01x02 - Escalation and Elation

[bunniefuu]

[soft music]

[Reporter] 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 Swindle] Seeing
the pictures of the two

that were involved in
k*lling these children,

had struck fear into me.

♪ Blood is on my hands ♪

His eyes, he has evil eyes.

♪ So I understand ♪

[Dr. Nixon] The victims
would beg to be freed.

He was absolutely possessed

by a need to create pain.

He was always going to k*ll.

[David Swindle] I have
never been able to understand

why a human being takes
the life of another.

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

but Ian Brady was ill.

[music continues]

[Cameron Boyd] 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.

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

♪ Blood is on my hand ♪

[Cameron Boyd] None of this explains why

he goes to the heart of darkness.

[Man] I won't call him a man.

I wouldn't, no, a monster.

When it comes to Ian Brady,
genetics loaded the g*n.

His personality aimed it
and Myra pulled the trigger.

♪ I'm the violent kind ♪

[eerie music]

Ian Brady is in a psychiatric hospital

at the mument and has been
diagnosed as suffering

from psychiatric illness
in one form or another

for many, many years
from being a teenager.

He's a very difficult
individual to deal with.

Highly intelligent,

but also, erratic in terms
of his psychiatric condition.

He tries to manipulate at every turn.

[eerie music]

I think Ian Brady is a textbook example

of how nature and nurture
intertwine together

to create a very disturbing individual.

[Geoff Knupper] Brady only
ever made formal confessions

in the presence of his
solicitor, legal advisors.

It was a tape recorded
confession at hospital,

but it was only a case of,

"Yes, I admit that I
m*rder*d these children."

but no detail was ever provided.

[Actor] I'll spill the beans,

if you'll give me the means

whereby I can k*ll myself.

Conversely, Myra Hindley
provided enormous detail

every bit of detail she possibly could.

My name is Cameron Boyd.

I am a retired forensic psychiatrist

who after retirement started working

for the Mental Health
Review Tribunal Service

and did so for about 15 years.

I was in my teens when he
was committing his crimes,

and obviously, you hear
about it on the news.

[Reporter] 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.

Brady is something special.

Serial K*llers are something special.

I did have a number of patients

who had committed
homicides and treated them,

but none as notorious as Ian Brady.

His psychopathology with
regard to the pedophilia,

the homicide, different
than anything I'd ever seen.

It didn't really begin until he meets

Myra Hindley in Manchester
when she goes to work

at the same factory that he is.

But that's the mument when
he becomes more disturbed

and more of a troublemaker.

Gets himself into more
trouble with the police.

So, if you're looking for the break point,

that's one of them.

But the thing to remember
is that none of this

explains why he goes to
the heart of darkness.

[tense music]

For that first year of their time,

there is this unrequited relationship

between Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

that as far as he was
concerned, didn't exist at all.

He wasn't interested in a relationship.

She was just another
member of the office staff.

He didn't take much notice of her.

It was a small company.

And at lunchtime, they'd sit around

having their sandwiches and playing cards,

and there was a bridge school,
which they had to abandon,

because Ian Brady would get very angry

and throw the cards down and
get very cross with his partner

and very cross when they
played pontoon, and other games

so, they knew, and she knew very quickly

that he was a man of a temper,

but there was something about
him that fascinated her.

[triumph music]

It wasn't until a Christmas party

when the whole office went out together

and got somewhat the worse for wear

that he walked her home,

and in fact, they walked to another pub

and carried on drinking.

And I think he started
then expounding to her

his views on the world.

And then it grew gradually.

[crowd cheering]

They watched the
Nuremberg rallies on film.

I mean, not the sort of thing

you'd take an 18-year-old
girl to normally.

I think he was confiding his dark secrets

from the beginning.

I don't think he took very long

before he started bringing
in his ideas about death,

about human beings being irrelevant

and that you could dispose of them.

She became part of his cult.

[tense music continues]

Quite quickly into their relationship,

Myra Hindley not only changed her outlook,

but her appearance.

Her hair was cut into a different style.

She dyed it a peroxide blonde

and Ian encouraged her to
wear leather and black.

It's undoubtedly the case that Ian

found her more sexually attractive

once she had conformed to this image

that Ian had of how a woman should look.

As well as being an individual

he could share his fantasies with,

whom he could coerce, who he could teach.

And Myra Hindley had so
many more human relationships

than him all the way through her life.

His were very sparse.

He was a virgin I think when he met her.

He may have had h*m* encounters,

but he certainly probably hadn't had

a heterosexual one before her.

She was also a virgin,

so they came to each other inexperienced,

but she was much more
experienced in terms of romance.

She'd certainly had her
experience of snogging boyfriends

down the back alleyways of Manchester,

which he hadn't had.

So, for her, the big
shift is perhaps greater.

There's a story about Ian
Brady and his first girlfriend

where he threatened
her with a flick knife,

because she attended a
dance with another boy.

How dare she attend a
dance with another boy?

And he was showing her
that that's something

that he does not want her
to do, by using a knife.

He viciously attacked
and beat up that other boy.

So yes, the vicious streak was there.

There we can see the
very beginning of a man

that was absolutely what we now call

a coercive controlling individual.

Ian's friends looked
upon him as being weird

and a cruel individual.

This was someone in earlier years

had displayed tendencies
of cruelty to animals.

[dark music]

It's widely believed that Ian Brady

did k*ll cats when he was a child.

One day he was playing
on this disused b*mb site

and Ian found a cat, which
he trapped in a plastic bag.

He then spent several hours with the cat

watching it gasp for
breath, playing with it.

After Ian had finished
playing with the cat,

he poured it out of the plastic bag

and into a makeshift tomb,

which he blocked at
either end with bricks.

Over the next few days,

Ian would return periodically to the site

to check that the cat was still
alive and still struggling.

Now, cruelty to animals
for me is something

that is a prerequisite to progressing

towards more serious behavior.

Serial K*llers in early
years indicate tendencies,

and this is has been
confirmed from various cases

with cruelty to animals,
maltreatment of animals,

and this was evident.

It was something that was
evident in Ian's behavior.

Something that's
quite interesting though

that is almost like the polar opposite

of what we know about Brady.

He's reported that he abused cats

and he threw a cat out
of the top floor window.

However, there's also other reports

that actually he got very upset

when the pets would
die in the foster home.

There was one dog called Sheila,

and there's a story that
Brady pleaded with God

to keep her alive when she was ill.

And when she died, that was proof to him

that there was no God,

because he didn't save Sheila.

He also expressed a deep sadness

that he had disappointed his foster mum.

So, although we see this angry antisocial,

antagonistical man, actually,

he also expresses a sadness
for upsetting his foster mum

and being a disappointment to her.

[dark music continues]

I'm Dr. Nicola Davis.

I have a PhD in psychology.

Behavioral psychology is
where my passion lies,

because I think you don't necessarily

even have to talk to someone

or understand someone
to get a better insight

into who they are as a person.

Their subconscious and their
conscious choices of behavior

can tell you a lot about them.

[brooding music]

If you look at photographs of Ian,

you get even more insight
into who he is as a person.

You can gain even further insight,

if you look at him and
Myra together as well,

because just the way they interact

gives you so much detail
about his personality.

[music continues]

She's usually looking at
him rather than the camera,

and he's usually looking at the camera.

And I think this shows how
he's besotted with himself

and she's besotted with him,

and the whole relationship is about him.

The relationship is based on

feeding his narcissism and his ego.

Narcissistic personality
disorder is where people

have an absolute need for success,

for being better than other people.

They want to be admired and looked up to.

They want people to adore them,

and that's why Brady loved the fact

that Myra Hindley adored him so much.

He thought he was cleverer
than other people.

He thought that he deserved
better than everybody else.

So, those combination of
things that we see in Brady,

the manipulation, the anger, the control,

plus the need for being adored

and better than everybody else,

those came together as
toxic personality traits.

She knows this.

She's aware of this,
and she's chosen that.

So, is she submissive?

I'm not sure if she's
submissive or more so

that this is something she wants as well.

I think she wants someone
who she can put on a pedestal

and who she feels is like a God to her.

It's a mutually beneficial
relationship here.

They know their places and
they're happy with their places.

[Actor] We were moving towards

an almost telepathic relationship.

I was never conscious of
having to exert myself

to coerce Myra into
accepting of my beliefs.

Myra was surprisingly in tune
with me from the beginning.

She was as ruthless as I was.

[tense music]

The relationship between
Brady and Hindley develops,

and it goes to the extent with
obsession with p*rn*graphy

to the extent of shutting out the world.

Ian became sexually
aware at a young age,

and by the age of 12 to 13,

he started having
violent sexual fantasies.

I don't think Ian Brady
believed in concepts

of straight or g*y, even in the 1950s.

Sex was an indulgence,

which could be practiced
with whoever was there,

and it wasn't anything
that should be subject

to the idea of social
control or social norms.

Brady described how
from a young teenager,

he would have fantasies
about k*lling people.

What we know from literature

is that many people have fantasies,

and some of those fantasies
are sometimes quite extreme,

but they never go on
to enact that fantasy.

With Brady's fantasies,
they were sadistic,

and he also, started to look at ways

that he could fulfill those fantasies.

When he met Myra Hindley, he
talked about those fantasies.

They enacted sexual fantasies together,

and he actually, then
started to manipulate her

in how they would eventually
go on to commit m*rder.

So, this is a man that
isn't just fantasizing,

but he's actually planning on

how he's going to carry
out those fantasies.

The relationship
between Brady and Hindley

is clearly profoundly disturbing.

It was deep and profound and
affectionate in their own way.

Myra Hindley was also an
object on which he could act out

his perverted sexual desires.

Brady would anally r*pe Myra.

He would bite her during
sex, he would beat her,

and he would gain sexual
satisfaction from doing so.

[tense music]

He certainly formed
an attachment with Myra,

but this attachment was
purely a means to an end,

an attachment that allowed him

to carry out his sadistic fantasies.

I don't believe there was any love there.

It took him a year to reciprocate
or so-called reciprocate

the love that Myra had for him,

and I feel that he more saw Myra

as an opportunity to
accelerate his deviance.

Deviance was his real attachment.

1963, Brady and Hindley
discover Saddleworth Moor,

a place that they visit continually,

and they speak about
committing bank robberies

and the perfect m*rder.

[new age music]

For Ian Brady Saddleworth
Moor was as close to Loch Lomond

as he could get whilst
living in Greater Manchester.

It was a place away from
oppression, away from poverty,

away from the natural cycle
of working class life.

It was also a place where he
and Myra spent many afternoons

drinking, listening to
music, and making love.

[music continues]

Growing up in the surrounding
Greater Manchester areas,

I became interested to conduct
my own individual research

and investigation into the
Brady and Hindley case.

[music continues]

This area in particular,

was of interest to Brady and Hindley.

They would come to this location

and during the summer months,
sometimes they would picnic,

drink wine over on the
rocks on Hollin Brown Knoll.

It was a favored location of theirs.

[wind blowing]

Back in the sixties,

this was nowhere near as
busy as what it is now

from a traffic point of view
and people walking around.

In fact, it was quite eerie

and it was somewhere that
Brady and Hindley enjoyed,

because of that reason,
because it was quieter.

[bright piano music]

This is Myra and Ian, and
they're sitting on a rock.

Ian again has his arms
around her shoulders,

almost pulling her back.

It's that sense of ownership.

I own you.

You'll see that in a lot of
the pictures of them together.

If you take a look, a lot of the time,

his hands are over her
shoulders or holding her arms

in some kind of tight lock to show

who's the boss and who's in power.

Myra seems happy and content,
that seems a genuine smile,

and I suspect she's happy and genuine

despite later going on to say

that she felt like she was
abused in the relationship.

I think she was getting
exactly what she was seeking,

which was that authoritative,
powerful father figure.

Ian Brady once asked Myra Hindley,

"If you could k*ll anybody in the world

and know that you would get
away with it, would you?"

Myra Hindley thought for
a while and said, "Yes."

Ian Brady asked her who she
said, "Ronnie Sinclair."

The man she had briefly been engaged to.

[suspenseful music]

Ian did some reconnaissance
on Ronnie Sinclair,

would follow him, would map his movements.

[music continues]

Fortunately, for Ronnie Sinclair,

the opportunity did not
arise for Ian Brady to act.

The impetus to m*rder
somebody to k*ll somebody

definitely came from Brady.

But he found that she was
willing to be his accomplice,

which must have been a
massive breakthrough for him,

because it liberated him.

[wind blows]

Brady and Hindley continued to discuss

how to commit the perfect m*rder.

And in July, 1963,
Hindley hired a white van.

[bright piano music]

16-Year-old Pauline Reade begins the day

looking forward to going to
a dance at the Railway Club.

[music continues]

As Pauline is walking to the dance,

she meets Myra Hindley who asked her,

if she would go to the moors
to help her find a glove

in return for some records.

And Pauline agrees to accompany her.

[camera clicks]

Pauline Reade knew Hindley.

She had gone to school
with her sister Maureen.

And so, she wouldn't have been afraid

of getting into the van with her

and driving up to Saddleworth Moor

to look for the supposed lost glove.

[music continues]

[David Swindle] Brady
who's following the van

on his motorbike continues
to Saddleworth Moor.

[music continues]

They got out of the car
on this side of the moor,

walked about another hundred yards

further down in that direction,
away from the roadside.

[tense music]

Upon Myra Hindley's account,
when Ian Brady arrived,

he took Pauline Reade out of sight

and returned 30 minutes later.

Claiming to have subdued her and saying

that he needed Hindley's
help in burying the body.

[suspenseful music]

However, Ian Brady's
account is very different

to that of Myra Hindley's.

Ian Brady insists that they both walked

Pauline Reade onto the moor,

and when they found a suitable spot,

both of them participated in
her sexual as*ault and m*rder.

When they're on the moor,

Myra Hindley reached
for Pauline's necklace,

telling Pauline, "You won't
need that where you are going."

Ian Brady was furious and struck Myra,

for having given the game away.

Ian Brady claims that at one point

he returned to the car to find a shovel

only to return to find Myra
struggling with Pauline.

Myra had attempted to stab her,

but the knife had bent.

Ian Brady intervened and
cut Pauline's throat.

The first incision, however,
was not deep enough.

It was only the second
incision across her voice box

that finally k*lled her.

[solemn music]

As Pauline Reade's body lay lifeless

and the blood gushed from her neck,

Ian Brady pushed the collar of her coat

into the wound to stem the flow.

Brady then dug a shallow
grave and with Myra's help

heaped Pauline's body into the ground.

[music continues]

Brady and Hindley m*rder*d her,

and buried her on the spot.

[dramatic music]

They celebrate the
k*lling by playing the music

"The Legion's Last Patrol".

[orchestral music]

And they carefully destroy
all forensic evidence

linking them to Pauline's m*rder.

It's almost like once they've taken

that first initial step, they can't stop.

They've become an
absolute pariah of society

and they feel even more lonely.

So, they continue,

because now the only thing that they have

is that compulsion to k*ll.

12-Year-old school boy, John Kilbride,

spends a morning with his gran

in anticipation of going to cinema.

[indistinct street vendors]

Afterwards, he runs
errands at Ashton Market.

His father visits the
market that afternoon,

but leaves just before 05:00.

Less than hour later,

John is sitting on a wall eating biscuits.

When Hindley and Brady approach him.

Hindley is wearing the black
wig that she'd bought earlier

to disguise her blonde hair.

They offer him a lift home
and a bottle of sherry

in return for helping find

the lost glove on Saddleworth Moor.

[soft music]

And it was there that John
Kilbride was abused and m*rder*d

and buried on the
opposite side of the road,

from poor Pauline, in a shallow grave.

[music continues]

The New Year's Eve bizarrely,

they spend the night at Saddleworth Moor

near the graves where they had committed

the horrific crimes.

[music continues]

Power is a very powerful aphrodisiac.

It can't be a sort of sexual impulse.

It's a power impulse.

And he definitely had that feeling

of power over these victims.

They affirmed something in him.

They affirmed his ability to k*ll

and be in charge of k*lling,

and because of that, he was aroused by it.

I don't think it was the fact

that even that they were children,

it was a feeling of
power that was affirmed

by what he had done.

[gentle music]

We're driving on the main A635.

This is the main route up
and through Saddleworth.

And this is the route that
Brady and Hindley would've taken

when they visited the areas

and tragically buried their victims.

I've taken this route many times.

It always gets to me.

There's always a period of I think,

reflection of what really happened up here

and sadly, what those
victims went through.

But every time I drive along here

you tend to revisit those events,

and yeah, it deserves that respect,

and consideration.

[car slowing]

[tense music]

So, this is the location of the lay-by

where Brady and Hindley pulled in

with John Kilbride in the car.

And basically, took him about
50 yards in that direction

and sexually abused John and k*lled him

and buried him in a shallow grave.

[music continues]

On the 6th of May, 1964,

both of them returned to the
scene in Saddleworth Moor

and they take pictures of
each other at the scene.

At the area where they have tortured

and k*lled two young
children and buried them.

[camera clicks]

[dark music]

There seems to be in a progression,

to some extent, in Brady's k*lling.

It kind of seems to me to
almost escalate really.

There's that kind of gamblers streak

that I think is very common.

Is very characteristic of a serial k*ller.

This, almost this urge to kind of

push the boundary further each time.

[music continues]

Here we've got Ian with his
shirt off and around his head

and a pint glass on his head.

And it looks like we are actually,

getting a rare glimpse into
some kind of personality

beyond the sadistic Ian we know,

which in a way makes his
crime seem even worse,

because there's clearly a human side here

and he is acting the fool.

And this isn't a human side
I've seen much of in the press

or in pictures that have
been available about him.

But yeah, it's like where did this aspect,

this part of his personality go?

[suspenseful music]

And here he is sitting
with a rock behind him.

He's high up looking down,

which I think has been
his key goal all the time,

is to be on top of the
world above everyone else.

And he's kind of got a a bit of a...

the side of his lip is
he is going up slightly,

kind of a bit of disdain or
disgust as he looks down.

It reminds me a bit of
when he went to Loch Lomond

and was looking down at them maggots.

I think he thinks the rest of the world,

actually, are the maggots.

[dark music]

One of the strongest
characteristics of Ian Brady

was a need to control,

and he needed to control Myra Hindley.

He took pornographic photographs of her,

which was, so this was a girl

who wouldn't have even shared
a bath with her sister.

She was so prudish.

Now, is taking part of a
pornographic film session with him.

Something that we know about Brady

is that the p*rn*graphy that he watched

wasn't just adult p*rn*graphy,

he looked at child p*rn*graphy.

So, he certainly, showed
a pedophilia interest.

When we look at k*lling children,

there are different reasons.

Sometimes, it's because
children are easier to k*ll,

easier to control, so
they're a more likely victim.

However, when we look at
sexually-motivated crimes,

we have to look at pedophilia

and that the individual is a pedophile,

is sexually attracted to children.

So, part of their fantasies
is not only to k*ll and abuse,

but to k*ll and abuse children.

There are certain
drives in certain people

that push them to do things

that other people would
consider horrendous

and beyond the pale.

There seems to be a reward
thing going on there

in terms of Brady is man

like we the other serial K*llers

that end up k*lling again and again,

which is that to get his
kick to get his feeling,

he needed to commit another crime,

he needed to keep on
committing those crimes.

And not just that,

but this seems to be a
kind of ratcheting up

of the level of the crime.

[tense music]

16th of June, 1964, after school,

12-year-old Keith Bennett,

who lived with his family on Eston Street

set out from home.

His mother, Winnie, who
was heavily pregnant,

was going to the bingo

and Keith was going to his
gran's house, which is nearby.

Keith had broken a lens in his glasses

and his mum wanted to see him

safely across the busy Stockport Road.

[music continues]

Keith waved his mum goodbye

and continued the rest of the walk alone.

His path to come past Westmoreland
Street where Brady lived.

Hindley called to Keith from the car

and asked if he could help
with some heavy boxes.

Keith agrees and climbs into the car,

and Brady is sitting
in the back of the car.

They use the story of
the lost glove again.

In the drive to the moors,

Keith was abused and m*rder*d

and buried on the moor in a shallow grave.

[music continues]

Ian knew exactly that
what he was doing was wrong,

and that is actually,

what made him feel
superior to everyone else.

That he was choosing to go down that route

rather than stick to the rules and laws

that the rest of us stick to.

So, he knew the difference
between his fantasies and reality

and the difference between right or wrong,

and he's very proud of the fact

that he chose to follow his desires

rather than to conform to what

society would expect and want.

He got his kick from hurting them.

He got his kick for them
begging for their life.

He got his kicks from
everything he did to them.

He loved the fact that he harmed them.

He got pleasure.

He's sadistic in nature.

[music continues]

In the late summer of 1964,

Hindley and her gran move
into 16 Wardle Brook Avenue

and Brady moves in with them.

Hindley and Brady's relationship
progressed on the notion

that it was those two against the world.

[people singing]

If you can picture Boxing Day, 1964,

Christmas decorations still hanging,

and a funfair filled with
children, filled with laughter,

and there would've been a
sense of fun in the air.

[funfair sounds]

[gentle piano music]

Lesley Ann Downey would've been
having the time of her life.

At Ancoats' 10-year-old Lesley Downey

spends the day with her family.

On the way back, Lesley decides
to return to the fairground

and that would become her downfall.

[music continues]

While she's at the fair ground,

Brady and Hindley see her at the Dodgems,

and they make approaches to her.

Upon seeing the child,
Hindley approached

and deliberately drops some shopping,

some parcels she was
carrying at the child's feet.

Hindley asked Lesley Ann Downey,

if she would help her
take the packages home.

She agrees to help them,

and she goes back toward the
Wardle Brook Avenue with them

to help them with the boxes.

Once at Wardle Brook Avenue
in an upstairs bedroom,

Hindley and Brady stripped

and sexually assaulted Lesley Ann Downey.

Moreover, they took photographs
of that sexual as*ault.

And according to Hindley,
unbeknownst to her,

Ian Brady had set up a recording
device underneath the bed.

It's only Hindley's voice

that could be heard on the audio tape.

[tape machine whirrs]

encouraging Lesley Ann Downey to be quiet

and to put a gag in her mouth.

Hindley says, "Shut up,
or I'll forget myself

and I'll hit you one."

Lesley Ann Downey repeatedly

calls Brady Daddy and Hindley mummy.

She begs to go home
through the whole ordeal.

Whilst we don't know whether the tape

was made before or after
the sexual as*ault,

what we do know is Lesley Ann Downey

did not leave Wardle Brook Avenue alive.

Whilst Brady claims that
Hindley strangled the child

with a dressing gown cord,
Hindley claims it was Brady.

[dramatic music]

It's long been suggested that music

played a significant role in
each of the child's murders.

A specific song associated

with each k*lling, with each child.

The tape of Lesley Ann Downey

is prefaced by the song
"Little Drumming Boy",

it could well be that Hindley and Brady

wanted to listen to that tape afterwards,

a shared memento of what they
did to Lesley Ann Downey.

[music continues]

Both of them obtained sadistic pleasure

out of watching that young
girl suffer and recording it.

And it's absolutely
horrendous what they did.

And for them, it's like serial
K*llers keeping trophies.

They wanted to keep a record of that.

And that is what makes
this case so despicable

and memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The way Ian Brady made
these children feel powerless,

scared, pleading for their mothers.

If we think of the Lesley Ann Downey tape

where she's pleading for her mother,

and her mother isn't coming,

because her mother can't come.

Is this the way Ian felt
when he was younger?

Was he in need of his
mother, and she didn't come.

[tense music]

Lesley Ann's body was
left in the house overnight,

because it had been snowing

and it wasn't possible for
them to reach Saddleworth Moor.

Brady and Hindley then
played back that tape.

They looked at those photos again.

There's a kind of sense
in which it becomes

part of the fantasies to
incorporate these elements

of the actual reality of k*lling someone.

And so, that's when the fantasy

and the reality become
kind of linked together.

But it's clearly that to
keep on fueling that fantasy

there needs to be this continual k*lling.

Brady was driven by instinct.

There are different
serial k*ller typologies.

There are four.

There's lust and r*pe,

power, anger, and financial gain.

Now, I believe that Ian Brady

was driven by the power and anger ones,

which are very instinctual feelings.

I believe that he felt
powerless as a child.

He lacked control over his environment

and what people were doing to him.

So, he's exerting this
power now in his adult life.

Could it be that Brady
somehow saw himself

in his weird fantasy about
being this kind of super person?

All the other people under
him kind of underlings

or kind of lesser people.

He somehow justified to
himself what he was doing.

So he made a choice.

I think that's one thing
about the human mind

that is quite special really.

That despite our biology,
despite our environment,

we do make choices.

We do have a kind of free will.

It may be constrained
in all sorts of ways.

It may be determined in all sorts of ways

by environment or our biology,

but I think ultimately,
we do make choices.

[orchestral music]

There was something of a pause

by Hindley and Brady
after the fourth m*rder

that most wretched of
all of Lesley Ann Downey.

But in that period, Brady took Hindley

on a very intriguing
trip back to Scotland.

Scotland was a place
of childhood innocence

and happy memories about his upbringing

by his foster parents.

He talked about the place,

his childhood there both
in Glasgow and in Pollok.

And he took Hindley back to the Gorbals

and showed her the place
where he'd been brought up.

He even photographed the tenement building

where he'd been brought up.

He took her to a place called Dunning

where there was a witch's cross.

They photographed each
other on this witch's cross.

[gentle music]

Taking Myra around
places from his childhood

was bringing her into that
world that was driving

the crimes that they
were committing together.

So it was joining them,
joining them more, I feel.

[music continues]

And they went to a castle
at a place called Haining

and photographed Hindley
there on the ruins.

I think in the middle of the horror,

he was going back to the
innocence of childhood.

It was such a powerful thing for him

that came through in his letters to me.

The hold it had over him and
the details he conveyed to me.

Something was going on that he went back

to the innocence days before the horror.

[Actor] I returned to Glasgow

for holidays with plenty of money

and a bolder approach
to life in general,

sometimes alone,
other times with company,

sometimes anonymously, sometimes formally.

And always seeing how family
and friends were doing,

even from a distance, if
necessary on occasion.

The new motorbike was
bought in the early sixties

and only for use in hot weather,

including fast trips to Glasgow.

Yes, the last trip to
the Gorbals was in 1965.

I took many photographs of both

and of familiar places around.

Over the years inside,

I've had letters
from old school friends.

[music continues]

He is his own breed of evil.

Now, if we think of a psychopath,

part of that definition of a
psychopath is lack of empathy.

Ian, I believe had that cognitive empathy

and it was actually that
empathy that drove him.

He knew exactly what these children

and their parents were going through,

and that's exactly what he wanted.

So, in that sense,

if you take the definition
of a psychopath,

he isn't, he's actually worse.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,

notwithstanding Jack the Ripper,

were Britain's first serial
K*llers of the modern age.

It's almost like
they're on a mission then

to keep on k*lling.

They can't stop.

[dramatic music]