Topping: The Autobiography of the Police Chief in the Moors Murder Case

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Peter Topping is Associate Professor in the Practice of Organization and Management at the Roberto C. Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta. In this role, Peter teaches courses in Leadership, Organizational Behavior, and Ethics across the School’s MBA programs, including the fulltime, Evening, and Executive MBA formats. Peter has also served as a Visiting Professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de México (ITAM), Mexico’s leading business school; and as an Associated Faculty Member with the Nonprofit Studies Program in the Andrew Young School of Policy and International Studies at Georgia State University. During the summers of 2000 and 2001, Peter was a Visiting Professor at EM Lyon, one of France’s major business schools. Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Reade and Bennett, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted. [14] Moors Murders: Search for Keith Bennett's body restarts". BBC News. 30 September 2022 . Retrieved 1 October 2022. At some point Brady sent Hindley to fetch Smith, her brother-in-law. [76] Hindley's family had not approved of Maureen's marriage to Smith, who had several criminal convictions, including actual bodily harm and housebreaking, the first of which, wounding with intent, occurred when he was 11. [77] Throughout the previous year Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith, who had become "in awe" of Brady, something that increasingly worried Hindley as she felt it compromised their safety. [78]

a b c "Two women at "bodies on moors" trial cover their ears", The Times, no.56616, Times Digital Archive, 27 April 1966, p.9 , retrieved 12 September 2019 Since Brady and Hindley's arrests, newspapers had been keen to connect them to other missing children and teenagers from the area. One such victim was Stephen Jennings, a three-year-old West Yorkshire boy who was last seen alive in December 1962; his body was found buried in a field in 1988, but the following year his father, William Jennings, was found guilty of his murder. [126] Jennifer Tighe, a 14-year-old girl who disappeared from an Oldham children's home in December 1964, was mentioned in the press some forty years later but was confirmed by police to be alive. [127] This followed claims in 2004 that Hindley had told another inmate that she and Brady had murdered a sixth victim, a teenage girl. [128] Moors murderer claims more killings", 4 August 1987 , retrieved 20 September 2018– via news.bbc.co.uk Couple in Court Two Minutes", The Times, no.56465, Times Digital Archive, 29 October 1965, p.15 , retrieved 11 August 2009 Keith Bennett, also aged 12, disappeared in the Longsight district of Manchester on 16 June 1964. His stepfather, Jimmy Johnson, became a suspect; in the two years following Bennett's disappearance, Johnson was taken for questioning on four occasions. Detectives searched under the floorboards of the family home, and on discovering that the houses in the row were connected, extended the search to the entire street. [51]Hearing Of Moors Murder Case In Camera", The Times, no.56498, Times Digital Archive, 7 December 1965, p.6 , retrieved 25 September 2009 In January 1959, Brady applied for, and was offered, a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton. He was regarded by his colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. Brady read books, including Teach Yourself German and Mein Kampf, as well as works on Nazi atrocities. He rode a Tiger Cub motorcycle, which he used to visit the Pennines. [16] Myra Hindley [ edit ] He wanted to know how much of the drug he needed to put the dog to sleep without suffering any ill effects. He said he had no intention of killing me, he said it was an experiment.” Many of the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley on the moor featured Hindley's dog Puppet, sometimes as a puppy. To help date the photos, detectives had a veterinary surgeon examine the dog to determine his age; the examination required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover. Hindley was furious, and accused the police of murdering the dog– one of the few occasions detectives witnessed any emotional response from her. [106] Hindley wrote to her mother:

Parmenter, Tom (2 July 2009), "Brady Banned From Fresh Moors Searches", Sky News, archived from the original on 5 October 2012 , retrieved 24 September 2009

Both Brady and Hindley entered pleas of not guilty; [118] Brady testified for over eight hours, Hindley for six. [119] Brady admitted to striking Evans with the axe, but claimed that someone else had killed Evans, pointing to the pathologist's statement that his death had been "accelerated by strangulation"; Brady's "calm, undisguised arrogance did not endear him to the jury [and] neither did his pedantry", wrote Duncan Staff. [120] Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims. [121] Lewis, James (9 December 1987), "Ian Brady resumes search for boy's grave", The Guardian, p.3 , retrieved 1 September 2019 A Most Unusual Trial", TIME Magazine, vol.87, no.17, 29 April 1966, p.40 , retrieved 5 September 2019– via EBSCOhost Within months he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese, and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion. [37] I met Topping a couple of times when I was reporting on the the on-going moors investigations and it is fair to say that he often adopted a brusque and sometimes overpowering nature.