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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
John Bett

Evil Ian Brady's sick dying wish was twisted final joke to punish his victims

Evil Ian Brady played a sick final prank on his victims as he lay dying in a hospital, but now they are finally getting some justice. Brady and his partner, Myra Hindley, are the Moors Murderers and are the UK's most infamous serial killers.

After murdering their victims, Brady and Hindley disposed of the bodies on Saddleworth Moor, on the outskirts of Greater Manchester. One victim, Keith Bennet, was never found and for the past 58 years his relatives were left in the dark as Brady took the secret to his grave.

In 2017, when Brady was dying in 'agonising pain' in Ashworth Hospital, he told those present that he wanted his ashes to be scattered over Saddleworth Moor - where the body of young Keith was still hidden. But now, the body may have been found as police are digging up the moors after a skull was found.

Ian Brady with Myra Hindley (right) and Myra's younger sister Maureen (SWNS)

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The Moors Murderers killed five innocent children, starting with Pauline Reade who was just 16 when she became Hindley and Brady's first victim. She had been making her way to a dance when the couple drove past her.

They offered her a lift and Hindley asked her to help search Saddleworth Moor for a missing glove on July 12, 1963.

She later claimed she waited in the van while Brady led the teenager out onto the desolate moors.

After 30 minutes Brady returned to the van alone and guided Hindley to where Pauline lay dying with two horrific slashes to her throat.

Brady died in agony in 2017 (SWNS)
Keith Bennett's body has never been found (Press Association)

Hindley claims Brady told her he had raped Pauline and the pair then buried the tragic schoolgirl in a shallow grave.

Brady claims Hindley was not only there when he killed Pauline but that she had also taken part in the sex assault.

Just four months later, Hindley and Brady struck again, this time targeting 12-year-old John Kilbride.

Again, they offered him a lift home, claiming they were concerned his parents would be worried, and again told him he would have to help them search for a glove on Saddleworth Moor.

Brady sexually assaulted the young boy before trying to slit his throat and then strangling him with a shoelace before burying him on the moors.

Keith Bennett, whose body has never been found, was the twisted pair's third victim. He was snatched when he stopped to help Hindley load boxes into her van.

A self portrait believed to have been taken by keen photographer Ian Brady (SWNS.com)

Brady was lying in wait in the back and the 12-year-old was driven to the moor where he went out onto the grassland to help look for a glove.

Brady told Hindley he had sexually assaulted Keith before strangling him with a piece of string and burying him with a spade he had hidden nearby.

It was Boxing Day 1964 when Hindley and Brady spotted 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey walking alone.

After deliberately dropping the shopping they were carrying, they asked the youngster to help them pick it up and then offered her a lift home.

Instead, they drove her to the house she shared, made her take her clothes off, gagged her and made her pose naked for pictures before they raped and killed her.

Ian Brady while he was living with his mum just round the corner from Keith Bennett's house (SWNS.com)

It was the next day before they drove her to Saddleworth Moor and buried her, naked, in a shallow grave with her clothes at her feet.

Hindley and Brady's final victim was 17-year-old Edward Evans, but this time the barbaric couple recruited David Smith, Hindley's brother in law, to help with their sick plan.

Smith was said to be in "awe" of Brady and the two had struck up a strange friendship

He watched as Brady throttled Edward with an electical cord and then helped him carry the body to the spare room.

Brady had sprained his ankle in the struggle with Edward and needed Smith to go home and collect a pram so they could get his body into a car and take him to the moors, where they would bury him.

But Smith was so horrified by what he had witnessed, he got up at dawn the next day and called the police, who arrested Brady and eventually Hindley.

Myra Hindley lured children to their deaths (PA)
She died in 2002 (Press Association Images)

At their trial, which last 14 days, the crimes horrified the nation. Hindley and Brady were both jailed for life and lived the rest of their lives behind bars.

But even as Brady, who breathed his last "agonising" breaths at Ashworth Hospital where he had been kept for years, died he played one final cruel trick on his innocent victims.

He had never revealed where the pair had buried their third victim, Keith Bennett, and the youngster's body has never been found.

And it is believed that Brady's final wish was for his cremated ashes to be scattered on the same moors where he had killed and buried his victims.

However, a judge ordered scattering his remains on Saddleworth Moors must be banned.

Lesley Ann Downey's brother, Terry West, told The Sun: "For the coroner to order this ban must mean Brady stipulated his ashes should be scattered on Saddleworth Moor.

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"It's a sick final twist to cause his victims' families the greatest upset from beyond the grave."

Brady died of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, a condition that affects the lungs.

He had been fed through a tube since he started a hunger strike in 1999 and it had been reported that he pulled the tube out a few days before he died.

Five-and-a-half hours before he died on May 15, 2017, he was found to be "laboured in his breathing and agitated".

However, Brady managed to make one final, bizarre, request with his dying breaths.

He ordered that two locked Samsonite briefcases should be taken from his bedside and handed to his solicitor Robin Makin.

He had already insisted they should not be opened until after his death.

Keith's mother, Winnie, died in 2012 without ever knowing where her son's final resting place was, although his family still hope his remains will one day be found.

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