Ian Brady, who went on to become Britain’s most evil serial killer, was 10 years old when he killed for the first time. He threw a cat of the top of a tenement building in Glasgow, Scotland.
Years later he told his lover and partner in crime, Myra Hindley, that the cat screeched all the way down. He enjoyed it. He wanted to witness the cat’s fear. This was the beginning of his journey of extreme violence leading to the serial murder of five children. He discovered that it was more satisfying to kill people. Earlier, he had told Myra Hindley that he had grown out of torturing animals.
The recent death of Ian Brady, at Ashworth Hospital, on Monday night, aged 79, has resulted in the newspapers taking a fresh look at his life and the infamous Moors Murders. It did not surprise me to see that he started his psychopathic killing tendencies with an innocent, trusting cat which he must have walked up to the top of a multi-storey building before throwing him/her off to the hard ground below.
He wanted to murder. He wanted to commit the perfect murder. Myra Hindley was a very useful accomplice because she was able to entice children into the van or vehicle that she was driving. The children would probably not not got into the vehicle if a man was driving it. They thought that they could trust a woman. She drove them to Saddleworth Moor where Ian Brady killed them. He would take them off the road onto the moor, perhaps three quarters of a mile away, kill them and then bury them.
One of their victims was Pauline Reade a 16-year-old teenager, who they murdered on July 16, 1963. Once Pauline was in the van that Hindley was driving she span a web of lies to obtain the child’s agreement to drive to a lay-by near Saddleworth Moor. Brady had been hiding behind rocks and took Pauline by the arm and led her onto the moor. He raped her and killed her. He returned covered in blood. He told his lover that if she had backed out he would have killed and buried her in the same way. But Hindley was a willing accomplice. She probably would have murdered alone if she had not met Brady.
Brady never showed any signs of remorse. He was a true psychopath. To his last days he tried to manipulate people to get his way. He never disclosed the whereabouts of the body of Keith Bennett, one of his victims. It seems that he kept the location secret as a bargaining tool in his conversations with the authorities. He did not get his way. During these conversations he would sit sideways on and wear dark glasses. It was his way of trying to dominate and control the situation.
Animal abuse often precedes violence against people. Outdoor cats are the most vulnerable of animals and ideal candidates for monsters such as Ian Brady. Hindley died 15 November 2002 of bronchial pneumonia. She smoked 40 a day.
