01x01 - A Dark Path

[bunniefuu]

[soft melodic music]

[Presenter] Saddleworth
Moor became indelibly linked

with crimes which
repulsed post-w*r Britain.

Volunteers searched for the
bodies of children m*rder*d

and then buried by Hindley
and her lover, Ian Brady.

[David] Seeing the pictures
of the two that were involved

in k*lling these children,
it struck fear into me.

♪ Blood is on my hands ♪

[David] His eyes, he has evil eyes.

♪ It's all I understand ♪

[Keri] The victims
would beg to be freed.

He was absolutely possessed

by a need to create pain.

[David] I have never
been able to understand

why a human being takes
the life of another.

[Mark] The misconception
of Brady is that he is evil,

but Ian Brady was ill.

♪ I'm gonna find my kind ♪

[Peter] If you're looking
for deep, psychiatric reasons,

no one has yet come up with them

and that's one of the horrifying paradoxes

of the whole case.

[Nicola] Brady's crimes
are a window into his mind.

♪ Blood is on my hands ♪

[Peter] None of this explains

why he goes to the heart of darkness.

[Speaker] I wouldn't call him a man,

I wouldn't, no, a monster.

[Nicola] When it comes to Ian Brady,

genetics loaded the g*n,
his personality aimed it

and Myra pulled the trigger.

[mellow melodic music]

♪ I'm gonna find my kind ♪

[gate clanking]

[Newscaster] Ian Brady is currently held

at the high security Ashworth Hospital

and can only be moved from there

with the Home Secretary's permission.

He stopped eating at
the end of last month,

because he was angry that
he'd been transferred

to a new ward from a part of the hospital

he'd been in for four years.

He's now being force fed
after a 30-day hunger strike.

[siren wailing]

[Newscaster] Ian Brady arrived at court

for the first day of a
case which will decide

if he is allowed to die as he wishes

or whether he'll have to live behind bars,

force fed by doctors.

He has no requests, no demands,

apart from he wants to
have the right to die.

He should never have
an easy life of dying,

not like an ordinary person.

He made kiddies suffer 35 years ago

and he should suffer and so should she.

[gentle orchestral music]

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,
horrible psychopaths,

that chose to take the
lives of young people

in the most horrific crimes that the UK

and probably the world has ever seen.

The Moors Murders happened
between 1963 and 1965.

I think everybody knows the Moors Murders,

because of those photographs,

the mugshots of Hindley and Brady.

[camera clicking]

Myra Hindley is the cultural warning

of femininity gone wrong.

She's very much part of what happened,

but she wasn't actually the one
who had the impetus to k*ll,

the need to k*ll was Brady.

[Mark] Ian Brady, he r*ped and molested,

tortured and k*lled.

[David] One of the victims
has never been found.

[camera clicking]

Those are the details about
these crimes that make him

one of the worst serial
K*llers there's been.

That name, Ian Brady is a name,

that will always be remembered

as being synonymous with evil.

[light haunting music]

I'm fascinated why an individual
chooses to commit crime,

why an innocent child goes
from being an innocent child

to somebody that can k*ll
or harm or do something bad.

What is it that happens
in that person's life,

in that person's brain,

in that person's mind
to make them a k*ller?

There are lots of theories,

for me, all K*llers are born evil.

I didn't believe that they were evil,

that's the cultural
representation of them.

When I looked into the crimes,

I knew that he was psychopathic.

[intense melodic music]

[cheerful Scottish music]

[typewriter keys tapping]

[cheerful Scottish music]

[melodic bagpipe music]

[Presenter] Ships from Glasgow,

in Clyde-built vessels powered by coal

hewn in the pits a few
miles from this famous port,

a highway to the export
markets of the world.

In the late thirties and early forties,

there was multiple deprivation in Glasgow.

[crowd applauding]

[soft orchestral music]

Every city has deprived areas,

but Glasgow particularly had
a reputation for violence

and the reputation for deprivation.

Ian Brady was born in Glasgow,

brought up in his early years in Glasgow.

[soft orchestral music]

I'm David Swindle, former
Senior Investigating Officer,

Strathclyde Police in Scotland.

Ian Brady was born as Ian Duncan Stewart

on the 2nd of January, 1938.

His mum, Maggie, was a waitress,
she was a single parent,

his dad apparently was a journalist,

but he had died before Ian was born.

In the 1930s, this building here

was called Rottenrow Hospital,

this is where Ian Stewart was born.

It's a very modern building now,

but that was the original
Rottenrow Hospital,

a well-known maternity
hospital in Glasgow.

[light melodic music]

His mother claimed that his father died

during her pregnancy,
she looked after him,

but that was very difficult
for an unmarried mother

in those days, life was difficult.

[light melodic music]

My name is Richard Finley,

I am Professor of Scottish History

at the University of Strathclyde.

Glasgow at this period had a population

of about a million people,

it was one of the
biggest cities in Europe,

so it was a bustling metropolis.

It had been very badly
affected by the impact

of the economic dislocation
caused by the First World w*r

and the impact of the Great Depression,

the Wall Street Crash in 1929,

which meant that many of
the traditional industries,

such as ship building,
heavy engineering, steel,

which had been this main locus
of the Glaswegian economy,

all went into decline.

[Presenter] In the
thirties, in the world slump,

Scotland was badly hit.

These ship builders were paid
off, the yards were still

and on a despondent Clyde
side, this rusting skeleton,

the world's largest liner
to be stood unfinished.

[soft orchestral music]

[birds chirping]

This is the Gorbals area of Glasgow.

It has changed over the years,

drastically changed over the years.

This is the area where Ian Stewart lived

in the very early years of
his life with his mum, Peggy.

[downbeat piano music]

The Gorbals was an area

associated with widespread poverty,

it was an area where there
was largely working class

ended up living there, there
was significant overcrowding,

significant infant mortality rates.

When we look at Brady's early childhood,

there are so many risk factors.

He was born into a single parent family,

which because she was poor,

she had to leave him
alone to go out and work.

An unmarried mother was someone,

who would have a major social stigma.

A woman of a kind of loose morality

is how many would've described it.

It would be difficult to find employment,

it would be difficult to find shelter.

[downbeat piano music]

My name is Dr. Keri Nixon

and I'm a consultant
forensic psychologist.

So we know that environmental factors

absolutely create criminals.

There's something called the
Vulnerable Locations Index,

where the government have
actually looked at areas,

where there's high crime
rates, high unemployment rates,

high mental health
rates, high poverty rates

and we know by looking at that,

it's a hotspot for criminal behavior,

a hotspot for mental
health and substance abuse,

so we know that those factors
absolutely correlate to crime.

However, they don't necessarily correlate

to producing serial K*llers
because if they did,

we'd have a lot more serial K*llers.

[downbeat piano music]

Peggy couldn't afford
to raise him on her own

and so Peggy put a sign
in a local shop window

advertising for somebody to take Ian.

The crucial things about
early childhood development

is ensuring that a baby feels
safe and secure and nurtured

and this includes touch,
play, feeling secure and safe.

It's crucial in terms of
how our brain develops

and it's crucial in terms of how we have

interpersonal relationships
with other people.

[gentle orchestral music]

I'm John Parrington,
I'm an Associate Professor

of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology

at the University of Oxford.

Our brains start to develop,

our nervous system starts
to develop very early on,

when we are only a very tiny, tiny embryo.

I find the brain is an
incredible thing really,

it's the most complex object
in the known universe,

out of it can come the most amazing art

or music or literature,

but equally, some horrific
thoughts and actions

have come out of the human brain

and trying to understand how
those thoughts and desires

and wishes all come out of this structure.

And this really starts from
the fertilized egg onwards

and certainly when a person's a fetus,

there's a huge amount of
influence there going on,

and interaction going on between
the mother and the child.

[soft tense music]

Our early attachments
in childhood are critical

to the person we become as an adult.

There are four types of attachments,

the one that I think most fits Ian Brady

is the ambivalent attachment.

This is when a mother comes
in and out of your life,

you can't predict when
they're gonna be there,

you can't predict when
your needs as a child

are gonna be met, this
can be really unsettling,

it can create anger in a
child, it can make them ask,

"Why am I not wanted?"

And I think this one
applies most to Brady.

His mum gave him up when
he was four months old.

Now, the critical period for
forming strong attachments

is that first two, two
and a half years of life.

He was given up at four months
when he would've started

forming an attachment with his mother,

so he's experienced an
abandonment at a critical time.

[soft tense music]

[traffic rumbling quietly]

[Keri] Brady was fostered unofficially

from a very young age.

[David] And he was taken
in by John and Mary Sloan.

[Keri] To a very safe, loving household.

They already had four
children of their own

older than him and they were
happy for the bit of money,

that she was able to pay
them to take Brady in.

They were a good, honest,
poor, working class family,

who treated him well and looked after him.

His mother would come and
see him every weekend,

she brought him presents.

As soon as he was old enough
to kind of understand,

the Sloan family made it clear to him,

that he wasn't their
child and that she was,

and she spoiled him,
but she cared about him.

The reason for adoption at that time,

particularly for such a young
child, would most certainly be

that there was no family
connection or infrastructure.

It may even be the case
that the family did not know

about it and adoption
was seen as a way out.

So it is a very big step to
to take, but quite clearly,

it was a sign that the
mother could not cope.

[soft orchestral music]

I think one thing that
Ian Brady learned as a child

was that nothing has permanence.

His mother didn't stay very long,

she was a fleeting presence
in and out of his life.

We know from research
that trauma in childhood

can cause changes to the
brain even as a fetus.

[heart beating]

But we also know that the brain

has got something called plasticity,

so if a child is then
put into a nurturing,

loving environment, the
brain can heal itself.

[children playing]

♪ Don't forget me while you're away ♪

♪ Send me a letter to tell
me that you're better ♪

♪ Don't forget me while you're away ♪

♪ And don't forget your own homeland ♪

[David] Ian Stewart attended

Campbell Street Primary School.

♪ Send me a letter to tell
me that you're better ♪

[David] He was an
intelligent individual,

but he appeared to be a disruptive
individual in the class.

Probably it'd be a lot of
kind of taunting and teasing

and quite cruel things that children do,

because an illegitimate
child or an adopted child

would not be that common
and you can imagine this,

the quite horrible things
that kids can sometimes do,

because technically
they would be a b*stard.

That is probably something
that would impact

very negatively on someone's self-esteem.

Ian Stewart was good academically,

but he was not good at sport

and his friends nicknamed
him Lassie, a big lassie,

which is a phrase to infer,

that he may have feminine tendencies.

One of the things that's
really interesting about Brady

is that he always seems to
be on the outside of society.

He was bullied at school,
he was called a sissy,

he was quite small for a young boy.

Ian would've already felt
different to his peers.

He was living with an adoptive family,

his mother wasn't around.

He was going to a school for people,

who were above his age group,

he would've already felt
different and stood out.

Being called a sissy or any negative name

would've just fed into his
low self-esteem at that age.

His mother wasn't around,
even though she was visiting,

for all intents and purposes,
he had been abandoned.

[gentle orchestral music]

My name's Peter Gillman,
I'm a writer, an author,

a journalist, I have been all my life.

I've written a number of books,

one which was actually the
most horrifying of all,

it was to do with the case of
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,

the Moors Murders.

One of the arguments that was
floating around conventionally

was that because he had
been fostered as a child,

he'd had a broken childhood,
a very disturbed upbringing

and somewhere in that lay the explanation

of why he went off the rails.

And as a journalist, I thought,
well, there's one person,

who might be able to answer
some of these questions,

that's Ian Brady himself,
so I started writing to him

asking about his childhood
and how he was fostered

in Glasgow as a child, both
during and after the w*r.

He wanted to know why I
was asking them and I said,

"Because I want to look at the theories,

which have been suggested as
to why you became who you did."

In the first letter that
Ian Brady wrote to me

in March, 2003, he described to me

where he'd grown up in the Gorbals.

[Actor] "It was in a
tenement flat in Camden Street,

comprised only of a front and back room

with recess beds in each

and a kitchen range in the back room

used for cooking, heating
and even firelight.

The communal atmosphere,
listening to the radio,

no one had TVs in those days.

I had a happy childhood in the Gorbals

and returned to it every year."

There is one incident
in Brady's childhood,

which he believed had a
profound effect on him.

One day, when he was out as
a child of six years old,

he found a horse in the street
that was lying on its side,

still tethered to the
cart it was carrying,

the horse was suffering,
the horse had hurt itself.

Ian Brady said he remembered
looking into the horse's eyes

as he touched his head

and he could see the
terror in the horse's eyes.

Any animals or bonds that he had formed

would've been incredibly important to him.

When men came to erect
a tent around the horse,

Ian knew that they would have to k*ll it.

He ran home crying

and that memory stayed with
him for the rest of his life.

[birds chirping]
[typewriter keys tapping]

[Newscaster] Tribunals being held

at the psychiatric hospital,

where he's been on hunger
strike for a decade.

He says he hates being analyzed

and was nostalgic for the
freedom of mainstream jails,

where he wants to return.

[Newscaster] He wants to
be transferred to prison,

where in his words, he can
end his life in his own way.

[camera clicking]

[soft tense music]

There was one thing that he wanted,

he wanted to be able to k*ll himself

and he wasn't allowed to do that.

No British government
was going to give Brady

anything he wanted, so they
weren't going to allow him

to go on a hunger strike and k*ll himself.

His hunger strikes was about control,

it wasn't this absolute desperation
to want to end his life,

he ate when he wanted to,

it was all about show,
it was all about control,

it was all about power with that man.

In order to be the center of
attention, now quite public,

that he would embark
upon the hunger strike.

It was recorded that he,
again, quite publicly,

that he felt that when
he was on hunger strike,

that he could sustain
his hunger far longer

than some of his
contemporary serial K*llers,

who he felt he could admire,
such as the Broadmoor Poisoner.

I've always felt that
if Fred West had lived,

Brady would've been knocked off his perch.

[birds chirping]

[typewriter keys tapping]

In 1947, things were looking up.

Ian moved to the Pollok area of Glasgow

with the Sloans, his adopted family,

a much better area at that
time than the Gorbals was

and he stayed here at
Templeland Road area.

Things were definitely getting better

in his life at that time.

[camera clicking]

He was close to all the Sloan family.

The four children were older than him.

One of the girls had had a
couple of children herself,

two boys and he would always hide money

around their bedroom for them

and he seemed very, very fond of them.

The house in Pollok was a
nice, suburban, terrace house,

it had its own garden and
Brady joined the family

in gardening activities,
helping them grow vegetables.

So to all intents and
purposes, very straightforward,

conventional and even bourgeois.

[soft orchestral music]

[typewriter keys tapping]

The Sloans took the
whole family on a picnic

up to Loch Lomond, and
they picnicked there

with their sandwiches
and their flasks of tea

and he climbed the hills

and he was looking down
at the world from there.

[soft orchestral music]

One can probably date
his great love of nature

and particularly of rugged,
hard scenery from that time.

He had never seen
wide open spaces before.

You could contrast the
limitless outdoor life

compared to the oppression and the squalor

of the slums that he was growing up in.

Recalling his visits to
Loch Lomond, Ian says.

[Actor] "It was as though I had suddenly

stepped through an invisible barrier

and had arrived in a different dimension.

I was encountering the naked
essence of life itself."

There's a description of
Brady having gone to Loch Lomond

with his foster family
when he was nine years old

and already then, at that young age,

when your personality is
only starting to develop,

he described himself as
better than the maggots below,

he was special, he was unique

and that's something we see

in narcissistic personality disorder,

but you can't possibly diagnose a child

with narcissistic personality disorder.

But what we saw were the beginnings

of a very troubling personality

and that again, suggests that
there was something in Brady

that created the man that he was.

When the Sloans were ready
to get the bus to go home,

they had to track him down,
he was up a hill somewhere

and that seems to have been

a very, very big moment in his life,

a seminal moment when he
discovered a love for nature,

which of course, in the Gorbals

and in the estate where they lived,

he'd never had that experience.

My reading of Ian's visit to Loch Lomond

was that he went there and
resolved an existential crisis,

that he was probably
unaware that he was having.

When he came back from Loch Lomond,

he could see a different path for himself,

different to those around him,

a life outside the slums of the Gorbals.

He was intellectually quite
bright, he won school prizes,

he formed various friendship groups.

One of the key friendships
groups, however,

was when they started
going around in gangs

and doing shoplifting,
which he started to do

at his secondary school

and that is the beginning of
the move into criminality.

It was straightforward teenage crime,

which they did for a mixture
of thrill and making money.

[soft tense music]

His first recorded burglary

was when he was nine years old,

although on that occasion,

he didn't actually steal anything.

It was the first of many.

Ian and his friends would
routinely break into premises

looking for things to steal.

That was the beginning of
him getting into trouble,

though later on, he said he
didn't do it for any thrill,

he just did it for mercenary reasons,

he wanted to get stuff for free.

[soft tense music]

I think Ian Brady started
out with low self-esteem

and much of his behavior
has actually been designed

to rectify that low self-esteem.

I suspect he had this low
self-esteem due to the abandonment

he had at such a young age
on top of the bullying,

on top of living with siblings,

who were perhaps fitting
in more to the family,

because they were the biological children

of the people he was living with.

Ian and his friends used to play a game

called Catching a Hudgy,

so they would wait on a street corner,

wait for a lorry or a van to slow down

to go round the corner
and then jump on the back

holding onto the spare tire

or whatever they could grab onto.

But one day, one of his friends died

and actually went underneath
the following lorry.

It was Ian's first glimpse of death,

but he didn't actually see the corpse,

he just saw the discarded shoe,
which was covered in blood.

[soft orchestral music]

We know now from lots of
studies into trauma and childhood

that the more trauma a child suffers,

the more impact it'll have
on them later in life,

particularly when we look at
things like complex trauma,

whereas it's not just one
single episode of trauma,

it's layers of difficulties
and traumatic experiences.

[soft tense music]

If a child is in a very
difficult environment,

plus suffers trauma, plus
has very limited attachment,

it will change the way the brain develops,

it's layers of damage,

that then will be evident
later on in adulthood.

I don't think you can ever put

too much emphasis on childhood,

it is going to impact
who we become as adults.

We're like little sponges
when we're children,

so we are gonna absorb
everything that happens to us

and the thoughts and emotions
that we go through as a child.

[gentle orchestral music]

In 1950, Ian passed his 11 Plus,

which was a progressive
examination at school,

and he enrolled at Shawlands Academy,

which was classed as a
grammar school in England.

[Actor] "I attended House Hillwood

and Kare Rodrick Primary Schools

before entering Shawlands Academy.

I introduced my academy
friends to those in the Gorbals

and observed how quickly they sloughed off

middle class values and enjoyed
real life in the Gorbals."

Ian's schoolmates regarded
him as a strange individual.

He was obsessed by Nazism,

he was obsessed by extreme things

and they looked upon him as being weird.

[soft tense music]

I think if I'd met Brady at that age,

there would've been many features

of his personality and his presentation,

that would've worried
me as a psychologist.

If you were looking at that picture

and see him in these years ago,

he looked like a normal
individual, an affable person

and these are people that can move out

and in different types of society.

But he was showing some
tendencies, but in these days,

no one would pay any attention to that,

they would just see him as a weirdo.

He didn't really have
many prospects in life

or much possibility for advancement.

He could be resigned to the
fact that he would play his part

in perpetuating working class mentality,

to fit into the groove and
continue as those around him did,

or he could strike out
on a different path.

[typewriter keys tapping]

In 1951, Ian appears at Juvenile Court

charged with housebreaking
and various other crimes.

[soft tense music]

He undoubtedly embarked on
crime when he was at school,

he was able to housebreak and steal.

He clearly always had an inkling,

a feeling that he needed
to buy other things

other than were being provided

by the very honest, hardworking Sloans,

he wanted more clothes, he
wanted more of everything.

So he became quite an
accomplished housebreaker,

but not so accomplished
that he didn't get arrested

on more than one occasion.

[soft tense music]
[typewriter keys tapping]

He saw crime as a way of making money.

Much later on he would dream
of bank robberies and big jobs.

In those days, as a school
boy, he put into practice

his dream of just breaking
into people's houses

and stealing whatever he could find,

which in the sort of area where they lived

would probably not be that much,

but he was a persistent offender

and he came to the notice of the police

and the Sloan family were
really, really dismayed,

because they'd had very
high hopes for him,

because he was clever and he'd
gone to a selective school

and they wanted him to do well in life,

so it was very sad for them
that he went off the rails.

But at that stage, he's only off the rails

in a very petty, juvenile
delinquent kind of way,

there is no violence
involved in these crimes,

there's no portent of violence to come,

he's just a petty thief.

[soft tense music]

The 29th of November, 1954,
Ian appears at court again

and his probation officer
suggests a fresh start

and arrangements are made
for him to move to Manchester

to where his mum was.

The Sloans said he could
no longer stay with them,

they were fed up with
it and he had to go back

and live with his mother in Manchester,

who by then had taken up
with a man called Brady.

Ian Brady was very unhappy about that

and he said he went back to
stay with them reluctantly.

Although the sentencing
judge in Scotland

may have hoped that
sending Brady to Manchester

would cure him of his criminal
behaviors, it did not.

Ian continued to burglarize
homes and businesses,

he would get into fights,
he would drink heavily.

In December, Ian moves to Manchester

and meets his stepfather, Patrick Brady,

and this is when he takes the name,

assumes the name Ian Brady,

a name that will never be forgotten.

If you're looking for the moment

he begins to go off the
rails for family reasons,

that's quite an important point.

[soft tense music]

I think that the magistrate
thought it was a very good way

of getting rid of a petty criminal,

what at the time would be
called a juvenile delinquent

and he was gonna clutter
up the legal system

and the prisons and the
Borstals of Scotland

for some time to come and they thought,

so what better than to
send him on probation

to live with his birth
mother who was in Manchester.

I imagine it was quite difficult

for him settling in Manchester,

because he definitely had
a strong Scottish accent.

He prided himself on that,

he loved what he called the mother tongue

and he liked the sound
of the Scottish voice.

As far as he was concerned,
it was yet another thing,

that made him different
from the hoi polloi.

I think there was continued trauma.

I suspect that from a very early age,

he started thinking in a way,

that didn't allow his brain to repair.

He started putting himself above others,

separating himself from others

and really isolating his brain,

so that there was no one
around him to help him repair.

Ian would have you
believe that his childhood

was not that bad, perhaps even good,

but this isn't something that I believe.

I believe that to go on and
do something this horrific,

he must have had some form
of trauma, at the very least,

I believe that he had
experienced psychological abuse.

Research shows that
psychological abuse is linked

with serial K*llers who go
on to t*rture their victims.

I wouldn't be surprised
if he hadn't experienced

other forms of abuse as well.

The brain in itself works

to something largely unconsciously,

although we have conscious thoughts,

there's a whole lot going in our brains,

that is unconscious and this
also applies to our memories,

so we may repress memories,

we may block out things that were painful.

This idea that we can have
desires, wishes, thoughts,

that we repress, that we hold back

and they're not part of
our conscious thoughts,

but they have very big
implications in our behavior.

And of course, things that happened to us,

when we were a child,

these could have implications
in our unconscious thoughts.

[gentle orchestral music]

In another letter
written in April, 2003,

he began to look at the questions of why

he behaved as he did,
why he became who he was

and this is familiar territory to him

and you kind of got
rather weary of it all.

[gentle orchestral music]

[Actor] "I had a happy
childhood and loved the family.

When free, I kept in
regular contact with all

and returned to Glasgow
as often as possible,

even if it meant driving there
and back within 24 hours,

a journey of over 400 miles.

So searching for the fashionable,
stereotypical excuses

and scapegoats in childhood
would be fruitless in my case."

[soft melodic music]

[typewriter keys tapping]

So this is a fairly
typical working class street,

which it looks very much as
it would've done in the 1950s.

All the houses very close together,

there'd have been lots
of people around here,

lots of children playing in the streets.

People would've been
living in these houses

and going to work in the local coal mine

in Bradford Colliery, or working
in some of the engineering

and manufacturing plants
of East Manchester.

So this was a very vibrant community,

people were working long hours

and when they weren't in work,

they were going into the pubs,

there would've been a pub on every corner,

there would've been working men's clubs.

So this was a really vibrant
community, lots of life,

lots of laughter, lots of
music, very close knit.

Neighbors would've known each other,

people would've been moving in and out

of each other's houses.

[Carol] Life was a lot
slower then, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was a lot slower.

Obviously kids could go
out, they could go and play

whatever games like
Hopscotch, Bits of Bats

and like you said, Grand Lamp Orson Rally,

them games what we used to play,

do you remember when
we were getting apples

from the apple trees?
- I might remember, yeah.

Getting caught, yeah,
getting caught nicking them,

'cause we used to get
a bag full and run off.

And then used to do all that.

- I had seven kids.
- Seven?

[Carol] Yeah, five boys and two girls.

[Susan] Well, there was four of us.

- I worked as well.
- Yeah, I know you did,

you worked, didn't you?

Yeah, I worked as well,
so when they went out,

they went out, we never
worried, we never worried.

Well, you don't then, do you?

[background people chattering]

[light melodic music]

Although the house has
since been torn down,

this is where the family
lived on Denmark Road.

In an effort to fit in
with his new family,

Ian took his stepfather's
surname and he became Ian Brady.

In return, his stepfather
got him a job as a porter,

but despite the reason
he came to Manchester

in the first place, his life
of petty crime continued.

It was in that job where
he stole 44 pounds' worth

of lead seals and that's
what got him sent to Borstal.

[typewriter keys tapping]
[soft tense music]

Ian Brady appears at
Manchester Crown Court

charged with stealing
lead seals from boxes.

A van driver at
Smithfield where Ian worked,

had asked him to steal
44 pounds of lead seals

and load them onto his lorry.

When the driver went to sell
them, the alarm was raised

and the driver gave the
police Ian Brady's name.

He's sent to Strangeways Prison

until a place could be
found for him at Borstal.

On January the 10th, 1956,

he's sent to Hatfield Borstal.

Whilst in prison, he becomes
friendly with other inmates

and fantasizes about
committing payroll robberies

and other financial crimes.

The prison system in that era

was totally different from now,

it was more about punishment,

there was nothing there about reforming

and really, they could be
seen as an academia for crime.

Unfortunately for
Ian, his time in Borstal

did nothing to correct
his deviant behaviors,

in fact, Borstal taught Ian
how to be a better criminal.

Ian made criminal contacts,

he learned how to do things
better than he had known before.

After his release from Borstal,

Ian Brady did not want a conventional job,

he had no need for a conventional job.

He seemed to come back
with the determination

to make something of his life
and not have a menial job,

study bookkeeping, become
something rather different,

something that he aspired to.

Brady takes work at
Millward's in Gorton,

it was a chemical wholesalers

and he was a stock clerk in there.

He wanted to have the kind of job,

where you wore a white shirt every day.

His mother and her
husband were very pleased

with this turn of events

and they bought him a suit
for his 21st birthday,

which might not sound very
much to young people today,

but it represented quite a lot of money

to a poor, working class family.

He also had the very long, black overcoat

and he became quite well known

around the streets of
Manchester in that coat.

I think he cared about
his self-image so much,

because of low self-esteem
when he was younger.

It's hard to think of this sadistic man

as being a small, powerless,
disgruntled child,

but I believe that's exactly what he was

and he needed to find some way

to overcome that

and one way was to focus
on his intelligence,

because he was intelligent,

he even went to this
school for gifted children.

So this was something he
could realistically grasp

and hold onto to boost his self-esteem.

I find it very interesting
actually, this side of Brady

and of course you might
see that as a good thing,

of course, it could be a
sign of great insecurity,

this sort of sense of trying
to transcend his origins,

because of something dark

and something that he
wanted to get away from,

so then it turned into
something much more sinister.

It's one thing to be
wanting to be different

in terms of the way you dress

or your taste in reading or films,

but it seems to have also
been linked to Brady's sense

that he was somehow better,
greater than other people

and this kind of idea that he
was some kind of super person,

that could basically control other people

and change their lives.

Although he wanted to be a bookkeeper

and although he wanted to
aspire to this office job,

it was only a stepping stone,
he was going to be rich,

he was going to be different,
he was going to do something,

that made him apart from everybody else.

On the 21st of December, 1960,

Myra is interviewed for a
job at Millward's as a typist

and she's offered the job on the spot.

And on the first day
there, she met Ian Brady.

[soft tense music]

She immediately became
infatuated with Brady,

however, he didn't even notice her,

but this in fact made
her infatuation deepen.

Hindley's diaries at the time reveal

an almost schoolgirl like innocence

regarding courtship and romance.

She would write in her diary.

[Actor] "Ian looked at me today.

Why hasn't Ian looked at me today?

I blushed When Ian smiled at me today."

Brady was certainly not
initially attracted to her,

but became attracted to the fact,

that she was devoted to
him, that's very seductive,

somebody being devoted to you.

Ian Brady saw in Myra
Hindley a kindred spirit,

but pivotally, he saw somebody,

that he could mold in his own image.

When she goes to work at
the same factory that he is,

that's the moment when he becomes

more disturbed and troublesome.

How is it that they come together

to commit acts of such horror?

[Presenter] Her awful,
child k*lling crimes

committed with Ian Brady came
to light almost 40 years ago

after police searched
the bleak countryside

on Saddleworth Moor near Manchester.

The crimes they committed left scars,

which will perhaps never heal

as long as they're associated
with the lonely landscape,

where innocent children were buried.

[solemn orchestral music]

[solemn orchestral music continues]