a shy, quiet, sweet girl. And, you know, he couldn't think
[43:42] of anyone that could do this to her.
[43:44] She wasn't in any bad circles. She wasn't a bad person.
[43:47] And when David began dating Maureen Hindley, none of the
[43:51] family approved of him. Like I said, he was a known
[43:54] criminal. He was a heartbreaker.
[43:57] And they knew this and they knew that he was bad news.
[43:59] Eventually, in 1964, Maureen Hindley discovered that she was
[44:03] pregnant to David Smith. And still, at this point, they
[44:07] weren't official. They were just seeing each other
[44:10] for a long time. And he got a pregnant and so he
[44:13] proposed to her and the 2 married before she gave birth to
[44:18] this baby. At the time, it was kind of
[44:20] looked down upon to have a baby out of wedlock.
[44:22] And David didn't want to bring that kind of shame on both
[44:26] himself and on Maureen and on her family and on his family.
[44:30] And he just thought it would be the easiest option to marry her.
[44:35] But even still, Maureen's family weren't willing to accept David
[44:39] Smith, so much so to the point that none of them attended the
[44:42] wedding, not even Myra. And Myra and Maureen were like
[44:46] best friends growing up, and she didn't even attend her own
[44:49] sister's wedding. It was only after the wedding
[44:52] that Myra decided that it was probably time to accept David
[44:56] because up until it was official, Maureen could have
[44:59] sacked him off at any moment and Myra didn't really care.
[45:03] But now that it was official and they were properly married, she
[45:06] kind of had to. And so she invited them both
[45:08] round for dinner that night in 1964.
[45:11] And we're back at the timeline. Like I said, David immediately
[45:14] looked up to Brady and Hindley. They were cultured.
[45:17] They read books, they listened to records.
[45:19] They were everything that no one his age was.
[45:23] They were cool. And Ian Brady took an equal
[45:26] liking to David Smith. He was like a younger version of
[45:29] himself. He had the criminal history, he
[45:31] had family issues. I don't know.
[45:34] He saw a lot of himself in David Smith.
[45:36] And he also loved that David looked up to him and was easily
[45:42] manipulated. And this night was the start of
[45:45] a new Group, A new little friend group that kind of manifested
[45:50] among the two couples. And the two couples also became
[45:54] best friends with each other, like the boys became best
[45:56] friends with each other. And Maura and Myrene kind of
[45:59] rekindled their friendship after it kind of fizzled out when
[46:04] Maureen got with David. So the girls were now best
[46:07] friends again, the boys were best friends, and the whole
[46:10] group started hanging out together more often.
[46:18] Myra Hindley was very jealous of David Smith.
[46:22] It was obvious that Ian Brady was very interested in this man,
[46:25] and he showed him more interest and more attention than he did
[46:28] Myra, his own girlfriend. And remember, Myra had to beg
[46:32] for Ian Brady's attention and for his love for so long, for
[46:37] nearly two years. And even then, when she got it,
[46:40] it still wasn't a lot. He still didn't.
[46:43] He was never really affectionate with her.
[46:45] And the fact that this guy could just come along and spend one
[46:48] night talking with him, and now he's closer to Ian than Myra
[46:51] ever would be. She was fuming.
[46:54] She hated David, and she was really, really jealous.
[46:57] Ian Brady would lend David Smith all the same books that he once
[47:01] lent Myra Hindley, and David seemed to be an even better
[47:06] student than Myra ever was. But every time David Smith would
[47:10] bring a book book back to Ian Brady, they were annotated and
[47:14] he'd made notes and everything. He was a better student than
[47:18] Myra was, and she felt like this man was replacing her in her own
[47:23] relationship. He would ask David Smith all the
[47:26] same kind of deep questions that he once asked Myra Hindley about
[47:29] like, what's the most you would do for £1,000,000?
[47:33] And would you ever rob a bank? What's the worst crime you would
[47:36] ever commit? And Brady began dropping things
[47:39] into conversation with Myra Hindley about potentially
[47:43] bringing David into their world. And you know exactly what I mean
[47:47] by their world. And he was talking about
[47:50] potentially making him an accomplice.
[47:52] David could help them clean up. He could help them get weapons.
[47:55] He was stronger than Myra, so he could help pin them down.
[47:59] Or, and this only angered Myra even more, this was her and
[48:03] Brady's thing. This was her and Brady's secret.
[48:06] This was all she had to define her relationship as any
[48:12] different from any other. Because like I said, Brady
[48:14] didn't show her all that much affection or attention.
[48:17] And so the only thing that she really had over everyone else,
[48:22] over every other woman in Brady's life, was the fact that
[48:25] they committed these murders together and she didn't want
[48:28] someone else coming in and intruding on that thing that was
[48:32] supposed to be just theirs. Around this same time, Hindley
[48:34] and Brady decided it was probably time that they moved in
[48:37] together. However, they still had to live
[48:40] with Hindley's grandmother because she couldn't afford to
[48:43] live alone and so they were just kind of stuck with her the rest
[48:46] of her life. Brady was in his late 20s,
[48:48] Hindley had just turned 22, and they wanted to kind of take the
[48:53] next step in their relationship. And so they went and rented a
[48:56] house in Hattersley. And here at this house in
[48:58] Hattersley, they quickly became very popular with the
[49:02] neighborhood children. They were very nice to the
[49:06] neighborhood children, which is something I find very unusual,
[49:09] particularly their next door neighbor Patty, who was a little
[49:12] girl no older than 10, and she loved animals, she loved dogs.
[49:18] And like I said, Hindley and Brady had a few dogs, including
[49:22] their puppy puppet. And so Hindley befriended this
[49:25] little girl and would invite her around to play with the dog and
[49:28] to watch TV and to eat snacks and whatever.
[49:32] And it was a strange friendship between an adult and a child.
[49:35] As time went on, Hindley and Brady got closer and closer to
[49:39] these neighborhood children, particularly Hindley, and they
[49:42] began taking them out on day trips to Saddleworth Moor.
[49:47] They would take all these children for walks with the dogs
[49:49] and they would play on the Moors, and then they'd bring
[49:52] them back again. I just think it's so eerie that
[49:54] they would take a group of children and let them walk
[49:58] across the graves of murdered children.
[50:03] Around this same time, Maureen gave birth to her baby.
[50:07] It was a little girl named Angela and Hindley and Brady,
[50:11] even though this was their niece, they really could not
[50:14] care less about this child or about this birth.
[50:17] All they cared about at this time was David Smith's new
[50:21] puppies. He had a dog and this dog had
[50:24] had a litter of puppies and Hindley and Brady wanted one of
[50:27] these puppies. So they would go around to the
[50:29] house, but not to care for their new niece, they would go to look
[50:33] at these puppies. On Christmas Eve of 1964,
[50:37] Hindley and Brady decided to go up on to saddle with more, as
[50:40] they often did with their next door neighbor Patty.
[50:43] They took her up and they were all drinking, even this little
[50:47] girl that was no older than like 10-11 years old.
[50:50] They were drinking wine, they were drinking whiskey and gin, a
[50:53] big mix of drinks. And then they eventually took
[50:56] this little girl home at 1:30 in the morning on Christmas
[51:00] morning. But on their way back to the
[51:02] car, Myra asked Patty to help her bag up some soil from the
[51:07] Moors so that she could take it home and put it in her garden.
[51:11] And Patty didn't really think much of it at the time.
[51:13] But how eerie is that, that Myra Hindley wanted a piece of the
[51:19] killing ground at her house at all times.
[51:22] Once they were back home, Hindley and Brady opened another
[51:26] bottle of wine in front of the fire in the early hours of
[51:29] Christmas morning. And it was then that Brady
[51:31] suggested to Hindley that he was ready to commit their 4th
[51:35] murder. But this time he wanted to make
[51:37] a few changes. He was bored of their normal
[51:40] method. He didn't want to commit this
[51:41] murder on the Mars. He actually wanted to bring the
[51:44] victim back to their house, kill them at home.
[51:48] The next morning, Hindley and Brady woke up and had Christmas
[51:51] morning as anyone else would. They saw family.
[51:54] They exchanged gifts. Brady gifted Hindley a record.
[51:59] Now, like I said, they had their song.
[52:02] Their song would change every few months depending on what was
[52:06] in the charts or you know, what they were liking at the time.
[52:09] And Brady would often buy Hindley different records of
[52:12] their songs. Now these songs were all to
[52:16] remind Hindley of the murders. He would get her a new record of
[52:22] their new song every time they would commit a murder or every
[52:25] time they were about to commit a murder.
[52:27] For example, the morning after the first murder, Hindley and
[52:30] Brady went to watch a movie and the two of them had this one
[52:35] particular song from this movie stuck in their head all day.
[52:39] And that became their song that reminded them of the first
[52:42] murder they ever committed. And so Brady went and bought it
[52:45] on vinyl and gave it to Hindley. And they would listen to it over
[52:48] and over again. They would sing it to each other
[52:50] in public, and no one else knew what they were referencing.
[52:54] They were referencing the time they murdered a child.
[52:57] And they liked this. They liked having this little
[52:59] thing that they could like reference to each other in
[53:01] public and no one knew what they were talking about.
[53:04] And so they kept updating their song every time they got a new
[53:09] kill. So yeah, Brady gave Hindley a
[53:11] record, and Hindley gifted Brady a tape recorder.
[53:16] Now, I don't think I need to tell you what she intended for
[53:19] him to use that for. By this point, killing wasn't
[53:23] enough for them. They were constantly wanting to
[53:26] step it up and increase the intensity from taking pictures
[53:30] on top of the graves to bringing soil home from the Moors.
[53:34] And now and a tape recorder to record the audio from their
[53:39] murders. The next day.
[53:41] On Boxing Day of 1964, Ian Brady decides he is ready to commit
[53:46] their 4th murder and he sends Myra Hindley into the other room
[53:49] to put on her headscarf and get ready to go out while he set up
[53:54] a camera and a tape recorder. Brady also told Hindley to go
[53:58] and drop her grandma off somewhere else for the night
[54:00] because he obviously couldn't really kill someone in the
[54:04] house. If the grandma mother was there,
[54:06] she would of course hear something.
[54:08] So Hindley dropped her grandmother off at a different
[54:11] family members house. She came back in the van, picked
[54:14] up Brady. They went to a supermarket and
[54:17] they did kind of like a weekly shop of their groceries and and
[54:21] then they went to a local fairground.
[54:23] Their plan this time was to find a victim at the fairground and
[54:28] they would carry around this shopping with them until they
[54:31] found a suitable victim. And then they would drop it and
[54:34] hope that the victim helped them pick it up and take it back to
[54:38] the car. And that is exactly what they
[54:39] did. They spotted a little girl alone
[54:42] just staring up at the rides, kind of mesmerized by the
[54:45] lights, and they walked by her and strategically dropped all of
[54:49] their shopping on the floor. And this little girl was so
[54:52] helpful. She helped pick it all up and
[54:54] take it all back to the car with them.
[54:56] Once they got back to the car, Hindley asked this little girl
[54:59] if she wouldn't mind coming back home with them and helping them
[55:02] take the shopping back into the house since the bags were broken
[55:05] and things like that, And this little girl said Yep, OK.
[55:08] And so they sat her in the back of the car and piled the
[55:11] shopping up around her, and then they set off.
[55:14] This little girl was 10 year old Leslie and Downey.
[55:18] She was a very shy and quiet girl for the most part.
[55:20] Leslie was the only girl of four siblings, so she had three
[55:24] brothers, and she lived with her mother and her mother's
[55:27] boyfriend. And Boxing Day morning, Leslie
[55:29] woke up. She ran downstairs along with
[55:32] all her brothers, and they played with all their new toys
[55:35] all morning. Specifically, Leslie wanted to
[55:38] play with her new sewing machine, but of course, a sewing
[55:40] machine is not a toy. And so her mother said, OK,
[55:44] we'll use it later tonight and I'll teach you how to use it
[55:46] properly because it's dangerous. And then at 4:00 PM that day,
[55:50] Leslie and her younger brother Tommy set off to the fair.
[55:54] They had a really good time at the fair, but they quickly ran
[55:57] out of money and so Tommy decided that they should
[56:00] probably go home since there's nothing left to do at the fair,
[56:03] and Leslie agreed. So they set off walking home.
[56:06] But they got halfway and Leslie realized that she didn't want to
[56:09] leave. She wanted to go back to the
[56:10] fair. She liked just looking at the
[56:12] lights, even if she couldn't afford to go on any of the
[56:15] rides, she liked to be there. So Leslie told Tommy to go back
[56:19] home. He was two years younger than
[56:21] she was, so he was 8 years old and she said that she would go
[56:24] back to the fairground and justice about and that's exactly
[56:28] what she did. She ran back to the fairground
[56:30] and she was sat staring at the lights when Myra Hindley and Ian
[56:33] Brady approached her. So they drove back to the house,
[56:36] and little Leslie helped Myra Hindley take all of the shopping
[56:40] into the kitchen in the house. Meanwhile, Ian Brady had gone
[56:44] upstairs for some reason, presumably to set up the audio
[56:48] recorder. After a short while, Hindley
[56:50] asked Leslie if she wouldn't mind helping her take the
[56:53] shopping upstairs, which Leslie thought was kind of weird, but
[56:57] she agreed anyway, and she walked up the stairs to where
[57:02] she would soon be killed. So up until this point, as we
[57:05] know, Myra Hindley had denied having any part in the murders.
[57:10] Well, she admitted she lured the children to Ian Brady, but she
[57:14] said she never actually killed them.
[57:15] She was never even present at the murders.
[57:19] But this time we have proof that she was.
[57:22] So now I'm going to describe what was on this audio tape.
[57:26] I'm not going to go into details.
[57:27] Details, but I am going to say a couple of quotes.
[57:31] So Leslie begins panicking when Hindley and Brady start handling
[57:37] her rather roughly. They're pulling her up onto the
[57:39] bed and Ian is trying to take pictures of her.
[57:42] I'm sure you can imagine what kind of pictures and she's
[57:45] screaming. These are these are two people
[57:48] that were so nice to her before and now they've suddenly
[57:51] switched up and they're being scary and they're forcing her to
[57:54] do things and they're pulling her about and she is scared and
[57:58] she's screaming this whole time is Leslie.
[58:00] And so Hindley grabs her handkerchief and pushes it
[58:03] inside her mouth to try and gag her so she can't say anything.
[58:07] On this tape recording, you can hear Hindley telling Leslie and
[58:11] Downey to shut up as they're trying to take pictures of her.
[58:14] And Brady is constantly saying, we're just trying to take
[58:16] pictures. We're just trying to take
[58:17] pictures. And this handkerchief gag
[58:20] situation that Hindley had tried to make Leslie be quiet with
[58:25] wasn't really working. And Leslie either spat it out or
[58:29] she could talk over it because she can be heard on the tapes
[58:33] begging for her mummy. She was saying she wants her
[58:36] mummy, she wants to be taken to her mummy.
[58:37] And Brady's still telling her to calm down.
[58:39] He only wants to take pictures of her.
[58:41] He's not going to hurt her. But then it gets more and more
[58:45] intense because at some point, Leslie must have had her arm at
[58:50] a position that he didn't want her to have it.
[58:52] And Brady can be heard on this tape telling Leslie to put her
[58:55] arm down or he'll slit her throat.
[58:58] This tape was 16 minutes long in total.
[59:02] And the whole thing is just them shouting at Leslie while she's
[59:06] screaming. She's begging for her mummy.
[59:09] She's pleading for them to let her go and she says she can't
[59:13] breathe and that they're hurting her.
[59:15] And this whole time, there's Christmas music playing in the
[59:18] background of all of this commotion going on.
[59:21] Eventually, either Brady or Hindley strangles Leslie and
[59:26] Downey to death with an electrical cord.
[59:29] And both of them say it was the other one that did it.
[59:33] So Brady says it was Hindley. Hindley says it was Brady.
[59:35] So we don't know the truth there.
[59:37] However, Brady claims that it was, of course, Hindley.
[59:40] And he says that for weeks after that murder, Hindley would keep
[59:44] this electrical cord in her bedside table.
[59:48] And she would get it out every night and kind of look at it and
[59:51] stroke it and kind of reminisce on that murder.
[59:55] And this tape is one of the most infamous things about this whole
[59:59] case. It is known to have brought
[1:00:01] grown men to tears when it was played in the courthouse to the
[1:00:05] jury. Members of the jury had to run
[1:00:08] out because they were going to throw up.
[1:00:09] Police officers have had to go through therapy after hearing
[1:00:13] this tape. It must have been.
[1:00:15] So harrowing to listen to and I'm glad it's not accessible
[1:00:21] online anywhere. After the murder, Hindley washed
[1:00:24] Leslie and down his body in the bath to make sure there was no
[1:00:28] evidence on her and then she wrapped up the body in like a
[1:00:31] rug or a carpet and then carried it out to the van.
[1:00:35] So that evening on the 26th of December, they set off driving
[1:00:39] to the Moors to go and bury the body as usual.
[1:00:43] However, they didn't make it very far because the road
[1:00:46] conditions were really bad. It was really icy, it was really
[1:00:49] slippy and they couldn't make it all the way to the Moors and so
[1:00:54] they turned around and went back home.
[1:00:56] But now they had a body they needed to hide.
[1:01:01] So they took the body. They put it back in Myras room
[1:01:04] and just left it there. Then they went back downstairs
[1:01:07] and again sat by the fire, blankets, wine, and talked about
[1:01:12] the murder while the body was still upstairs.
[1:01:15] And while all of this was happening, Leslie Ann Downey's
[1:01:18] mother had immediately gone out searching for her.
[1:01:21] As soon as Tommy came back to the house without her, she went
[1:01:25] straight back to the fair to go get Leslie.
[1:01:27] She didn't want her to be there alone, and so they'd gone to the
[1:01:30] fair and she wasn't there. And so she sent Leslie's older
[1:01:34] brother back to the house, just in case Leslie had come back
[1:01:37] home, or in case she was anywhere else, and she decided
[1:01:40] to come back home. They decided it would be a good
[1:01:43] idea if one of them stood at the house and one of them was at the
[1:01:46] fairground looking. They were searching all night
[1:01:49] for Leslie, but they couldn't find her anywhere and so they
[1:01:53] called the police, who as well began searching, but nothing.
[1:01:58] The next morning after the murder, Hindley and Brady drove
[1:02:02] the body back out to Saddleworth Moor and they buried her in a
[1:02:05] shallow grave. This time the body was naked.
[1:02:09] This was the first one that was stripped naked and they just
[1:02:12] buried her clothes at her feet. After a day off or two of
[1:02:15] searching, people's expectations of finding Leslie were already
[1:02:20] very low because there'd already been two disappearances of two
[1:02:25] young boys, and immediately it just didn't look good.
[1:02:28] Police began going to schools and giving talks about not
[1:02:32] staying out too late after dark, not going anywhere alone, and
[1:02:36] not getting into cars with strangers.
[1:02:38] As with the other disappearances, Leslie's
[1:02:42] biological father and her stepfather were both extensively
[1:02:46] questioned, but to no avail. And that is where we are going
[1:02:50] to end Part 2 of this video. Thank you so much for listening
[1:02:58] to usual disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[1:03:00] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[1:03:03] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[1:03:06] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[1:03:09] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[1:03:12] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[1:03:15] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[1:03:18] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[1:03:21] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[1:03:24] production. See you next time.

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