‘An almost biblical notion of evil’ – why Ian Brady haunts the British psyche

Other child killers have slid off into obscurity, but Brady and fellow Moors murderer Myra Hindley have fascinated and revolted the nation for 50 years. We still haven't heard the last of them

He has been, for half a century, "the most hated man in Britain", the walking embodiment of evil, an unrepentant Antichrist and exhibit No 1 in the argument for bringing back the death penalty. Now he has departed in a final irony: the man whom many would have cheerfully killed with their bare hands was denied for years by medical science and the laws of the land his desire to end his own life.

Ian Brady was the main protagonist in the Moors murders, a title that now has the echo of an old horror film rather than the grim reality of the killing of five children - Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Along with his accomplice, Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002, Brady represented the darkest side of the national psyche: unredeemed and unredeemable. But why has he cast such a baleful shadow for so long when other child killers, sexual torturers and savage pyschopaths have been able to slide off into the relative obscurity of psychiatric wings and solitary confinement? Why was it that Brady was able to embody for so many the almost biblical notion of evil?