Sadistic and shocked the nation when their evil crimes were revealed in the 1960s. The serial killers were in their 20s when they over 18 months.

Four of their young victims - Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10 - were sexually tortured and strangled in the mid 1960s before they were buried on Saddleworth Moor above . The couple were caught in October 1965 when Hindley's teenage brother-in-law David Smith arrived at their home to see Brady striking their fifth victim, 17-year-old Edward Evans, with an axe before throttling him with a length of electrical cord.

Smith, then also 17, in plastic sheeting before fleeing the home in Hattersley, Greater Manchester, under the pretence of fetching a pram to help dispose of the body. Instead, he vomited in the bathroom, woke up his sleeping wife Maureen and they later called 999.

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The serial killers' 14-day trial began in April 1966 at Chester Assizes. And it was the depraved murder of Brady and Hindley's fourth victim that sealed their reputation for committing unspeakable horrors. Lesley Ann Downey had been lured from a fairground to the home Hindley shared with her grandmother on Day in 1964.

Brady stripped, sexually abused and tortured the schoolgirl, forcing her to pose for pornographic photographs. And he recorded Lesley's last moments on a heartbreaking cassette tape which was 16 minutes and 21 seconds long. The chilling audio recording, played in court, revealed Lesley begging for mercy, appealing to God for help, and calling out to her mother before her voice was stifled. Her cries of, "I want to see Mummy" reduced reduced the judge, jury, courtroom spectators and even hardened police officers to tears.

Lesley was also heard pleading: "Please God, help me" and "Don't undress me, will you?" as she was tortured by the evil pair. At one point, a child's scream and cry was heard in the silent courtroom. At another point, Brady said: "If you don't keep that hand down, I will slit your neck."

A popular song, The Little Drummer Boy, could be heard playing in the background as the murder took place. John Stalker, a detective sergeant who became deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said "a chill goes down my spine" every time he hears it.

"Our revulsion at her murder remains undiminished," he told The . "Nothing in criminal behaviour has penetrated my heart with quite the same paralysing intensity. It's an ­innocent children's Christmas song but a chill goes down my spine every time I hear The Little Drummer Boy because it reminds me of Myra Hindley."

"When the 16-minute tape was played at the police station before the trial, I saw senior detectives and legendary crime reporters – hard men who had been through the war and seen terrible things – dissolve into tears," the former cop added. "Anybody unfortunate enough to have to listen to her harrowing, last desperate moments could not fail to conclude that Hindley was evil and an equal partner with Brady in the crimes."

The depraved couple were jailed for life for their crimes. Hindley died in hospital aged 60 in 2002, and Brady was 79 when he died at a high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool in 2017.