When is Ian Brady: 50 Years Behind Bars on Channel 5? Documentary about the Moors murderer examines his life in jail
IAN Brady the infamous Moors Murder has spent the last half a century in jail for his evil crimes.
Channel 5 documentary Ian Brady: 50 Years Behind Bars examines his time in prison and the killings he committed - here is what we know...
What is Ian Brady: 50 Years Behind Bars ? When can I watch it?
It's been half a century since the Moors murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment and Ian Brady: 50 Years Behind Bars documentary will examine his time in jail.
Among the contributors are prison officers, detectives, relatives of the victims, pen pals and inmates who served time with him.
They reveal how Brady has shown a psychopathic lack of connections with his crimes.
You can watch this insightful documentary at 11.05pm on Channel 5 28 February 2017
Who is Ian Brady?
Brady was born in Glasgow in 1938 and attended Shawlands Academy - a school for above-average pupils.
His violent personality was shaped by an unstable background. His mother neglected him and he was raised by foster parents in the Gorbals - Glasgow's toughest slum.
After a spree of petty crime as a teenager the courts sent him to Manchester to live with his mum and her new husband, Patrick Brady.
Ian took his stepfather's name, continued his criminal activities and developed into a teenage alcoholic.
He pursued new interests in a bid to "better himself" - building up a library of books on Nazi Germany, sadism and sexual perversion.
Brady first met Myra Hindley when she worked as a secretary at the same company in Manchester where he was working as a stores clerk.
It was love at first sight and Brady impressed her by reading Mein Kampf in the original German.
Who were Ian Brady's victims?
As Brady and Hindley's relationship became more twisted, between July 1963 and December 1964, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, 12-year-old John Kilbride and Keith Bennett, also 12, were reported missing, all in the Manchester area.
Another victim, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, disappeared on 26 December 1964.
Police were baffled over the disappearances because there wasn't a single shred of evidence.
Brady and Hindley at this point became intent on corrupting Myra's brother-in-law, David Smith, and recruiting him into their twisted circle where Brady would talk about murder.
On 6 October 1965, the killer offered a practical demonstration with Edward Evans - striking him fourteen times with a hatchet before finishing the job by strangling him.
Horrified, Smith phoned the police next morning and directed them to Brady's address.
He said in his statement to cops: "He was lying with his head and shoulders on the couch and his legs were on the floor. He was facing upwards.
"Ian was standing over him, facing him, with his legs on either side of the young lad's legs. The lad was still screaming ... Ian had a hatchet in his hand ... he was holding it above his head and he hit the lad on the left side of his head with the hatchet.
"I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible."
How was Brady caught?
On October 7, 1965, Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Cheshire Police arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue and told Hindley he wanted to speak with her boyfriend.
The couple allowed the police to look around but when they reached the spare bedroom where Edward's body was, they found it locked.
Brady told Hindley to hand over the key and the police entered the room to find Edward's corpse wrapped in plastic sheeting.
The bloody murder weapon was also recovered, along with Brady's collection of books on perversion and sadism.
He admitted that he had fought with Edward after he was arrested on suspicion of murder but insisted Smith had helped him.
Four days later, another search of Brady's flat turned up two left luggage tickets for Manchester Central Station, leading police to a pair of suitcases.
Inside one they found pictures of Lesley Ann Downey naked with a scarf tied around her mouth along with tape recordings of her final tortured moments, pleading for her life as she was brutally abused.
A series of snapshots showing random sections of Saddleworth Moor were also discovered and an exercise book with John Kilbride's name scribbled in it led police to believe Brady and Hindley were involved in the unsolved disappearances.
A huge search operation involving 150 officers was launched and on October 16, they found an arm bone sticking out of the ground belonging to Lesley Ann.
They discovered the badly decomposed body of John Kilbride five days later.
Police announced that they were opening their files on eight missing persons, who had disappeared over the previous four years, but no new charges had been added by the time the couple went to trial.
What happened at Ian Brady's trial?
On 6 May 1966, both defendants were convicted of killing Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey.
Brady was also convicted of murdering John Kilbride, while Myra Hindley was convicted as an accessory after the fact.
All-male jurors fell silent for 16 minutes as the tape recording of Lesley Ann Downey's terrified last moments was played to the court.
The tape was played at full volume and the chilling sounds of screaming echoed through the court before only the footsteps and soft voices in the background could be heard.
Harrowing passages could be heard including "Don't undress me, will you?" and "I want to see mummy". The haunting sound of the 12-year-old's throat being slit was also played to the court.
In his closing remarks Mr Justice Atkinson described the murders as a "truly horrible case" and condemned the accused as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity".
He stated that Brady was "wicked beyond belief".
Brady was sentenced to concurrent life terms on each count, while Hindley received two life terms plus seven years in the Kilbride case.
When did Brady confess to the other two murders?
Nineteen years later, in November 1985, Brady was transferred from prison to maximum-security hospital Ashworth.
There, he confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, whose remains had still not been found, in an interview with reporters.
A search was carried out on the moors a year later, with Hindley joining officers in 1986 and Brady in 1987.
On June 30, 1987, after more than 100 days of searching, the body of Pauline Reade was found buried 3 feet below the ground.
It took pathologists a month to decide that the girl had been sexually assaulted and her throat slashed from behind.
Keith is the only one of their victims never to have been found despite tireless campaigning by his mum Winnie, who died in 2012.
How did Brady kill his victims?
On July 12, 1963, Brady told Hindley he wanted to "commit his perfect murder".
He told her to drive a van around the local area while he followed on his motorbike. After spotting Pauline, the couple stopped and Hindley asked her if she would help her locate an expensive glove she had lost on the Moor.
Hindley claimed Brady then took Pauline on to the Moor, where he slashed her throat twice and sexually assaulted her. Brady claims that Hindley helped.
On November 23, 1963, Hindley approached John Kilbride in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs, and offered him a lift home.
Brady told the 12-year-old he would give him some sherry, but they would have to make a detour on the Moor first.
He sexually assaulted the youngster and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before fatally strangling him with a piece of string.
Keith Bennett was on his way to his grandmother's house on June 16, 1964, when Hindley lured him into her van.
She drove to a lay-by on the Moor and Brady took the boy while Hindley kept watch. Brady reappeared 30 minutes later having sexually assaulted and strangled Keith.
In search of another victim, the couple visited a fairground on Boxing Day, 1964, and came across Lesley Ann Downey.
They approached the ten-year-old and lured her back to their house, where she was undressed, gagged and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed.
The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey's body to Saddleworth Moor, where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.
On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home where Brady beat him to death with an axe.
Where is Brady now?
Brady is now Britain’s longest-serving offender and for the past 31 years has lived at Ashworth Hospital, where he is on permanent suicide watch.
He was declared criminally insane in 1985 and moved to the high-security hospital in Merseyside.
Brady has been on hunger strike since 1999 and is kept alive by being force-fed a liquid nutrition mix.
But he has claimed he used method acting to pretend to be psychotic claiming life in the mental hospital is cushier than being in jail.
A psychologist told a tribunal the manipulative murderer read up on the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and copied them.
Myra Hindley died in 2002, still a prisoner.
READ MORE
Who is Ian Brady? What were his crimes, where is he held and will he ever be released?
Moors Murderer Ian Brady reveals he’s dying and has been bed-ridden for two years