Sadistic child murders that shocked the nation

The file photo issued by Greater Manchester Police of Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.

The sadistic crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley shocked the nation to its core.

Across Britain there was an outpouring of loathing for the pair who snatched children off the street, sexually abused them and tortured them to death.

Moors murderer Ian Brady takes secret of victim's burial site to his graveThe evidence seen and heard at their Chester Assizes trial chilled the hearts of those who sat through it.

Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, who vanished on July 12 1963, on her way to a disco near her home in Gorton, Manchester.

She was lured to the moors by Hindley who said she had lost her gloves there and needed help finding them.

It was two decades later when Pauline's grieving parents discovered exactly what had happened to her.

Her body was discovered in 1987 after the murderers confessed to the killing.

They were taken to bleak Saddleworth Moor where they located the shallow grave dug over 20 years before.

Pauline was still wearing her pink and gold party dress and blue coat.

Brady had beaten her about the head and cut her throat with such force that her spinal cord was severed.

Pathologists said it was impossible to say whether Brady had sexually assaulted her.

Four months after Pauline vanished, the day after President John F Kennedy's assassination in the US, 12-year-old John Kilbride became Brady's second victim.

In the shadow of the presidential assassination little attention was paid to the disappearance of the Manchester boy.

John was lured on to the moor where he was sexually assaulted and murdered.

Brady took a photograph of Hindley standing on the edge of his grave holding her pet dog. The photograph would later lead police to the young boy's resting place.

The body of the third victim, Keith Bennett, 12, has never been found.

Keith died after leaving his home in Chorlton-on-Medlock in Manchester on June 16 1964.

Police mounted an intensive search of the moor in 1986 amid reports that the pair had confessed to his murder.

But even though Brady and Hindley were both permitted to travel to the moor to try to remember where the boy's remains were, they were not found.