Fifty years ago today, the jury at Chester Assizes Court gave their verdict on a trial that had shocked and horrified the nation.
Twenty seven year old old Ian Brady was found guilty of the murders of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride, while Myra Hindley was found guilty of the murder of Evans and Downey, found not guilty of thr murder of John Kilbride but guilty of being an accessory of the murder after the fact.
They had taken just two hours and fourteen minutes to reach their verdicts after a trial that had lasted fourteen days.
Just after 5.00pm, the judge, with the rain pouring down outside, sentenced both Brady and Hindley to life in prison “These were three cool calculated cold blooded murders” he told Brady adding ” that I pass the only sentence that the law allowed” before he was taken down , and then addressed Hindley saying that she had been equally guilty of two horrible murders and of being an accessory to a third.”
Life would mean just that said a Home Office spokesman later that evening as the country recoiling from the gruesome facts of the case were calling for the return of the death penalty which had been abolished only the year before.
The case resonates to this day, Brady at the age of seventy eight is still detained in an institution, occasionally popping up with a comment that gives hope to those who still wish to understand what happened those fifty years ago. (Hindley died in prison in 2002), and for the fact that the Moors above Saddleworth are still the place of rest for Keith Bennett, who would later be confirmed as the couple’s fifth victim, while Brady continues to play cat and mouse over where his grave is.
It took the couple twenty years to finally admit their parts in the deaths of Bennett and their first victim back in the summer of 1963 sixteen year old Pauline Reade.
We have had worse since, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper killed thirteen, Denis Nielson, fiveteen, Fred and Rose West, Harold Shipman, but somehow the events of 1963-65 remain so much more reticent, perhaps because it marked the end of an age of innocence
It was a tragedy for Manchester, all its victims came from the region but probably most puzzling of all was the case of Myra Hindley. Surely she was one of us?
Manchester could sort of understand Brady, dealt the wrong cards at birth, born in Glasgow Gorbal’s area, bright at school but a persistent thief, moved to Manchester with his mother, stole again, sent to Borstal, then settled down, first working with his stepfather in a meat market and then to Millward’s Chemical works as a stick control, meticulous but rather anti social.
Hindley, solid working class brought up in an extended family in Gorton, did well at school and then at the age of thirteen she saw a boy drown in the canal and fell into religion, began to converts to Roman Catholism, then a failed engagement, zand a string of jobs before he turned up at Millwards in 1960 where it was love at first sight with Brady.
In time she became obsessed with him, living together on the new estate in Hattersley, 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, Brady playing Hitler’s speeches, Hindley learning German, while finding ways to dye her hair more and more peroxide blonde.
Their first victim, sixteen year old Pauline Reade from Gorton, kidnapped sexually assualted, killed and buried in a shallow grave on Saddleworth Moor in the late summer of 1963. Then twelve year old John Kilbride, abducted at Ashton Market later that year, lured into a hired Ford Anglia by Hindley and taken to Saddleworth Moor on the pretext of looking for a lost glove.
After that abduction, it changed for Manchester’s children, no longer free to play outside, instead ushered indoors for protection. The following year Keith Bennett, twelve years old went missing from Longsight in June, his body never found, his mother going to her grave nearly fifty years later without being able to bury her son
On Boxing Day 1964, Lesly Ann Downey, aged ten, lured from a fair ground in Ancoats.During the trial the court would hear the tapes of her final moments, probably one of the most harrowing moments in a British court room. “Let me go” and “Please” were audible, “Don’t undress me, will you?” and “I want to see mummy”. The tape ends with Brady saying “If you don’t keep that hand down, I will slit your neck.” then suddenly a child’s scream and a cry filled the room.”.
The murderous rampage was brought to an end the following year with the murder of seventeen year old Eric Evans, seen by Dave Smith the boyfriend of Hindley’s sister, whom Brady had tried to include into warp his twisted world who went to the police.
By the 6th May they were both behind bars, and Manchester and the rest of the world would be left trying to make sense of it all.
