For our video class, we were assigned a project which was to produce a video about a thief stealing an object from someone.

There were four people in my group. Me and another person filmed the shoot whilst the two others in the group acted out the parts of the thief and the victim. We found the camera relatively easy to use and were able to capture some suitable shots. We filmed in a corridor of the college with people occasionally walking past, this presented us with the problem of people walking into the shot and therefore ruining it and this did happen in one scene.

The light we had was perfect for the shoot, filming indoors gave just enough light for the subject to be in focus. For the wide shots, we had to move the tripod itself to get the whole shot in because of the limited space we were working within, though this was easily solved with two people working the camera. The team in general worked well together and we attained enough footage to assess and see where we had gone wrong or where we had succeeded.

The door we used did not come under the conditions of the shoot, instead of a handle turning, we used a sliding door, which I personally think added eeriness to the particular shot of the door slowly opening to reveal the thief.

Some of our shots were too repetitive because the object being stolen was the victim himself, this meant that the shots of the object were the same as the shots of the victim.

After filming we returned to room A111 to assess our work and the other groups work. The end results were technically right but there was a lot of work that needed done to finalise the project. In our note pads we took notes of the shots that needed editing, or re-done altogether.

The things to look out for before filming are your environment and who is around, the setting and checking whether it applies to the brief and also the light source.

Myra Hindley was born on the 23^rd of July 1942 in Gorton, which, in those days, was a tough working class area of Manchester. She was the daughter of Nellie and Bob Hindley; Bob was an alcoholic and Myra was beaten by both parents on a regular basis. Due to the poor living conditions her family suffered, she and her parents slept in the same room - her in a single bed next to her parents’ double. After the birth of her younger sister Maureen, the family’s condition worsened.  Shortly after the birth, Myra, then aged five, was sent to live with her grandmother who lived nearby.

Myra’s father served in the parachute regiment in the Second World War. He was known in the army as a “hard man” and, as a result, he expected his daughter to be equally tough. He taught her how to fight and forced her to stick up for herself. When Hindley was aged 8, a local boy ran up to her in the street and scratched her on the cheek, drawing blood. She then burst into tears and ran into her house where she was met by her father who told her to “go and punch him, because if you don’t I’ll leather you!” Hindley found the boy and successfully knocked him to the ground with multiple punches, as her father had taught her. She wrote later “at eight years old I’d scored my first victory”.

Professor of forensic psychiatry, Malcolm MacCulloch, suggested that the fight and her father’s role in it may be “key pieces of evidence” in trying to understand her role in the Moors murders.

One of her closest friends, Michael Higgins, asked Myra to go swimming with friends in a local disused reservoir one day but she declined the offer and instead went out with another friend. On that day, Michael drowned. Upon learning of his death, Myra was distraught and blamed herself for the tragedy. She began collecting for a wreath and attended the funeral at St Francis’ Monastery in Gorton lane – the church where she was baptised a catholic on 16^th August 1942. Hindley was increasingly attracted to the Catholic Church, beginning with Ryder Brow secondary modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception soon after Higgins’ funeral. She took the confirmation name of Veronica and received her first communion in November 1958. She also became a godparent to Michael’s nephew, Antony John. It was also around this time she started bleaching her hair.

Hindley first got a job as a junior clerk where she typed, made tea and ran general errands. She was well liked in the company, so much so that when she lost a week’s pay packet, her colleagues all chipped in to get her the money back. She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas 1958, and got engaged at 17. However, the engagement was called off a few months later as she thought him to be too immature and not able to fulfil her needs.

Shortly after her 17^th birthday, she died her hair pink and took judo lessons once a week. It was then that she attained a job at Millwards merchandising in Levenshulme Road, where she met Ian Brady.

Ian Brady was born in Glasgow on 2 January 1938 as Ian Duncan Stewart, the son of Maggie Stewart who was an unmarried 28 year old. His father’s identity has never really been known, although his mother said he was a reporter working for a Glasgow newspaper, who died three months before Brady was born. His mother had no support in raising him so after a few months she was forced to give her son to Mary and John Sloan, a local couple who had four children themselves. Brady took their name and was known as Ian Sloan. Maggie continued to visit her son throughout his foster care.

As a child, Ian enjoyed torturing animals: he broke the hind legs of a dog, set fire to another dog and decapitated a cat. A few months after his ninth birthday he moved to a new council house on an overspill estate at Pollok. He was also accepted at Shawlands Academy, a school for above average students.

As he grew older Brady’s brutality escalated, and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself. At Shawlands his behaviour worsened: as a teenager he appeared twice before a juvenile court for house breaking. He left the academy aged 15 and attained various jobs. He had a girlfriend for a short period, but that broke off after he threatened her with a flick knife for having attended a dance with another boy. He once again appeared before the court, this time with nine charges against him, and shortly before his 17^th birthday a Scottish court put him on probation. The condition of this was that he went to live with his mother who was now living in Manchester and married to an Irish fruit merchant. His name was Pat Brady and he managed to get Ian a job selling fruit at Smithfield Market.

Brady was caught stealing a bag of lead from the market but because he was under 18 he was sentenced to two years in Borstal for “training”. He was originally sent to Hatfield but after being found drunk on alcohol that he had brewed himself he was moved to a much tougher unit at Hull. After being released, Brady returned to Manchester and found more jobs. Just three months after being released from Borstal, he successfully applied for a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising where he met Hindley.

Hindley became slowly infatuated by Brady and it wasn’t until 27 July that she finally spoke to him. She continued to talk to him occasionally and then in December, he asked her out on a date to the cinema where they watched a film about Nuremburg trials. Their dates followed similar patterns: a trip to the cinema to view an adult film then back to Hindley’s house to drink wine. On their lunch breaks they would read to each other aloud about Nazi atrocities. She emulated the Aryan perfection, dying her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick. Hindley expressed concern about some aspects of Brady’s character, writing to her friend about a time when she was drugged by him, and then later asking her friend to burn the letter. As a couple, they became increasingly withdrawn from their colleagues. They expressed a liking for photography; the pair took photographs of each other that at the time would have been considered explicit. This marked a major turnaround for Hindley, changing her from the shy, repressed character she had been before.

It is said that Brady began talking about the perfect murder in July 1963. He often spoke of a book called Compulsion by Meyer Levin which was about two children from well off families plotting the perfect murder of a 12 year old boy, and who escape the death penalty because of their young age.

By June 1963, Ian had moved into Myra’s grandmother’s house with her on Bannock Street, and on 12 July 1963, they had murdered their first victim, 16 year old Pauline Reade who had been at school with Myra’s younger sister Maureen. Pauline was a neighbour of the couple and so had slight trust in them, and she and Hindley drove up to Saddleworth moor with Brady secretly following them on a motorbike. They then stopped and got out to search for a missing item belonging to Hindley. This is the point that Brady struck with a spade, fracturing her skull. She was then raped before having her throat slit.

Their next victim would be John Kilbride who was killed on 23 November 1963. Hindley walked past John at a market and dropped some boxes on purpose, then asking him to help her take the boxes home they drove up to the moors with Brady sitting in the back of the car. Kilbride and Brady went for a walk where John was sexually assaulted and strangled with a piece of string.

Keith Bennet was murdered in a similar way to John Kilbride, with the couple dropping boxes and asking for help in taking them home.

Lesley Ann Downey was asked to help carry shopping to the car and then home, when in the house she was stripped naked, gagged and forced to pose for sexual photographs and then strangled with a piece of string, Hindley drove her body to Saddleworth moor where she was buried

.

Brady met 17 year old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester railway station and invited him to his home where he was beaten with an axe until dead. The full extent of their murders would not come to light until their confessions in 1985, as the couple maintained their innocence up until then.

Clockwise from top left: Lesley Ann Downey, Keith Bennett, Edward Evans, Pauline Reade and John Kilbride.

My opinion is that of any other sane human being, these terrible murders were a sick abomination to human society. One of the victims, John Kilbride lived on the same street as my mother in Ashton-under-Lyne, and was in my aunty’s class at school. Either one of them could have been abducted and murdered, had Hindley and Brady chosen another victim. Knowing this disturbed me greatly and really brought the facts of the matter home.

Finding out about Hindley and Brady’s backgrounds has helped me understand that the brutality of their upbringings obviously had a great impact on the rest of their lives. However this does not forgive them. After nearly fifty years, feelings still run strong and Brady still refuses to let the grieving family of one victim know where the remains of their son are buried.