Here I am in Southern Cemetery
four miles from the city centre on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The sunshine and
cheeping birds belied the sorry sickening saga behind the grave I visited. It’s
that of Edward Evans who was the fifth and last victim of the so-called Moors
Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. They had
already murdered four children and buried them on Saddleworth
Moor (Keith Bennett is still missing) but Edward wasn’t. He was murdered in the
front room of their house in Hattersley (since
demolished.)
He was selected at random in the early evening on
Wednesday 6th October 1965. Hindley drove her lover
Brady down to Manchester central railway station to find someone to kill. There
would be lots of people around as Manchester United had been playing football
that afternoon. She sat in the car and waited for Brady who soon returned with 17-year-old
Edward, a smartly-dressed apprentice engineer (and gay - normally Hindley enticed the victims into the car.) Brady lied and
said Hindley was his sister and they drove him their
home eleven miles away where they opened a bottle of wine and relaxed. At some
point Brady told Hindley to fetch her brother-in-law
David Smith who was a violent man with many convictions. He knew Smith was awe
of him and wanted to show off. When Edward came round Brady violently murdered Edward
by bludgeoning him with an axe. He screamed for his mum but after fourteen
blows to his skull he was soon dead or close to it. He was strangled with some
electrical cord. Brady had been so engrossed he hadn’t noticed he sprained an
ankle badly. For affect he said to Hindley, “That’s
it. It’s the messiest yet.”
Though David Smith was a violent man with many
convictions he was terrified and helped Brady scrub away the blood. In fear of
his own life he agreed to put the corpse in the boot of the car and take it up
to the moors. It was too heavy for Brady to carry with a sprained ankle and Edward
was wrapped in a plastic sheet and dumped in the spare bedroom. Smith sat with Brady
and Hindley for hours while they had a meal and only
when he thought it safe did he leave. He sprinted home and relayed the events
of evening to his wife who insisted he ring the police. They walked to the nearby
phone box taking a screwdriver and knife should Brady confront them.
More children may have been murdered but bringing
David Smith around to show off brought the end of the murder spree. The day
after the murder a policeman called at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue. Hindley opened the door to the policeman who said he was investigating
"an act of violence involving guns." She denied it and allowed the policeman
to search the house (Brady was still dressing.) The policeman found the door of
the spare bedroom locked and asked for the key. When Hindley
claimed it was at her workplace and the police said they'd drive her to work to
fetch it Brady knew this was the end. He told Hindley
to hand over the key. Brady claimed he and Edward had argued and when it
escalated he’d killed him.
Brady was arrested and driven to the police
station. Hindley insisted on going with them with
their dog called Puppet. The police considered her innocent and allowed her to
go home. However she was soon arrested when they found a luggage ticket in her
prayer book. It led them to suitcases stored at the railway station which
contained photographs of a young naked girl and a haunting 13-minute tape
recording of a screaming girl. It was ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey pleading
for her mum moments before she was murdered. Lesley had disappeared from a
fairground ten months earlier and was one of four children who had seemingly
evaporated from that zone of Greater Manchester. When the police found
photographs of Brady and Hindley posing on Saddleworth Moor they searched it. An arm bone sticking out
of the peat lead to the decomposed remains of Lesley Ann-Downey. At this point
they instinctively knew the two people in custody had murdered the four
children who had gone missing over the last two years and three months.
I took some
photos of the grave as usual (never comfortable doing these murder victims.) Edward's
buried here with his parents and, looking at the dates, his dad didn't live for
more than two years after the murder. There were some kids on bikes watching me
and they stopped talking to one another to watch more intently. A West family
grave is nearby - Tommy West who was Lesley Ann Downey's brother is buried there.
Southern Cemetery is the largest municipal cemetery in Britain so I don't know
if this is a coincidence. I'd only visited this cemetery a few weeks ago to
find the grave of one of Peter Sutcliffe's victims who had been killed on some allotments
across the field.
The kids on bikes
kept watching as I got back in the car. It was a hot day and a few magpies were
lying on the grass with their wings slightly spread to absorb the sun. As it was
too hot I parked up in the shade of some trees in the older section of the
cemetery and had a sandwich next to the grave of painter LS Lowry. It was good
to see the stone had been cleaned up.
Thanks to David C for telling me of this grave's exact
location.
David Smith who witnessed Edward's
murder...
He was murdered here at 16, Wardle
Brook Avenue in Hattersley...
...it has been demolished...