article: Over a period of 18 months in the 1960s, Brady and his accomplice, Myra Hindley, kidnapped and murdered five children in north-west England. The bodies of three of their victims were later found buried on Saddleworth Moor near the Lancashire town of Oldham. The details of the crime shocked the nation, not least because Brady's accomplice was a woman, and also because of the complete lack of remorse either showed during the subsequent trial. Brady was born Ian Stewart on 2 January 1938, the illegitimate son of a Scottish waitress. His violent personality was shaped by an unstable background. His mother neglected him and he was raised by foster parents in the Gorbals, Glasgow's toughest slum. After a spree of petty crime as a teenager the courts sent him to Manchester to live with his mother and her new husband, Patrick Brady. He assumed his stepfather's name, continued his criminal activities and developed into a fully-fledged teenage alcoholic. By now he had acquired new interests, building up a library of books on Nazi Germany, sadism and sexual perversion. He first met Hindley when she worked as a secretary at the company where they were both employed. For Hindley it was love at first sight. Brady impressed her by reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in the original German. As their relationship developed, they began taking obscene photographs of each other before turning their attention to kidnapping, child molestation and murder. Between July 1963 and December 1964, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, 12-year-old John Kilbride and Keith Bennett, also 12, were reported missing, all in the Manchester area. Another victim - Lesley Ann Downey, 10 - disappeared on 26 December 1964. Authorities were baffled by what they referred to as the "unrelated" cases, and were left without a single piece of solid evidence. In the meantime, Brady and Hindley were intent on a campaign to corrupt Hindley's brother-in-law, David Smith, and recruit him into their circle. A petty criminal with convictions of his own, Smith was amused when the conversation turned to murder; he questioned Brady's ability to follow it through. On 6 October 1965, Brady offered a practical demonstration with Edward Evans, a homosexual teenager, striking him 14 times with a hatchet before strangling him. Horrified, Smith phoned the police the next morning, directing them to Brady's address. The officers caught Brady and Hindley at home, retrieving a fresh corpse from the bedroom, along with the bloody hatchet and Brady's library of volumes on perversion and sadism. A 12-year-old neighbour recalled several trips she had made with the couple to Saddleworth Moor, and the police launched a search which uncovered the body of Leslie Ann Downey on 16 October. Four days later, another search of Brady's flat turned up two left luggage tickets for Manchester Central Station, leading police to a pair of hidden suitcases. Inside, they found nude photographs of the girl, along with tape recordings of her final tortured moments, pleading for her life as she was sexually abused. A series of seemingly innocent snapshots depicted portions of Saddleworth Moor, and detectives paid
summary: Few killers achieved the notoriety or attracted as much public loathing as the so-called "Moors Murderer", Ian Brady, who has died at the age of 79.