Moors Murders

I have been re reading a book about the Moors murders, by Emlyn Williams. It came out many years ago, fairly soon after the couple were tried and imprisoned. Williams wrote in novelistic fashion, rather than in a non fiction format and he has been criticised for this. But much of what he wrote seems to be correct, and he interviewed many people who were involved with Brady and Hindley. He got to know David Smith, who was Myra's brother in law and who betrayed the couple to the police. Hindley and Brady killed 5 children and teenagers, but Brady lured Smith to his house to help with the murder of the last victim. David Smith while he helped to clean up after the murder, was shaken to his core. He played along but when he got out of the house, and ran home to his own flat, he and his wife Maureen decided that they had to go to the police. He was a tough lad who had been in trouble often with the law, but the barbaric killing horrified him. In spite of the style it is an interesting book. David and Maureen went to the police at first light, calling from a coin box, and the police raided Myra's house before she and Ian were due to leave for work in the morning. They found the dead body of Edward Evans, a young apprentice whom they had brought to their house the previous night and slaughtered. Ian had boasted to Dave about having killed other kids, and told him that he had stood on the grave of one of them, on the moors. Dave had at first thought it was just a drunken joke on Brady's part. However after seeing the death of Evans, he took it seriously and told the police that other bodies might well be buried on the moor. Myra and Ian had been a couple for a few years, they both worked as clerical workers in a small firm in Manchester. Myra's younger sister Maureen became pregnant by David Smith and they got married and became close to the other couple. But their baby, Angela Dawn, died at 6 months of a cot death. Ian's first kill was Pauline Reade a young neighbour who knew David Smith and the Hindleys. She was on her way to a dance, and he and Myra concealed the murder. He went on to kill 3 young children, and the bodies were buried on the moors. Then they killed the 17 year old Edward Evans, inside their house and in David Smith's presence... and he was terrified but played along and helped clean up the mess. But as soon as he could escape, he and Maureen called the police. Later books on the Moors murders have followed Ian and Myra's lives in Prison and their eventual deaths in captivity. David Smith and Maureen had 3 sons, but their marriage was under tremendous strain. Maureen had been very close to her sister, and she had ambivalent feelings about having turned her in to the police. David found it hard to get a job and wound up in prison for a time. Maureen could not cope and the children were taken into care and she and David divorced. He came out of prison and took on looking after his sons, and he fell in love with a young girl whom he later married. He and his wife moved to Ireland where they found some peace. Sadly Maureen, who remarried, died of a brain haemorraghe in her 30s.