JENNI MURRAY: The terror of being a teen in the shadow of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

I was just 13 and became curious about the world when we first heard in 1963 that two young people had disappeared.

I was used to a tremendous amount of freedom at the time, just like any other girl of that age at the time. My mom was very relaxed about me spending time with friends.

We took long, unsupervised walks in the woods around the South Yorkshire town of Barnsley, where we lived. It never occurred to me that something bad could happen and my friends were the same. It was – or it felt – a wonderful, safe, protected world.

Then everything changed – and I mean everything -. On July 12 of that year, 16-year-old Pauline Reade disappeared on her way to a dance. She was still missing when there was more disturbing news on November 23, which we read in the papers and heard on the radio.

A 12-year-old boy named John Kilbride had disappeared on his way home from his job in the market in Ashton-under-Lyne, a town on the outskirts of Manchester, in the shadow of the moors. It was only 30 miles from us. A sense of danger crept in, something I had never felt before. My mother was palpably anxious.

Then, in June of the following year, 12-year-old Keith Bennett disappeared after leaving his home 53 miles away in Longsight, Manchester to visit his grandmother nearby. Suddenly my freedom was severely restricted. My mother wanted to accompany me – everywhere.

If I was allowed to leave the house at all, I had to assure her that I would be with at least two friends. I was warned daily never to talk to strangers. Never accept sweets. And never, ever get into a car with someone I don’t know.

The suspected discovery in recent days of remains on Saddleworth Moor has brought back so many memories of the fear that plagued my teenage years – and that of so many other girls, boys and families at the time.

It also caused the horror we felt when we finally learned what had happened to those children, to get revenge. It’s been a lifetime, but somehow it feels like yesterday.

It wasn’t until 1965 that we learned the names of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, of their other victims, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, or of “the Moors Murders” as their sadistic murders came to be known.

These depraved crimes against children, every parent’s nightmare, were a turning point – for all of us.

Not only were we confronted with the true depths of human depravity, but a woman, Myra Hindley, was at the heart of them.

It was the gruesome murder of 17-year-old Edward Evans that eventually brought the two killers out.

Edward had been clubbed to death with an ax in Brady’s front room and then strangled to death—a cruelty witnessed by Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith.

He was horrified by the police, who found Evans’ body wrapped in a plastic sheet along with the murder weapon. They also found Brady’s books on sadism and sexual perversion, and plans to dispose of the teen’s body.

John Kilbride’s name was found in a notebook. In October 1965 his body and that of Lesley Ann Downey were found buried on Saddleworth Moor.

In April of the following year, Hindley and Brady pleaded not guilty at Chester’s imposing Crown Court, but the evidence against them was irrefutable.

Aside from David Smith’s eyewitness account, the police had found a left-luggage office at Brady’s house.

Two suitcases were discovered at Manchester Central Station containing photos of a naked 10-year-old – Lesley Ann Downey – and a tape recording of her plea for her life, begging Brady and Hindley not to take her clothes off. Crying for her mother.

This tape, played in court, brought police and jurors to tears. It was not available for the rest of us to hear. Maybe that was lucky. But we read about it in the papers and heard about it on television. Really shocking.

I remember heartfelt discussions at school about the life sentences imposed on the killers. Had the couple gotten off lightly? The death penalty had only been abolished the year before.

There were some of us, including my mother, who felt they should have hung up. We had only just become aware of feminism and women’s rights. Could Hindley really have been equally responsible for the horrible crimes in which she had participated?

Wasn’t she in love with Brady, friends said? He had certainly bullied her into playing her despicable role, luring children to her car and asking the young victims to help her find a lost glove or move a few boxes.

Brady had used her. No woman could ever have taken part in the sexual assault of little girls and boys.

But they were wrong. I never doubted that she fully shared Brady’s guilt, but it came as a terrible shock to many teens and their parents that a woman could be evil in this way.

Hadn’t we always been told that if we got lost in a shopping center we had to find a lady to help us? Men can be dangerous, we knew that.

Now Hindley had taught us another lesson: that women could be both dangerous and unspeakably cruel. We all make our own decisions about how we should behave. She could have turned around and said no. She didn’t.

The impact of her crimes continued through my teenage years. Until I was 18 and left home to go to college, my mother’s life was plagued with fear.

I was definitely allowed to go out with friends, but had to be home by 10pm by bus. I remember her standing at the window, watching anxiously as I walked down the sidewalk and got home safely.

The memories were constant and received a lot of publicity. Brady confessed to killing Pauline and Keith in the late 1980s. He returned to Saddleworth Moor with Hindley in 1986 and 1987, presumably to help find the remains of these two children.

It was unbearable for the families left behind. Pauline was exhumed in 1987, but Brady never revealed the whereabouts of Keith Bennett, another open wound to his grieving mother, Winnie.

I had the privilege of speaking to her on Woman’s Hour in 1995. Her grief was palpable.

At the time, I had a 12-year-old son of my own, but I could only imagine what she’d been through in the years before Brady admitted Keith was one of his victims. How did she cope with not knowing what had happened?

She told me she had barely left the house for the past five years, afraid to send her other children to school in case they disappeared and she wanted to die.

What did she do after Brady confessed to killing Keith? She said she wrote to him dozens of times begging him to reveal her child’s whereabouts. He refused.

She thought, like so many others, that Hindley would have been more sympathetic as a woman.

Winnie said it took her five weeks to write the letter to Hindley, telling her she was a humble woman who worked in the kitchens of Christie Hospital in Manchester.

Here was a hardworking northern woman whose life had been ruined by two of the worst people imaginable. I wanted to hug her and cry with her. Her grief was unbearable.

But Hindley gave her nothing. Denying Winnie what she’d begged for was the last cruelty of these two evil people.

Barnsley is only 22 miles from the Moor and I often felt a terrible shiver as I drove along the A635 to and from my home town, passing where I thought Keith might be.

And I cried when Winnie died at age 78 in 2012, without a chance to find her son.

There is now a chance that he has been found and that the proper burial his mother longed for could be done.

Please let those apparent remains belong to Keith and finally let both him and Winnie rest in peace.