Ian Brady, the infamous Moors Murderer has died in a secure hospital on Merseyside. Brady, together with his accomplice Myra Hindley, tortured and murdered five children in the 1960’s.  Four of their victims were buried on Saddleworth Moor, near Oldham.

I can remember reading a book back in the 1990’s written by the mother of one of the child victims, Lesley Ann Downey.  On the night of her disappearance Lesley had gone happily off to a local fairground, and when she did not return home her worried mother searched the fairground in vain, while the song ‘Let’s Dance’, the one sung by Chris Montez, played on one of the rides in the background.  Even today when I hear this song, I still think of that poor mother’s anguish.

I don’t suppose that Brady had a last minute stab of conscience  and revealed where the remains of Keith Bennett are buried, to give Keith’s family some kind of closure.  They have waited over 50 years to find out, and Keith’s mother Winnie died without ever knowing her son’s whereabouts.  One of the doctors who had spoken to Brady every day says the murderer told him information which he will publish in a book.  Surprise surprise; am I being cynical when I wonder how many literary agents will be beating a path to that doctor’s door in order to get their hands on possibly the next best-seller?

When she was dying about 15 years ago, Myra Hindley was a patient in the hospital I used to work in.  A hospital grapevine is very efficient, and within a few hours the majority of workers knew that she was there. A police guard stayed outside her side-room at all times, and after she died two guards were on duty outside the mortuary for the whole time until her body had been collected by the funeral directors.  I think Brady and Hindley were possibly amongst the two most hated people on the entire planet.  If there’s any kind of afterlife, I dread to think where the pair of them are going to end up.