An expert on the Moors Murders has claimed that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had disturbing ties to the occult and satanic practices. The pair abducted at least five children in and around Manchester in the 1960s, in killings that shocked the nation. Neither revealed the resting place of their final victim, Keith Bennett, triggering a decades-long search.
Occult Links and Ritual Items
Erica Gregory, who spent years studying Brady's literature and letters, believes the couple were fascinated with the occult and astrology. She has previously claimed they had links with 'High Priest' Alex Sanders, who practised witchcraft in the 1960s. At one point, Sanders vowed to raise a man from the dead at a 'magical' site in Alderley Edge, Cheshire.
Gregory said she reckons the couple 'sought out' Sanders while he was working at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Her team of researchers found knotted ropes, hare, and sheep bones at the site of the murders, which supposedly point to evidence of satanic practices.
Manipulation and Brady's Final Wishes
Gregory believes Hindley 'was given a high status' by Brady in order to manipulate her. Brady himself asked to be cremated to a symphony that charts a murderer's descent into hell: Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, deemed one of the darkest pieces of music ever written, about a killer haunted by the spirit of his victims in hell.
Gregory has said he may have wanted a sea burial off the west coast due to his supposed obsession with the occult and astrology. The child killer's ashes were driven to Liverpool Marina and dumped after a cremation in Southport in November 2017. The remains were placed in a weighted salt urn that disintegrated 10 minutes after being dumped in the sea.
Gregory claims he would not have been bothered by the lack of ceremony. She previously told the Daily Star: 'Salt is pretty significant in Wicca, and you will see it quite frequently. It is an essential item for a ritual altar. Mixed with water, it is used for purification and on its own, it is used to represent the element of earth.'
Arrest and Deaths
The murderous pair were arrested in 1966 and sentenced to life in prison. Hindley died from respiratory failure in 2002 while serving her sentence at Highpoint Prison in Suffolk. Her body was taken to a crematorium in Cambridge, 30 miles away, after 20 undertakers refused to handle her remains. Brady died at Ashworth secure hospital in Liverpool in May 2017, where he had lived since 1985 after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
