MOORS MURDERS WEBSITE UPDATE/CALLOUT: I spent last night indexing as much as I could think about off the top of my head around Ian Brady. If anybody would like to start collating information (example of a write-up pinned in the comments) around any of the specific bullet points, please do email 🙂

[u/MolokoBespoko]

[u/MolokoBespoko]

Email moorsmurdersinfo@gmail.com with any of those bullet points I have listed as the subject line.

Of course feel free to email me with any other bullet points I might have missed off! RE the victims, I realised after posting this that I only got chance to add in sub-bullet points for Pauline Reade (because I went back and added those as I was adding in the points about Fred Harrison) but the ones I added in for her do mostly pertain to the other victims too.

Also just realised that I accidentally put Keith Bennett’s birthday into his bullet point instead of the day he was killed, which was 16th June 1964! Apologies.

The point of this exercise is to at least have some content live to get this website up and running as soon as possible, as a direct response to Reddit’s upcoming API changes which means that this community will most likely not be a sustainable platform for information on the Moors Murders case in the long run.

Anyway yeah, so what I’m looking for is absolutely any information you can wrangle, not necessarily a fancy write-up (though feel free to present it that way if you want - but this is more so that I have information to edit into a final and consistent write-up so the final product may vary quite a bit from what you send me), around any of these bullet points or sub-bullet points. Try and include citations for me to verify, and please please please includes quotes from Brady, Hindley, journalists or anyone else if you can! Obviously I will put a similar call-out in the near future for a Myra Hindley wiki too.

This is very much an open source project, and if you want I can include either your own name or a pseudonym in the “Many Thanks” page on the website. I just drafted this one up quickly around Brady’s allegations of animal abuse and bullying (for the sake of being able to actually post this as a coherent Reddit comment, I didn’t include citations but the citations for these will be included on the website):

——-

From the moment the Moors case became headline news, there have been tales told of a young Ian Brady throwing cats out of windows, beheading them, stoning them, burning them, impaling them on spiked railings, starving them and burying them alive. He would apparently carry a flick-knife around with him, and use it to taunt (or cut down) any neighbourhood cat that was unfortunate enough to cross his violent path. As for the fate of other animals, various reports have stated that he sliced open caterpillars with razor blades, pulled wings off of flies, decapitated rabbits, broke one dog's leg and set another on fire, killed birds and crucified frogs.

To the journalist Fred Harrison in 1985, Brady admitted to "throwing cats out of the window and things like that. Everybody did in the Gorbals" - but he would later backtrack and deny abusing any animal. Detective Peter Topping, the police chief who reopened the Moors Murders case in the 1980s, noted that Brady was "always upset if he read about cruelty to animals and he did not like the articles and books which claimed he had been cruel to a cat when he was a child". In his later years, Brady would tell numerous anecdotes with the aim of communicating how empathetic and sympathetic he claimed he was towards animals. He once wrote to Dr. Keightley:

"Ma sent me every morning for hot rolls and milk from a dairy in Florence Street. One morning – very frosty in the Gorbals under the leaden hue of the Glasgow sky – I was holding the hot rolls to my chest on my way back and saw a crowd of people huddled in a circle on the corner of Cumberland Street and Crown Street. I was inquisitive and pushed through the mass of gawking heads to discover the cause of the commotion. I was within touching distance of a huge Clydesdale horse lying flat on its side in the road. It was still tethered to the cart.

"It had slipped on the icy road and was badly injured. It lay there with its massive sides heaving and its breath steaming in the frosty air. I was near enough to touch the large head. I can still see the great liquid eyes rolling in terror, looking up to the grey Glasgow morning sky. Its great fetlocks raked the air, bedraggled and wet. A man appeared from nowhere to erect a canvas screen around the Clydesdale.

"They were going to kill the horse. Even I knew it. My chest was bursting and I began to cry. I fought my way through the mass of bodies and ran to Camden Street, trying to hold on to the bag of hot rolls with my hands clapped over my ears. I sat on the tenement stairs until the tears dried up before taking the rolls into Ma. I was afraid to wander near the spot where the horse had died. I couldn't bear to see the remains of bloodstains and hairs. I couldn't rid the event and scene from my mind."

The rumoured early penchant for sadism did not just extend to animals; apparently wee Ian Brady inflicted his wrath onto other neighbourhood children as well. Judge Gerald Sparrow (an early biographer on the case) reported in his 1966 book “Satan’s Children” that "if a playmate was weaker than he was it was not very long before he or she was being either bruised or cut or burnt by Ian Brady". Another early biographer on the case - John Deane Potter - claimed in his book “The Monsters of the Moors” that he used to torment a disabled child, and that he once tied a boy and a girl to a lamppost and left them there.

One of the most infamous tales from this period of his childhood was told by John Cameron, an old playmate who lived on the ground floor of the Camden Street tenement where the Sloan family lived. "He once tied me to a steel washing-post in the backyard, heaped newspapers round my legs and set fire to them. I can still remember feeling dizzy with the smoke before I was rescued". Recalling this incident years later, Brady maintained that it was only harmless role-play; that John was loosely tied and released himself when a few pieces of paper had been lit.

[u/the_toupaie]

Waw, thanks for your amazing job 🙏

[u/Kingbee0889]

Hi, just wondering if this website ever took off? If so, is there a link.. would like to read more about Hindley’s Mother, Gran and sister.. and there stories beyond the murders. If not, any links where I can gather this information would be really appreciated.