Most hated woman in the UK

Reviled as “the most hated woman in Britain”, Myra Hindley’s crimes with Ian Brady shocked the nation – a disgust that is felt to this day.

But her early life belied the monster she became after falling in with Brady.

Hindley was born in a working class suburb of Manchester in July 1942. Her father Bob, a labourer who served with the Para­chute Regiment during World War II, was a tyrant and beat her regularly when she was young but also taught her how to fight.

Conditions at home were cramped and when her sister Maureen was born in 1946, Hindley was sent to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby.

As a teenager Hindley was a normal girl. She dyed her hair blonde and practised judo, but became drawn to Catholicism and readied herself for formal reception into the Church.

After leaving school at 15, she learned how to type, working at a local electrical engineering firm.

In 1961 the 18-year-old joined Millwards Merchandise, a small chemical distributing firm in Gorton, Manchester, where she met Brady, who had a number of minor criminal convictions.

Brady was obsessed with Nazi philosophy and he and Hindley began reading books on Nazi atrocities to each other and watched X-rated films.

The talk turned to murder, and on July 12, 1963, they killed their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a friend of Hindley’s sister Maureen, after luring her to Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines above Manchester.

Hindley waged a long campaign to be released, but in 1998 the Appeal Court backed the decision by former Home Secretary Jack Straw that she should stay in prison until she died.

Hindley died in jail in November 2002, aged 60, after suffering respiratory failure following a heart attack.

She was cremated following a private funeral conducted by Father Michael Teader, a Roman Catholic priest at Highpoint Prison, Suffolk, where Hindley spent her final years in jail.