Maureen Hindley

Maureen Hindley (21 August 1946-1980) (married names were Maureen Smith and Maureen Scott) was the younger sister of the British Moors murderess, Myra Hindley, and the wife of murder witness, David Smith. She was born and raised in the working-class neighbourhood of Gorton in Manchester. As a child, she lived in a small two-up, two-down semi-detached house with her mother, Nellie Hindley, while her older sister Myra lived in the next house over with their grandmother, Ellen Maybury.

The first months of marriage to David Smith

As a teenager, Maureen developed into something of a wild child, and her behaviour became a cause of concern for her family when she began hanging about with rough boys of less-than-respectable origins. She also started taking after her older sister by wearing heavy eye makeup and tight hobble skirts and having her hair done up in a beehive or with fringed bangs. The Hindleys did not approve of Maureen's relationship with 16-year-old David Smith, who had lived near the Hindleys with his father, Jack, and did not attend the teenage couple's shotgun wedding on 15 August 1964. Smith, who was the product of a broken home, had a reputation in Gorton as a hardcase and ne'er-do-well, having earned several convictions for assault and petty theft in the local juvenile courts, the first when he was still only 11 years old.

Although Myra disliked David Smith, regarding him as rough and common, her steady boyfriend, Ian Brady, took a shine to him, and some writers have speculated that Brady's interest in Smith might have been sexual in nature, as Brady sexually assaulted and murdered two 12-year-old boys and a 17-year-old boy.

Ian and Myra soon invited David and Maureen to accompany them on picnics and outings to Saddleworth Moor. The four of them also began spending long evenings socializing at Myra's house at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, a new two-bedroom council house where she, her grandmother, and Ian Brady had moved in the autumn of 1964. Brady felt that he had found a kindred spirit in David Smith, the troubled teenager with a penchant for brawling and street-fighting. He also began lending Smith books to read on his two main subjects of interest: torture and murder.

Like Myra before him, David Smith was flattered by the attention of the older, apparently sophisticated and intellectual Brady. He and Brady often spent nights talking and drinking together, much to Myra's annoyance. Brady showed off his gun collection and openly boasted to Smith about having murdered several young children and buried their bodies on the moors, although Smith didn't believe Brady's claims. Brady also subjected his young friend to a kind of intellectual catechism concerning the contents of the books he had lent him, expecting him to have read them closely.

A year into their marriage, the Smiths were suffering major financial problems. David had difficulty holding a job and had recently been served with an eviction notice on the modest bedsit flat he shared with Maureen, who by this time had just become pregnant with their second child. Their first, a girl they named Angela Dawn, died of cot death in April 1965, aged six months. These mounting pressures and upsets had put a strain on the marriage and led to many violent late-night rows, which attracted the attention of neighbours.

The murder of Edward Evans

On the evening of October 6 1965, Myra showed up at David Smith's flat at Underwood Court and asked him to accompany her back to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue. A day or two earlier, Brady had proposed to help alleviate Smith's financial problems by making a night-time excursion to the city centre to rob a homosexual ("rolling a queer" was how Brady put it). Myra had come calling on Smith on the pretext that Ian had some miniature wine bottles that he wanted to give him. A few minutes after Smith arrived at the house, he heard a scream from the living room. Myra shouted to Smith, "Dave, help him!", indicating that he should rush to assist Brady. When Smith entered the living room, he found the walls covered in blood and Brady bludgeoning a 17-year-old boy, Edward Evans, with the blunt edge of a hatchet. After expending his fury with the axe, Brady finished Evans off by strangling him with a length of electrical cord.

Stunned and terrified, Smith struggled to keep his composure and helped Brady carry Evans's body upstairs to be wrapped in a polythene bag, trussed with rope, and stored for disposal on the moors the next day. Brady and Smith then went downstairs to help Myra clean up the blood and brain matter covering the walls and floor of the living room. When the room was spotless, Brady told Smith to meet him the following afternoon and to bring the baby pram that had once been used for Angela Dawn. Brady told Smith that they could use the pram to carry Evans's body to Myra's minivan. Smith agreed and quickly left the house at about three o'clock in the morning, after Brady had changed out of his blood-soaked clothes and Myra had made tea.

Fearing that Brady might be following him, Smith ran back to his flat in a panic and woke his sleeping wife. Pale and shaken, he began vomiting in the toilet and then told Maureen what he had witnessed at her sister's house. Maureen burst into tears, and the two of them agreed that they must call the police.

Three hours later, at about six o'clock that morning, David and Maureen carefully made their way to a red telephone box on the street below. Smith took the precaution of arming himself with a screwdriver and carving knife in the event that the two of them ran into Brady. Smith made a 999 call to the nearby Hyde police station and related the night's events to the officer on duty.

David Smith's phone call to police on the morning of 7 October 1965 led to Brady's arrest by Police Superintendent Bob Talbot. After a thorough search of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, more evidence came to light, including a Manchester Central Railway left-luggage ticket found in the spine of Myra's prayer book. The ticket led to the discovery of two large suitcases packed solid with highly incriminating notes, photographs, and reel-to-reel audiotapes revealing the lurid details of other murders the pair had committed. Four days following Brady's arrest, Myra Hindley was also charged with murder and taken into custody.

The trial of the Moors murderers and its aftermath

After weeks of intense investigation and rigorous questioning of all known witnesses as well as the two suspects themselves, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley went on trial at Chester Crown Court on 21 April 1966 for the murder of Edward Evans, as well as two other murders: those of 12-year-old John Kilbride and 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey. The bodies of Kilbride and Downey had been recovered from the moors later in October 1965, after police thoroughly examined photographs taken by Brady that were later revealed to be burial sites. At the trial, David Smith testified as a principal witness for the prosecution, as did Maureen. While on remand, Brady and Hindley exchanged a message in code which read "Smith will die and Maureen too".

After a two-week trial, Brady and Hindley were convicted of all three murders (although Hindley was only convicted of being an accessory in the case of Kilbride) at Chester Assizes Crown Court on 6 May 1966. Upon hearing the verdict, the judge presiding over the case, Mr. Justice Fenton Atkinson, sentenced both Hindley and Brady to life imprisonment.

In November 1986, Brady and Hindley finally confessed to the murders of 16-year-old Pauline Reade and 12-year-old Keith Bennett. They also agreed to help police search for the bodies, and on 1 July 1987, a search team uncovered Pauline Reade's body with Hindley's assistance. The search continued for Keith Bennett's body, but despite the two killers' descriptions of a burial site and an extensive charting of the disturbed soil around Saddleworth, the murdered child's body has yet to be found.

Pauline Reade had been a neighbour of Myra Hindley's when she was living in Gorton, and Hindley had even told Pauline's mother Joan Reade how sorry she was that her daughter had gone missing.

In the months and years that immediately followed the sensational murder trial, financial troubles and the stigma of being connected to the Moors murderers aggravated tensions in David and Maureen's marriage. After David Smith was imprisoned for stabbing a man in a pub brawl (an incident provoked by the continuous public harassment of Smith on account of his involvement with Brady and the Hindley sisters), he and Maureen divorced in 1969. Since she was not in a fit mental state to provide for their children as a single mother, she put them into foster care.

Over the years, Maureen suffered guilt and anguish at having alienated the affections of her mother, Nellie, as a consequence of reporting Myra to the police and testifying against her at trial. She also bore the burden of having made local pariahs of her family; the day after her sister's conviction, she was assaulted in the elevator of her apartment building while eight months pregnant. She later received threatening letters, and her home was vandalized several times. Maureen visited Myra only a few times during the years of her incarceration at Holloway Prison (1966-1977) and later at Cookham Wood Prison in Kent. In a 1977 television interview, Maureen told the questioner that she believed her sister was now a reformed character and blamed Myra's involvement in the murders on the influence of Ian Brady. Around this time, Lord Longford said the same thing in a television interview, and called for her release. Longford, a Labour Peer, campaigned in vain for Hindley to be freed until he died in August 2001 at the age of 95.

Maureen's later years

Later in life, Maureen did enjoy a few years of relative happiness with her second husband, a kindly, generous older man from London named Bill Scott, and they had a daughter called Sharon.

Maureen Hindley died in 1980 at the age of 34, having suffered a haemorrhage.

Even in death, Maureen Hindley could not escape the shadow of her sister's crimes. Her funeral service was interrupted by Patrick Kilbride, the father of Moors victim John Kilbride, who arrived at the scene with knife in hand. As eulogies were being read, Mr. Kilbride suddenly lunged at a blonde woman present, wrongly believing that she was Myra Hindley. Mr. Kilbride was quickly restrained and led away. Mrs Ann West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey, also turned up at the funeral, and had to be restrained by police when attempting to attack the woman.

David Smith today

David Smith now lives in the Republic of Ireland with his second wife, Mary, and their daughter Jodie. He runs a bed and breakfast hotel. He has three sons from his marriage to Maureen Hindley, and now has several grandchildren.

Television film

In May 2006, ITV screened a two-part drama serial entitled "", that presented the facts of the Moors case from the point of view of Maureen, who was portrayed by Joanne Froggatt.

References and further reading

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