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Who were Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and where are they now?

MOORS Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley acted upon their sick desires by killing five children during the 1960s.

Their heinous acts shocked the nation with the pair being dubbed the most evil couple in Britain for their kidnap, torture and murder of innocent children and teenagers.

Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
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Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra HindleyCredit: Getty

Who were Ian Brady and Myra Hindley?

The Moors Murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around Manchester, England.

Ian was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on January 2, 1938.

A number of authors stated that as a child he tortured animals, although Brady objected to these accusations.

As a teenager, while attending at Shawlands Academy, his behaviour worsened and he appeared before a juvenile court twice for housebreaking.

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He left the academy when he was 15 and took a job as a tea boy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan.

During his teen years he had a girlfriend named Evelyn Grant, but their relationship came to a quick finish when he threatened her with a flick knife after she visited a dance with another boy.

He then appeared before the court, but this time with nine charges against him.

Before his 17th birthday he was placed on probation on the condition that he live with his mother.

In January 1959, he was offered a clerical job at Millwards, a wholesale chemical distribution company, and was described by his colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man.

Myra was born on July 21, 1942, in Crumpsall to parents Nellie and Bob.

Her father was an alcoholic and would regularly beat her as a young child.

When she was eight years old her father threatened to "leather" her if she did not retaliate towards a boy who had scratched her cheeks, as she wrote later: "At eight years old I'd scored my first victory".

After her first job as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm, she became engaged at 17 but called it off after several months when she decided the man was too immature and unable to provide her with the life she wanted.

Police searching for the bodies of the victims on Saddleworth Moor
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Police searching for the bodies of the victims on Saddleworth MoorCredit: Alamy

How did the Moors Murderers meet?

In January 1961, 18-year-old Hindley joined Millwards as a typist and soon became infatuated with Brady, even though he had a criminal record.

She would often write in her diary about her fascination with Brady who she eventually spoke to for the first time on July 27, 1961.

They didn't become an item until December 22, 1961, when Brady asked her on a date to the cinema.

After learning about Brady's Nazi obsession, Hindley would then try to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection.

She would bleach her hair blonde and apply thick crimson lipstick.

The pair would often take photographs of each other that would have been considered explicit back in those days.

How many people did Ian Brady and Myra Hindley kill?

Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about "committing the perfect murder" in July 1963.

The pair killed five children - Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans — aged between 10 and 17.

At least four of them were sexually assaulted.

The bodies of John and Lesley Ann were discovered in 1965, in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor.

A third grave, that of Pauline, was discovered there in 1987, more than twenty years after Brady and Hindley's trial.

Bennett's body still remains undiscovered.

Where are they now?

Brady died on Monday, May 15, 2017, with his official cause of death being cor pulmonale and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

His body was disposed of with no music or ceremony, a High Court Judge ruled.

He was declared criminally insane in 1985 and moved to the high-security hospital in Merseyside where he was on a hunger strike from 1999, but kept alive by being force-fed a liquid nutrition mix.

Hindley was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Evans and Downey and sent to Holloway Prison.

She died in jail in November 2002, aged 60, after suffering respiratory failure following a heart attack.

In 1999 she had been diagnosed with angina and hospitalised after suffering a brain aneurysm.

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She was cremated following a private funeral conducted by Father Michael Teader.

A member of the public left a banner at the entrance to the crematorium which read “Burn in hell”.

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