Nicknamed the “Moor killer”, Ian Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley – who died in 2002 – were sentenced to life in prison in 1966, for having raped, tortured and then killed three young people aged 10 to 17. In 1987, they admitted to the murder of two other teenagers. The bodies of four of their five young victims were found buried on the moors near Manchester (north-west). Ian Brady died at Ashworth Hospital on May 15, 2017, aged 79, from cancer. Since no municipality wanted his remains, his body was cremated on October 25, 2017 in the Portsmouth crematorium; no music was authorized by the courts, despite the killer’s request to broadcast the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique. His ashes are placed in a biodegradable urn and then scattered at sea the next day.

During his detention, Ian Brady wrote a book entitled “The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and Its Analysis by the Moors Murderer”, translated and published in French by Camion Noir. The killer exposes his vision of society, his conception of good and evil, the concept of moral relativism and demystifies the serial killer. The second part of the book is devoted to the study of famous serial killers.