Lesley Ann Downey had been missing since Boxing Day 1964, taken from a Manchester fairground and killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who recorded her final minutes on tape. In October 1965 police digging on Saddleworth Moor spotted a bone protruding from the peat.
The body recovered was still visually identifiable. It was formally confirmed the next day as Lesley Ann, and her mother identified her by the clothing recovered with her, bringing a grim end to months of searching in one of Britain’s most notorious crime cases.
Ian Brady insisted that his lover, Myra Hindley, had nothing to do with the killing. But detectives found a handwritten account in her car describing their plan to murder a teenager: a plan they had already carried out.
Further searches uncovered photographs and a tape recording documenting another victim’s ordeal. On the recording, detectives heard not only the pleas for mercy, but the voices of Brady and Hindley themselves.
After three days searching the moorland above Manchester, police uncovered the first grave. The discovery confirmed what detectives had feared since finding a body at Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s home: there were more victims.
Eleven days later, searchers found a second grave. Another victim was never found. His mother spent the rest of her life searching for answers and returning to the moor, hoping to bring her son home.
One October night in 1965, Ian Brady and his lover Myra Hindley brought a seventeen-year-old back to their home near Manchester, where Brady killed him with an axe in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom they had wrongly taken for a kindIan Brady and Myra Hindley brought 17-year-old Edward Evans back to their home near Manchester after Brady had approached him at Manchester Central station. Brady attacked Evans with a hatchet in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom Brady apparently believed could be drawn into his criminal world, before strangling Evans with electrical flex.
Smith was horrified and notified police the next morning. Police Superintendent Bob Talbot arrived at the house wearing a bread deliveryman’s overall over his uniform. Inside, Brady was lying on a divan writing to his employer about his injured ankle. Talbot said he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns”, and Hindley denied that any violence had occurred.
When officers asked for the key to a locked spare bedroom, Hindley claimed it was at work. Police offered to take her there to retrieve it, at which point Brady told her to hand it over. Inside the room, they found Evans’s body, and Brady was arrested on suspicion of murder.
