A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

strong ... And Myra, who regards him as a brilliant intellectual (he is learning German to be able to
read Mein Kampf in the original), swallows it all - without enthusiasm, but with the patience of the
devoted slave who knows that her master is seldom wrong.
How can he push her further, savour his dominance? He tells her he is planning a bank robbery, a
big job. She is shocked - at first - then, as usual, she accepts it as further evidence of his
resourcefulness and self-reliance. He persuades her to join a rifle club and buy a gun.
He begins to take a popular photography magazine and buys a camera with a timing attachment. He
persuades her to dress in black panties without a crotch and pose for photographs. Then the timing
attachment allows him to take photographs of the two of them together, navel to navel, engaged in
sexual intercourse - with white bags over their heads. In others, she has whip marks on her
buttocks. Brady apparently hoped to sell the photographs (for these were the days before
pornography could be bought in most newsagents) but was apparently unsuccessful.
At this stage, there is only one possible way in which Brady can push her further into total
acquiescence: by finally putting the daydreams of crime into practice and ordering her to be his
partner. But bank robbery is a little too dangerous. In fact, most crime carries the risk of being
caught. Perhaps the crime that carries least risk is the kind committed by Leopold and Loeb: luring
a child into a car...
Myra Hindley bought a small car - a second-hand green Morris - in May 1963, having taken driving
lessons. (Brady had given up his motor cycle after an accident.) Two months later, on 12 July 1963,
a sixteen-year-old girl named Pauline Reade, who lived around the corner from Myra and knew her
by sight, vanished on her way to a dance and was never seen again. When police began
investigating the moors murders, they started with the file on Pauline Reade. It seemed probable
that she had been picked up by a car. Since she was unlikely to get into a car with a strange man, it
may have contained someone she knew. The disappearance of the body suggests that she was
buried - and casual rapists seldom bother to bury a body. It is conceivable then, that Pauline Reade
was their first victim.
On Saturday afternoon, 23 November, they drove out to Ashton-under-Lyne and offered a lift to a
twelve-year-old boy, John Kilbride, who was about to catch a bus home. He climbed in and was
never again seen alive. Nearly two years later, his corpse was dug up by police on Saddleworth
Moor. His trousers and underpants had been pulled down around his knees. Myra Hindley had
allowed Brady to take a photograph of her kneeling on the grave.
On 16 June 1964, twelve-year-old Keith Bennett set out to spend the night at his grandmother’s
house in the Longsight district of Manchester - where Brady had lived until he moved in with Myra
and her grandmother. Bennett vanished, like Pauline Reade. Brady still visited the Longsight
district regularly to see his mother.
On 26 December 1964, Brady and Hindley drove to the fairground in the Ancoats district of
Manchester and picked up a ten-year-old girl, Lesley Ann Downey. They took her back to their
house - they had now moved to Hattersley, where Gran had been assigned a council house - made
her strip, and took various photographs of her. They also recorded her screams and pleas to be
released on tape. Then she was killed and buried on the moor near the body of John Kilbride. Later,
they took blankets and slept on the graves. It was part of the fantasy of being Enemies of Society,
dangerous revolutionaries.