Moors killer Ian Brady will have public ‘sanity’ test

It is only the second time that such a hearing has been held in public.

Judge Robert Atherton granted permission in October for the hearing to be held in public, but it can only be reported for the first time today. No date has been set.

Brady and his partner, Myra Hindley, were responsible for the murders of five youngsters in the 1960s.

They lured children and teenagers to their deaths, with victims sexually tortured before being buried on Saddleworth Moor above Manchester.

Pauline Reade, 16, disappeared on her way to a disco on July 12 1963 and John Kilbride, 12, was snatched in November the same year.

Keith Bennett was snatched on June 16 1964 after he left home to visit his grandmother; Lesley Ann Downey, 10, was lured away from a funfair on Boxing Day 1964; and Edward Evans, 17, was killed in October 1965.

Brady was given life at Chester Assizes in 1966 for the murders of John, Lesley Ann and Edward.

Hindley was convicted of killing Lesley Ann and Edward and shielding Brady after John’s murder, and jailed for life.

In 1987 the pair finally admitted killing Keith and Pauline.

Both were taken back to Saddleworth Moor in 1987 to help police find the remains of the missing victims but only Pauline’s body was found.

Hindley died in jail in November 2002, aged 60.

Brady has spent the last 25 years at the high-security Ashworth Hospital.

In October, the first psychiatric patient to have an appeal against detention held in public lost his legal battle to be freed from Broadmoor Hospital.

Albert Haines, 52, made legal history when he successfully argued that his case should be considered at an open hearing.

But a mental health tribunal ruled that the nature or degree of his mental disorder meant he should not be released from the high-security psychiatric institution.

Haines was convicted of two counts of attempted wounding in September 1986 after he armed himself with a machete and a knife and tried to attack a doctor and a nurse at the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in Camberwell, south London.

Since then he has been detained under the Mental Health Act at Broadmoor in Crowthorne, Berkshire, and at Three Bridges medium secure unit in Ealing, west London.

The tribunal heard that he does not think there is anything wrong with him and believes his discharge from Broadmoor is “in the moral public interest”.

But it also received evidence from Dr Jose Romero-Urcelay, Haines’s responsible clinician, who argued that the patient remained a risk to the public and to himself.

Publishing his decision on Brady’s hearing, the judge said: “In a decision given on October 17 2011, the application by Mr Ian Brady for a hearing in public that his application dated August 4 2010 should be held in public was granted.

“The date of the hearing and appropriate arrangements are presently being determined and will be published as soon as possible.

“The fact of this decision should be published. The tribunal also ordered that the reasons for the decision must not be made public.”

Brady, who was born in Glasgow, wants to be transferred to a Scottish prison and be allowed to die.

The hearing will be a rare chance to see the Moors Murderer in public.