1965: Saddleworth Moor Gives Up a Victim of the Moors Murders

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.

Grim Murder Discoveries on Saddleworth Moors
Grim Murder Discoveries on Saddleworth Moors

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1992: Eyes Removed, Organs Eaten: Andrei Chikatilo Convicted of 52 Murders in Rostov

Andrei Chikatilo cut the eyes from his victims, believing the dead retained an image of their killer burned into their retinas. He could only reach climax while torturing or murdering, and prosecutors said he ate parts of his victims, including their sexual organs, over a killing spree across the Rostov region that claimed at least 52 lives, mostly women and children lured into forests and fields.

On this day a Russian court convicted him on all counts. He was executed by a single shot to the back of the head, a death far quicker than any he gave the people he killed.

Cannibalisation of some of the victims.
Cannibalisation of some of the victims.

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1969: A Bloodstained Scrap of Shirt: the Zodiac Killer Mails Proof to a San Francisco Newsroom

Two days after shooting cabdriver Paul Stine dead in San Francisco, the Zodiac Killer sent the San Francisco Chronicle a taunting letter dated October 13, 1969. Inside was a torn piece of Stine’s bloodstained shirt, offered as proof the killer was the same man terrorising the Bay Area, not a copycat.

The letter mocked police for failing to catch him despite patrols flooding the area that night, and promised more killings to come. It remains one of several pieces of physical evidence tied to an identity that, more than fifty years on, has never been conclusively proven.

Symbolism
Symbolism

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1965: Myra Hindley Arrested as a Tape Recording Exposes Her Role in the Moors Murders

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.

Guilty or guilty.
Guilty or guilty.

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On This Day in True Crime History

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