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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
World
Kate Lally

Who were Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and what were the Moors murders?

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley tortured and murdered five children in the 1960s.

Four of the victims were buried on Saddleworth Moor in the south Pennines. Brady was jailed for three murders in 1966 and was at Ashworth Hospital in Maghull from 1985 until his death in 2017.

Brady and Hindley later confessed to another two murders. Myra Hindley died in prison in 2002.

READ MORE: Police back digging on the moors for Ian Brady's victim Keith Bennett as skull found

Today (September 30), news has emerged that police are back digging on Saddleworth Moor for murder victim Keith Bennet.

The search has been launched after a skull has been found. The 12-year-old boy was snatched 58 years ago by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and the case has never been resolved.

Here is what happened during those heinous years, and what the Moors murders were.

Brady has never revealed where he buried the body of youngster Keith Bennett, who vanished in 1964 aged 12. His mum Winnie Johnson spent her life campaigning to find the truth.

She died in 2012 having been unable to give her son the Christian burial she had always wanted. Lesley Ann Downey was just 10-years-old when she was abducted on Boxing Day in 1964, brutally tortured and killed by the evil pair.

For years her stepfather Alan West was haunted by Lesley’s chilling death. He tirelessly campaigned against Brady’s appeals and to ensure Hindley remained behind bars.

He died aged 81, in 2016, after a long fight with a Parkinson’s-like condition, leaving Lesley’s brother Terry the only member of her family still alive. Terry previously said he prayed for the day when Brady dies - and says the fact the serial killer was outliving his victims’ families was “a joke”.

He said: “I hate him with a passion and wish he wasn’t on this earth. I’m just waiting for the day - the sooner he is not on this earth the better.”

Brady and Hindley also admitted killing Edward Evans, 17; John Kilbride, 12 and 16-year-old Pauline Reade.

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