Brady says moors killings were 'existential exercise'

Moors murderer Ian Brady has claimed that he and Myra Hindley tortured and killed children as an "existential exercise", and by the time they were arrested the two had decided to stop and planned to turn to armed robbery. The claim is made in a letter, obtained by the BBC, written at the secure Ashworth hospital on Merseyside, where the 67-year-old is on hunger strike; he was convicted in 1966 of killing three children and later admitted killing two more. "Contrary to popular perception, the so-called Moors murders were merely an existential exercise of just over a year," he writes.