Investigation and Arrests.

After witnessing the murder of Edward Evans, David Smith, Myra Hindley's brother-in-law, agreed to return the following morning with his baby’s pram, so they could use in to transport Evans's body to the car before disposing of it on the moor. Smith arrived home around 3:00 a.m. and asked his wife to make a cup of tea, which he drank before vomiting and telling her what he had just witnessed. At 6:10 a.m., having waited for daylight and armed himself with a screwdriver and bread knife, in case Brady was planning to intercept him, Smith called police from a telephone box on the estate. He was picked up by a police car from the telephone box and taken to Hyde police station, where he told officers what he had witnessed.

Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Stalybridge police division went to Wardle Brook Avenue, accompanied by a detective sergeant. Wearing a bread deliveryman's overall on top of his uniform, he asked Hindley at the back door if her husband was home. When she denied that she had a husband or that a man was in the house, Talbot identified himself. Hindley led him into the living room, where Brady was lying on a divan, writing to his employer about his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating "an act of violence involving guns" that was reported to have taken place the previous night, Hindley denied there had been any disturbances or violence, and allowed police to look around the house. When police asked for the key to the locked spare bedroom, she said it was at her workplace; but after police offered to take her to retrieve it, Brady told her to hand it over. When police returned to the living room they arrested Brady on suspicion of murder. As Brady was getting dressed, he calmly said, "Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand."

Though Hindley wasn’t initially arrested, she demanded to go with Brady to the police station, taking her dog. She refused to make any statement about Evans's death beyond claiming it had been an accident, she was allowed to go home on the condition that she return the next day. Over the next four days Hindley visited her boss at her work and asked to be dismissed so that she would be eligible for unemployment benefits. During this time she had found an envelope belonging to Brady which she burned in an old ashtray, she claimed she did not open it but believed it contained plans for bank robberies. On 11 October, she too was arrested and taken into custody, being charged with accessory to the murder of Evans and was remanded at HM Prison Risley. Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue found an old exercise book with the name "John Kilbride", which made them suspect that Brady and Hindley had been involved in the disappearances of other youngsters. Brady told police that he and Evans had fought, but insisted that he and Smith had murdered Evans and that Hindley had "only done what she had been told”. Smith said that Brady had asked him to return anything incriminating, such as "dodgy books”,(suspicious books) which Brady then packed into suitcases; he he didn’t know what else the suitcases contained or where they might be, though he mentioned that Brady "had a thing about railway stations". A search of left-luggage offices turned up the suitcases at Manchester Central railway station on 15 October, the claim ticket was later found in Hindley's prayer book. Inside one of the cases wes assortment of costumes, notes, photographs and negatives nine pornographic photographs taken of Downey, naked and with a scarf tied across her mouth, and a sixteen minute audiotape recording of a girl identifying herself as "Lesley Ann Weston” Lesley was heard screaming, crying, and pleading to be allowed to go home to her mother. Downey's mother later confirmed that the recording, was of her daughter.

Officers making inquiries at neighbouring houses spoke to 12-year-old Patricia Hodges, who had on several occasions been taken to Saddleworth Moor by Brady and Hindley, and was able to point out their favourite sites along the A635 road. Police immediately began to search the area, and on the 16 of October found an arm bone protruding from the peat, which was presumed at first to be Kilbride's, but was identified the next dat as belonging Downey whose body was still visually identifiable, her mother was able to identify the clothing which had also been buried in the grave. Also amongst the Photographs in the suitcase were a number of scenes of the moors. Smith had told police that Brady had boasted of "photographic proof" of multiple murders, and officers, struck by Brady's decision to remove the apparently innocent landscapes from the house, appealed to locals for assistance finding locations to match the photographs. There was a photograph taken by Brady in November 1963, of Hindley crouched over John Kilbride's grave on Saddleworth Moor with her dog, Puppet. Many of the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley on the moor featured Hindley's dog Puppet, sometimes as a puppy. To help date the photos, detectives had a veterinary surgeon examine the dog to determine his age; the examination required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover. Hindley was furious, and accused the police of murdering the dog – one of the few occasions detectives witnessed any emotional response from her. Hindley wrote to her mother:

“I feel as though my heart's been torn to pieces. I don't think anything could hurt me more than this has. The only consolation is that some moron might have got hold of Puppet and hurt him”

On the 2nd of October they found the "badly decomposed" body of Kilbride, which had to be identified by his clothing. That same day, already being held for the murder of Evans, Brady and Hindley appeared at Hyde Magistrates' Court charged with Downey's murder. Each was brought before the court separately and remanded into custody for a week. The investigating officers suspected Brady and Hindley of murdering other missing children and teenagers who had disappeared from areas in and around Manchester over the previous few years, and the search for bodies continued after the discovery of Kilbride's body, but with winter setting in it was called off in November. Presented with the evidence of the tape recording, Brady admitted to taking the photographs of Downey, but insisted that she had been brought to Wardle Brook Avenue by two men who had subsequently taken her away again, alive. By 2 December, Brady had been charged with the murders of Kilbride, Downey and Evans. Hindley had been charged with the murders of Downey and Evans, and being an accessory to the murder of Kilbride. At the committal hearing on 6 December, Brady was charged with the murders of Evans, Kilbride, and Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Evans and Downey, as well as with harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed Kilbride.

Trial 

The fourteen-day trial, began on 19 April 1966. The courtroom was fitted with security screens to protect Brady and Hindley, who were charged with murdering Evans, Downey and Kilbride. Both Brady and Hindley  Brady admitted to striking Evans with the axe, but claimed that someone else had killed Evans, pointing to the pathologist's statement that his death had been "accelerated by strangulation”. Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims. The sixteen-minute tape recording of Downey, on which the voices of Brady and Hindley were heard, was played in open court. Hindley admitted that her attitude towards Downey was "brusque and cruel", but claimed that was only because she was afraid that someone might hear Downey’s screams. Hindley claimed that when Downey was being undressed she herself was "downstairs"; when the pornographic photographs were taken she was "looking out the window"; and that when Downey was being strangled she "was running a bath".

On 6 May, after having deliberated for a little over two hours, the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders, and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans. As the death penalty for murder had been abolished in the UK while Brady and Hindley were held on remand, the judge passed the only sentence that the law allowed: life imprisonment. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered Kilbride. Brady was taken to HM Prison Durham and Hindley was sent to HM Prison Holloway.

Later Investigation

In 1985, Brady allegedly told a journalist working for The Sunday People, that he had murdered Reade and Bennett, something the police already suspected as both lived near Brady and Hindley and had disappeared around the same time as Kilbride and Downey. Greater Manchester Police reopened the investigation headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, head of GMP's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Since Brady and Hindley's arrests, newspapers had been keen to connect them to other missing children and teenagers from the area. One such victim was Stephen Jennings, a three-year-old West Yorkshire boy who was last seen alive in December 1962; his body was found buried in a field in 1988, but the following year his father, William Jennings, was found guilty of his murder. Jennifer Tighe, a 14-year-old girl who disappeared from an Oldham children's home in December 1964, was mentioned in the press some forty years later but was confirmed by police to be alive. This followed claims in 2004 that Hindley had told another inmate that she and Brady had murdered a sixth victim, a teenage girl.

On 3 July 1985, DCS Topping visited Brady, but found him "scornful of any suggestion that he had confessed to more murders”. Police nevertheless decided to resume their search of Saddleworth Moor, once more using the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley to help them identify possible burial sites. In November 1986, Bennett's mother wrote to Hindley begging to know what had happened to her son, a letter that Hindley seemed to be "genuinely moved" by It ended: "I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie's Hospital. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. Please, Miss Hindley, help me." Police visited Hindley a few days after she received the letter, and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help by looking at photographs and maps to try to identify spots she had visited with Brady. She showed particular interest in photos of the area around Hollin Brown Knoll and Shiny Brook, but said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed with DCS Topping that a visit would be worth risking despite security problems presented by threats against Hindley. Writing in 1989, Topping said that he felt "quite cynical" about Hindley's motivation in helping the police. Although Winnie Johnson's letter may have played a part, he believed that Hindley, knowing of Brady's "precarious" mental state, was concerned he might co-operate with the police and reap any available public-approval benefit.

On 16 December 1986, Hindley made the first of two visits to assist the police search of the moor. Police closed all roads onto the moor, which was patrolled by 200 officers, some armed. Hindley and her solicitor left Cookham Wood at 4:30 am, flew to the moor by helicopter and then were driven, and walked, around the area until 3:00 pm. Hindley had difficulty connecting what she saw to her memories, and was apparently nervous of the helicopters flying overhead. The press described the visit as a "fiasco", a "publicity stunt", and a "mindless waste of money", but DCS Topping defended it, saying "we needed a thorough systematic search of the moor ... It would never have been possible to carry out such a search in private.”

On 19 December, David Smith, then 38, spent about four hours on the moor helping police identify additional areas to be searched. DCS Topping continued to visit Hindley in prison, along with her solicitor and her spiritual counsellor, who had been a prison governor before becoming a Methodist minister. On 10 February 1987 Hindley formally confessed to involvement in all five murders, but this was not made public for more than a month. The tape recording of her statement was over seventeen hours long; Topping described it as a "very well worked out performance in which, I believe, she told me just as much as she wanted me to know, and no more”. He added that he "was struck by the fact that in Hindley's telling she was never there when the killings took place. She was in the car, over the brow of the hill, in the bathroom and even, in the case of the Evans murder, in the kitchen"; he felt he "had witnessed a great performance rather than a genuine confession”. Police visited Brady in prison again and told him about Hindley's confession, which at first he didn’t believe. Once presented with some of the details that Hindley had provided of Reade's abduction, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but on one condition, that immediately afterwards he be given the means to commit suicide, a request with which was impossible for the authorities to lawfully comply with. At about the same time, Johnson sent Hindley another letter, again pleading with her to assist the police in finding the body of her son Keith. In the letter, Johnson was sympathetic to Hindley over the criticism surrounding her first visit. Hindley, who had not replied to the first letter, responded by thanking Johnson for both letters, explaining that her decision not to reply to the first resulted from the negative publicity that surrounded it. She claimed that, had Johnson written to her fourteen years earlier, she would have confessed and helped the police. She also paid tribute to DCS Topping, and thanked Johnson for her sincerity. Hindley made her second visit to the moor in March 1987. This time, the level of security surrounding her visit was considerably higher. She stayed overnight in Manchester, at the flat of the police chief in charge of GMP training at Sedgley Park, Prestwich, and visited the moor twice. Hindley confirmed to police that the two areas in which they were concentrating their search Hollin Brown Knoll and Hoe Grain were correct, although she was unable to locate either of the graves. She did, though, later remember that as Reade was being buried she had been sitting next to her on a patch of grass and could see the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.

In April 1987, news of Hindley's confession became public. Amidst strong media interest Lord Longford pleaded for her release, writing that continuing her detention to satisfy "mob emotion" was not right. Fisher persuaded Hindley to release a public statement, which touched on her reasons for denying her guilt previously, her religious experiences in prison, and the letter from Johnson. She said that she saw no possibility of release, and also exonerated Smith from any part in the murders other than that of Evans. Over the next few months interest in the search waned, but Hindley's clue had focused efforts on a specific area. On 1 July, after more than 100 days of searching, they found Reade's body 3 feet (0.9 m) below the surface, 100 yards (90 m) from where Downey's had been found. Brady had been co-operating with the police for some time, and when this news reached him he made a formal confession to DCS Topping, and in a statement to the press said that he too would help police in their search. He was taken to the moor on 3 July but seemed to lose his bearings, blaming changes in the intervening years; the search was called off at 3:00 pm, by which time a large crowd of press and television reporters had gathered on the moor. DCS Topping refused to allow Brady a second visit to the moor before police called off their search on 24 August. Brady was taken to the moor a second time on 8 December, and claimed to have located Bennett's burial site, but the body was never found. Soon after his first visit to the moor, Brady wrote a letter to a BBC reporter, giving some sketchy details of five other deaths that he claimed to have been involved in, a man in the Piccadilly area of Manchester, another victim on Saddleworth Moor, two more in Scotland, and a woman whose body was supposedly dumped in a canal. Police, failing to discover any unsolved crimes matching the details that he supplied, decided that there was insufficient evidence to launch an official investigation. Hindley told Topping that she knew nothing of these killings. Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Reade and Bennett, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted.

In 2003, the police launched Operation Maida, and again searched the moor for Bennett's body, this time using sophisticated resources such as a US reconnaissance satellite which could detect soil disturbances. In mid-2009, the GMP said they had exhausted all avenues in the search for Bennett, that "only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart”, and that any further participation by Brady would be via a "walk through the moors virtually" using 3D modeling, rather than a visit by him to the moor. Donations from the public funded a search by volunteers from a Welsh search and rescue team in 2010. In 2012, it was claimed that Brady may have given details of the location of Bennett's body to a visitor, a woman was subsequently arrested on suspicion of preventing the burial of a body without lawful excuse, but a few months later the Crown Prosecution Service announced that there was insufficient evidence to press charges. In 2017, the police asked a court to order that two locked briefcases owned by Brady be opened, arguing that they might contain clues to the location of Bennett's body; the application was declined on the grounds that no prosecution was likely to result. 

Brady’s Incarceration

Following his conviction Brady was moved to HM Prison Durham, where he asked to live in solitary confinement. Where he stayed for nineteen before being diagnosed as a psychopath 1985 He was then sent to the high-security Park Lane Hospital, now Ashworth Hospital, in Maghull, Merseyside; He made it quite clear that he never wanted to be released. The trial judge recommended that Brady's life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries agreed with that decision. In 1982, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane said, ”this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies". 2007 death of John Straffen, who had spent 55 years in prison for murdering three children, meant that Brady became the longest-serving prisoner in England and Wales. Although Brady refused to work with Ashworth's psychiatrists, he occasionally corresponded with various journalists outside the hospital. In one letter, written in 2005, Brady claimed that the murders were "merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964". By then, he claimed, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles. During several years of interactions with forensic psychologist Chris Cowley, including face-to-face meetings, Brady told him of an "aesthetic fascination he had with guns”, despite him never having used one to kill. He complained bitterly about conditions at Ashworth, which he hated. In 1999, his right wrist was broken in what he claimed was an "hour-long, unprovoked attack" by staff.  Brady went on a hunger strike, but while English law allows patients to refuse treatment, those being treated for mental disorders have no such right if the treatment is for their mental disorder. He was therefore force-fed and transferred to another hospital for tests after he fell ill. Brady recovered and in March 2000 asked for a judicial review of the legality of the decision to force feed him, but was refused permission.

“Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight simply to die. I have had enough. I want nothing, my objective is to die and release myself from this once and for all. So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic. I'm only sorry I didn't do it decades ago, and I'm eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin”. 

In 2001, Brady wrote The Gates of Janus, which was published by the US underground publisher Feral House. The book, Brady's analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in the UK. In the book, Brady recounted his friendship with the "teacup poisoner" Graham Young, who shared Brady's admiration for Nazi Germany. It was said that Brady regretted Hindley's imprisonment and the consequences of their actions, but not necessarily the crimes themselves. He saw no point in making any kind of public apology; instead, he “expressed remorse through actions”. Twenty years of transcribing classical texts into braille came to an end when the authorities confiscated Brady's translation machine, for fear it might be used as a weapon. He once offered to donate one of his kidneys to someone, anyone who needed one”, but was blocked from doing so. It was claimed that it was because these attempts to express remorse were thrown back at him that he began to contemplate suicide. In 2006 officials intercepted 50 paracetamol pills hidden inside a hollowed-out crime novel sent to Brady by a female friend. The mother of the remaining undiscovered victim, Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within 20 yards of her son's body but the authorities would not allow it. He did not refer directly to Bennett by name and did not claim he could take investigators directly to the grave, but spoke of the “clarity” of his recollections. In 2012, Brady applied to be returned to prison, reiterating his desire to starve himself to death. At a mental health tribunal in June the following year, he claimed that he suffered not from paranoid schizophrenia, as his doctors at Ashworth maintained, but a personality disorder. Brady's application was rejected and the judge stated that he "continues to suffer from a mental disorder which is of a nature and degree which makes it appropriate for him to continue to receive medical treatment." After receiving end-of-life care, Brady died of restrictive pulmonary disease at Ashworth Hospital on 15 May 2017; the inquest found that he died of natural causes and that his hunger strike had not been a contributory factor. Brady had refused food and fluids for more than forty-eight hours on various occasions, causing him to be fitted with a nasogastric tube, although his inquest noted that his body mass index was not a cause for concern. He was cremated without a ceremony, and his ashes disposed of at sea during the night.

Hindley’s incarceration

Hindley lodged an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction immediately after the trial. She corresponded with Brady by letter until 1971, when she ended their relationship. The two remained in sporadic contact for several months, but Hindley had fallen in love with one of her prison warders, Patricia Cairns. A former assistant governor. Hindley successfully petitioned to have her status as a Category A prisoner changed to Category B, which enabled Governor Dorothy Wing to take her on a walk round Hampstead Heath, part of her unofficial policy of reintroducing her charges to the outside world when she felt they were ready. The excursion caused a furore in the national press and earned Wing an official rebuke from the then-Home Secretary Robert Carr. With help from Cairns, and the outside contacts of another prisoner, Maxine Croft, Hindley planned a prison escape, but it was thwarted when impressions of the prison keys were intercepted by an off-duty policeman. Cairns was sentenced to six years in jail for her part in the plot. Hindley was told that she should spend twenty-five years in prison before being considered for parole. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, but in 985 Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased her tariff to thirty years. By that time Hindley claimed to be a reformed Catholic. Downey's mother was at the centre of a campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released from prison, and until her death in February 1999, she regularly gave television and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley's release was rumoured. In February 1985, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Brittan that his proposed minimum sentences of thirty years for Hindley and forty years for Brady were too short, saying, "I do not think that either of these prisoners should ever be released from custody. Their crime was the most hideous and cruel in modern times."

In 1987, Hindley admitted that the plea for parole she had submitted to the Home Secretary eight years earlier was "on the whole ... a pack of lies",and to some reporters her co-operation in the searches on Saddleworth Moor "appeared a cynical gesture aimed at ingratiating herself to the parole authorities".Then Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life tariff on Hindley in July 1990, after she confessed to having been more involved in the murders than she had admitted. Hindley was not informed of the decision until 1994, when a Law Lords ruling obliged the Prison Service to inform all life sentence prisoners of the minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole. In 1996, the Parole Board recommended that Hindley be moved to an open prison. She rejected the idea and in early 1998 was moved to the medium-security HM Prison Highpoint; the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom. Between December 1997 and March 2000, Hindley made three separate appeals against her life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.

When in 2002 another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary's power to set minimum terms, Hindley and hundreds of others, whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released. Hindley's release seemed imminent and plans were made by supporters for her to be given a new identity. Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered the GMP to find new charges against Hindley to prevent her release from prison. The investigation was headed by Superintendent Tony Brett, and initially looked at charging Hindley with the murders of Reade and Bennett, but the advice given by government lawyers was that because of the DPP's decision taken fifteen years earlier, a new trial would probably be considered an abuse of process.

On 25 November 2002, the Law Lords agreed that judges, not politicians, should decide how long a criminal spends behind bars, and stripped the Home Secretary of the power to set minimum sentences. Just prior to this, however, on 15 November 2002, Hindley, aged 60, died from bronchial pneumonia. She had been diagnosed with angina in 1999 and hospitalised after suffering a brain aneurysm. Camera crews "stood rank and file behind steel barriers" outside, but none of Hindley's relatives were among the small congregation of eight to ten people who attended a short service at Cambridge crematorium. Such was the strength of feeling more than thirty-five years after the murders that a reported twenty local undertakers refused to handle her cremation. Four months later, her ashes were scattered by her ex-partner, Patricia Cairns, less than 10 miles (16 km) from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. The Manchester Evening News reported on possible fears that this would result in visitors choosing to avoid or vandalise the park. 

Early life (Brady) 

Ian Brady was born at the Rottenrow Maternity Hospital in Glasgow to Margaret Stewart and grew up in the tough slum neighbourhood of the Gorbals. Peggy Stewart, a tea-room waitress. She found it extremely difficult bringing up a child on her own and hoped to spare her son the social stigma of his illegitimacy. So she put young Ian up for adoption  The nearby Sloane family adopted him into their own family and raised him as one of their own. Ian's father has never been identified; Peggy Stewart claimed that he was a journalist who died a few months before their son was born. Ian showed troubling signs of dysfunctional behaviour early on in his childhood. He an displayed an unusual amount of moodiness and when he could not have his way he would throw violent tantrums, which sometimes ended with him banging his head against the wall. Peggy occasionally came to visit her son and brought him gifts. Ian figured out for himself who Peggy Stewart really was, and that the Sloanes were not his real family. Other people in the neighbourhood also caught on to Ian’s socially unacceptable origins, and this, coupled with his sullen, unsociable personality, and his lack of skill at football, made him unpopular with local kids. Ian came to resent his illegitimacy, and began to see himself as a rebellious outsider and refused to follow the same rules as others. At school he was a bright student and a people thought him as handsome, well-dressed but he still wasn’t not well-liked. At the age of eleven, Ian passed the entrance exams to Shawlands Academy but Ian was lazy, would not apply himself. He was also misbehaved. He started smoking, and gave up schoolwork. He developed a fascination with Nazi Germany, Nazi pageantry and Nazi symbolism. He often asked other boys for souvenirs that their fathers brought back from the war, and when playing rough war games he would insist on being "the German". It was at this time that Ian also became known for weird perverse and sadistic tendencies, including bullying smaller kids and torturing animals which is a huge red flag as many serial killers start by killing and torturing animals in a variety of grotesque ways. By the time he was a teenager, he had been brought before the juvenile courts for burglary and housebreaking. On the first two occasions he was given probation, but on the third the court ordered him to leave Glasgow and live with his mother. She had since moved to Manchester and had married an Irish labourer named Patrick Brady. In November 1954, two months before his 17th birthday, Ian left the Sloane household and traveled down to join his mother and her new husband. Although he did not get along with Mr Brady, Ian took his stepfather's name and used it for his own. As a Scot exiled in an English city, Ian Brady's compounded feelings of isolation and hostility began to manifest in other ways. He would often spend hours in his room, reading and listening to music. He developed an interest in the writings of the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, focusing particular attention on Nietzsche's theories of Übermensch and The Will to Power. He became increasingly obsessed with the philosophy that championed cruelty and torture, and the idea that superior creatures had the right to control and destroy weaker ones. Brady collected books about torture and sadomasochism relating to domination and servitude. About this time, he got a job as a butcher's assistant, and some commentators have expressed that the experience of regularly cutting meat away from bone may have nurtured his interest in the physical acts of mutilation and murder. He also began drinking heavily and went to the cinema a lot, He often found himself in need of extra spending money to support these new habits. Brady also gambled on Horse Races. He soon resorted to thieving again and after being convicted several more times and being arrested and fined for an incident of public drunkenness he was sentenced to two years training at a Borstal school as well as a spell at Strangeways Prison. While prison, Brady learned illegal techniques for acquiring money, and entertained grandiose fantasies of becoming a big-time criminal, pulling off lucrative bank heists. He hoped to avoid manual labour and aimed to appear respectable, and so studied bookkeeping. His release led to prolonged stretches of unemployment. He worked as a Labourer for Boddington's Brewery between April and October 1958, before spending a few more months unemployed. Brady eventually found a job in February 1959 as a stock clerk at Millwards Merchandising.

In January 1961, he met Myra Hindley, who had just been hired at Millwards as a shorthand typist, however, Ian remained disinterested in Myra and aloof, whereas she liked him enormously. But at the Christmas office party, relaxed by a few drinks, Brady asked Hindley for a date.

Early life (Hindley)

Myra Hindley was born on the 23th July 1942, to Nellie and Bob Hindley. She was brought up in Gorton. Back then is was a working class area of Manchester. Her father was an alcoholic and would beat Myra regularly when she was a small child. The small  council house the family lived in was in such poor condition that Hindley and her parents had to sleep in the only available bedroom, she slept in a single bed next to her parents' double. The family's living conditions deteriorated further when Myra’s sister, Maureen, was born in 1946. Shortly after the birth, Myra then aged five, was sent to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby, by her parents. Myra’s father had fought in the Second World War, and had served with the Parachute Regiment. He had been known in the army as a "hard man" and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her how to fight, and insisted that she "stick up for herself". When Myra was aged 8, a local boy approached her in the street and scratched both of her cheeks with his fingernails, drawing blood. She burst out crying and ran into her parents' house, only her father demanded that she "Go and punch him the boy because if you don't “I'll beat you” Myra found the boy and succeeded in knocking him down with a sequence of punches, as her father had taught her. As she wrote later, "at eight years old I'd scored my first victory". Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has suggested that the fight, and the part that Hindley's father played in it, may be "key pieces of evidence" in trying to understand Hindley's role in the Moors murders: The relationship with her father brutalised her. She was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age it can distort a person's reaction to such situations for life.

One of Myra’s closest friends was 13-year-old Michael Higgins, who lived in a nearby street. In June 1957 he invited her to go swimming with friends at a local disused reservoir. A good swimmer, Hindley chose not to go went out with a friend, Pat Jepson. Higgins drowned in the reservoir, and upon learning of his fate Hindley was deeply saddened, and blamed herself for his death. She collected for a funeral wreath, and his funeral at St Francis's Monastery in Gorton Lane—the church where Hindley had been baptised a Catholic had a lasting effect on her. Hindley's mother had only agreed to her father's insistence that she be baptised a Catholic on the condition that she was not sent to a Catholic school, as her mother believed that "all the monks taught was the catechism". Hindley was increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church after she started at Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception into the Church soon after Higgins's funeral. She took the confirmation name of Veronica, and received her first communion in November 1958. She also became a Godparent to Michael's nephew, Anthony John. It was also at about this time that Hindley first began bleaching her hair. Hindley's first job was as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm. She ran errands, made tea, and typed. She was well liked at the firm, enough so that when she lost her first week's wage packet, the other girls had a collection to replace it. She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas 1958, and became engaged aged 17. The engagement was called off several months later; Hindley apparently thought Sinclair immature, and unable to provide her with the life she envisaged for herself. Shortly after her 17th birthday she changed her hair colour, with a pink rinse. She took judo lessons once a week at a local school, but found partners reluctant to train with her, as she was often slow to release her grip. She took a job at Bratby and Hinchliffe, an engineering company in Gorton, but was sacked for absenteeism after six months.

In 1961, 18-year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards as a typist. She soon became infatuated with Brady, despite learning that he had a criminal record. She began a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady. Over the next few months she continued to make entries, and grew increasingly disillusioned with him. On the 22nd December Brady asked her on a date to the cinema, where they watched a film about the Nuremberg Trials. Their dates were always a trip to the cinema, and then back to Hindley's house to drink German wine. Brady then gave her books to read, and the pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities. Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, bleaching her hair blonde and applying thick red lipstick. She expressed concern at some aspects of Brady's character; in a letter to a childhood friend, she mentioned an incident where she had been drugged by Brady, but also wrote of her obsession with him. A few months later she asked her friend to destroy the letter. In her 30,000-word plea for parole, written in 1978 and 1979 and submitted to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Myra said:

“Within months he had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion”

Myra began to change her appearance further, wearing clothing considered risqué such as high boots, short skirts, and leather jackets, and the two became less sociable to their workmates. The couple were regulars at the library, borrowing books on philosophy, as well as crime and torture. They also read works by the Marquis de Sade, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Although Myra was not a qualified driver, she passed her test on the third attempt, late in 1963, Myra often hired a van, in which the two planned bank robberies. Myra befriended George Clitheroe, the President of the Cheadle Rifle Club, and on several occasions visited two local shooting ranges. Clitheroe, although puzzled by her interest, arranged for her to buy a .22 rifle from a gun merchant in Manchester. She also asked to join a pistol club, but she was a poor shot and allegedly often bad-tempered, so Clitheroe told her that she was unsuitable; she did, though, manage to purchase a Webley .45 and a Smith and Wesson .38 from other members of the club. Brady and Hindley's plans for robbery came to nothing, but they became interested in photography. Brady already owned a Box Brownie, which he used to take photographs of Hindley and her dog, Puppet, but he upgraded to a more sophisticated model, and also purchased lights and darkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other that, for the time, would have been considered explicit. For Myra this demonstrated a marked change from her earlier, more shy nature.

Aftermath

David Smith became "reviled by the people of Manchester” for financially profiting from the murders. During the trial, Maureen who was eight months pregnant at the time, was attacked in the lift of the building in which she and Smith lived. Their home was vandalised, they regularly received hate mail, and Maureen wrote that she could not let her children out of her sight when they were small. After declining to prosecute the News of the World, Attorney General Elwyn Jones came under political pressure to impose new regulations on the press, but was reluctant to legislate on "chequebook journalism". Instead, he accepted the offer of the Press Council to produce a "declaration of principle" which was published in November 1966 and included rules forbidding criminal witnesses being paid or interviewed—but the News of the World promptly rejected the declaration and the Council had no power to enforce its provisions.

After stabbing another man during a fight, in an attack he claimed was triggered by the abuse he had suffered since the trial, Smith was sentenced to three years in prison in 1969. That same year his children were taken into the care of the local authority. Maureen moved from Underwood Court to a single-bedroom property, and found work in a department store. Subjected to whispering campaigns and petitions to remove her from the estate where she lived, Maureen received no support from her family—her mother had supported Myra during the trial. On his release from prison, Smith moved in with a 15-year-old girl who became his second wife and won custody of his three sons. Maureen managed to repair the relationship with her mother, and moved into a council property in Gorton. She divorced Smith in 1973, and married a lorry driver, Bill Scott, with whom she had a daughter.

Maureen and her immediate family made regular visits to see Hindley, who reportedly adored her niece. In 1980, Maureen suffered a brain haemorrhage; Hindley was allowed to visit her in hospital, but arrived an hour after her death. Sheila and Patrick Kilbride, who were by then divorced, attended Maureen's funeral thinking that Hindley might be there; Patrick mistook Bill Scott's daughter from a previous relationship for Hindley and tried to attack her. Shortly before her death at the age of 70, Sheila said: "If she Hindley ever comes out of jail I'll kill her”. It was a threat repeated by her son Danny.

In 1972, Smith was acquitted of the murder of his father, who had been suffering from terminal cancer. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to two days' detention. He remarried and moved to Lincolnshire with his three sons, and was exonerated of any participation in the Moors murders by Hindley's confession in 1987. In 2011, he co-authored the book Witness with biographer Carol Ann Lee. Smith died from cancer in Ireland in 2012.

In 1977, a BBC television debate discussed arguments for and against Hindley's release, with Lord Longford, a Catholic convert, on the side who argued that she should be released, and Downey's mother arguing against her release and threatening to kill her were the release to occur.

Reade's mother was admitted to Springfield Mental Hospital in Manchester. She was present, under heavy sedation, at the funeral of her daughter on 7 August 1987. Five years after their son was murdered, Sheila and Patrick Kilbride divorced. Downey's mother died in 1999 from cancer of the liver. Since her daughter's death, she had campaigned to ensure that Hindley remained in prison, and doctors said that the stress had contributed to the severity of her illness. Bennett's mother continued to visit Saddleworth Moor, where it is believed that Bennett is buried, until her death in 2012.

Manchester City Council decided in 1987 to demolish the house in which Brady and Hindley had lived on Wardle Brook Avenue, and where Downey and Evans were murdered, citing "excessive media interest in the property creating unpleasantness for residents".

In November 2017 it was revealed that, without the knowledge of her family, some of the remains of Pauline Reade, including her jaw bone, had been kept at the University of Leeds by Greater Manchester Police. GMP apologised to the Reade family. In October 2018 her remains were re-buried at her grave in Gorton Cemetery, Manchester.