60 years on: The life and tragic death of Pauline Reade

Before posting this, I want to make it very clear that out of respect for Pauline’s living relatives, I am not taking into account her killers’ differing accounts of what exactly happened to her in her final moments up on the moor. I am merely including the results of the inquest into her death, which trigger warning, are absolutely awful. I will be censoring out the worst of the details with the spoiler marking, which looks like this ********** in case you are unaware, but they have still been included nonetheless and can be read by tapping on that box.

Tomorrow, the subreddit will only be open for tributes to Pauline Reade, and to any for the other four victims on the 60th anniversary of the start of the Moors Murders. I debated even posting this write-up in the first place, but ultimately I have deemed it necessary so that you can truly understand the sheer brutality of what Pauline was subjected to before we make way for tributes to her tomorrow.

The purpose of this specific write-up is more to inform, and I’ve sort-of split it up into four parts - talking about who Pauline was as a person and how people remembered her, then recounting the evening of her disappearance, then establishing the facts as to how she died by relaying the answers that her family got (albeit far too late), and then touching upon the aftermath of her death - specifically the grief that her mother experienced as she waited for those answers, and how she coped in the aftermath of Hindley’s confession in 1987 and then to Pauline’s body finally being found upon the moor.

We cannot forget Pauline, John, Keith, Lesley or Edward, and yet we also cannot overlook the sheer disregard that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley held for each of their lives that left their families with so many unanswered questions for so long, and so much trauma - trauma that they still experience today because of such sheer brutality and callousness. Even though the parents and some of the siblings of the Moors victims have since died, from having read more recent statements from surviving friends and family members, I can tell that the pain has transcended generations and has never subsided, and so to truly illustrate the horrors of these crimes in anticipation of the sensationalist articles that will no doubt start cropping up tomorrow I believe it is necessary for me to detail only the facts and not leave what happened to Pauline open to conjecture or invention, as it often seems to be through inaccurate retellings of the Moors Murders case in rushed articles.

With that all being said, I have done my best to keep this write-up as considerate as possible whilst not glossing over what happened to her. The comments on this post will also be moderated to be kept “safe for work”. If you have any questions around some more specific details, or accounts from Brady and/or Hindley of Pauline’s death, either reach out to me directly or post them as a question in this subreddit with the “Questions” flair and mark it as NSFW.

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Born on 18th February 1947, 16-year-old Pauline Catherine Reade had left school the previous summer and was working alongside her father, Amos, at the Sharples' bakery on nearby Cross Lane. Joan and Amos Reade were happily married, and Pauline had a younger brother (younger by only a year) named Paul who she was very close to. Even though where the family lived - 9 Wiles Street, Gorton - wasn’t necessarily the nicest or cleanest of streets, they were a house-proud family who always made the most of what they had and Joan always kept the house spic, span and homely.

She was a talented trainee baker - seven months prior to her tragic death, her face appeared in the Gorton Reporter after she was announced as one of three winners of a Christmas baking competition.

Having attended Catholic school, Pauline was devoutly religious and aspired to become a nun one day. But she was also a huge fan of the pop singers Marty Wilde and Adam Faith, she loved to go dancing and write songs (she had piano lessons from a neighbour) and poems. She was also remembered for her sense of humour, and to this day, a niece who she never got the chance to meet - Jackie Reade - treasures one of her cookery books. She had written her address inside of it and commented:

This book belongs to Pauline Reade. If this book gets lost, smack its bum and send it home crying. Pauline xxx.

Paul remembered:

"She was very religious, never missed mass or confession. But she wasn't one of those holier than thou types. she liked a laugh. Funny thing was when we walked home at night I was the one scared of the dark, but Pauline used to hold my hand and laugh."

Pat Cummings, one of her closest friends, remembered her as "very quiet. When she came to our house, she would ask me to walk her home if it was dusk. She was very frightened. She was not the sort to get into a car with a stranger." Nor would there have been any reason for Pauline to run away from home - she had no boyfriends and was incredibly close with her family. Every morning she got up and made tea, and she would sit on her mother’s bed and talk for half-an-hour before she went to work. In the evenings, she would come home and say:

Don't bother, Mam - I'll brew up.

Pauline and Pat had a closely-knit friendship circle, which included Barbara Jepson as well as Pat Garvey, Linda Bradshaw, Kathleen King, Kathleen Murphy, Carol Hudson, Linda Leadbetter and Caroline Malloy. Pauline was always the first of the girls to return home in the evening, as she and her father rose at the crack of dawn to open the bakery. From a young age, a lot of the girls would play hide-and-seek on the crofts and head to the Plaza Cinema together, and as they grew older they traded their dolls for dancing shoes. At five-foot-four and with dark hair and blue eyes, Pauline was blossoming into a beautiful young woman and was starting to enjoy the independence that most girls of her age were enjoying.

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On the afternoon of Friday 12th July 1963, Pauline returned home from the bakery early because her mother, Joan, was feeling unwell. In the evening, she and Pat Cummings had planned to go to a dance at the Openshaw Railway Institute in Cornwall Street - less than a mile's walk from her home - and Pauline wore a new outfit for the occasion: a lurex pink-and-gold patterned dress; white stilettos; white gloves; a white headscarf; gold jewellery, a hand-knitted lilac cardigan, and a powder-blue coat.

Pat ended up cancelling at the last minute for reasons not entirely certain, and now Pauline could not find a friend to accompany her. Her brother, Paul, was going to the cinema with his friends to see a double feature. There are conflicting accounts of who Pauline had called on that evening and when, exactly - whether it was before she got ready, after Joan offered to walk with her to a few of her friends' houses or after she was out of her mother's sight altogether - but it is accepted knowledge that Linda Bradshaw, Barbara Jepson, Pat Garvey and Linda Leadbetter all eventually had to say no after their parents found out that alcohol was sold at the social club.

Joan did not like the idea of either of her children being out on their own, but she recalled how excited Pauline was about the evening - it would only have been her third time going dancing. She trusted that her sensible daughter would not break her 11pm curfew or risk getting herself into any sort of trouble. "At first, she didn't want to go on her own, and I couldn't find anyone to go with her," she recalled in an interview with journalist Noreen Taylor some twenty-four years later. "So I said 'never mind, love, you'll probably find someone you know when you get there.'"

Joan recalled in a later interview that Pauline reassured her that two of her other friends might be going, and this put her mind at ease for the evening:

"Before she went out of the door, I put my necklace round her neck.

"'Oh, mum! That's your favourite necklace.'

"'Well, you're my favourite girl aren't you?'

"'I will look after it.'"

"'I went out with her and I stood at the top of the road. I watched her disappear and waved to her as she went round the corner."

Meanwhile, Pat Cummings couldn't believe it when Pauline insisted that she was just going to go to the dance on her own, and decided that she would join her at the dance after all. She called for another friend, Dorothy Slater, and the two decided that they would try to catch up with Pauline near the club and surprise her.

There was understandably some contradiction around the events prior to Pauline disappearing between the Reade family, who were deeply affected and traumatised by her disappearance and - as they found out much later - murder. Amos Reade recalled last seeing his daughter at around 6:50, as he was heading to bed and she was standing at the door with Joan. Journalist Fred Harrison, who met and interviewed the Reade family during the period of his correspondence with Ian Brady in the mid-1980s, wrote that Amos had arrived back home from work at around 7:30, and Joan was in the middle of cooking him fish and chips whilst Pauline was upstairs getting ready. She came downstairs fifteen minutes later, and Amos commented on how beautiful she looked before she left the house - dropping one of her white gloves which Joan later spotted and tucked away in a side drawer. (She forgot to tell police about it at the time, and ended up retaining it.)

Around the time that this was happening, Myra Hindley (who lived nearby and who knew Pauline from childhood - her sister Maureen was friends with her) and Brady would have been getting ready to leave. Their exact accounts differ, but it is certain that Hindley drove onto Gorton Lane first and then into Froxmer Street, which was along Pauline’s route.

Meanwhile, Pat Cummings and Dorothy Slater had been following behind their friend for almost her entire route. First they hid on the croft behind Benster Street, where Pat lived, and watched as Pauline emerged from Charmers Street (which connected Wiles Street to Benster Street) and onto Taylor Street, her blue coat swinging around her. They followed her up Gorton Lane and when they reached Froxmer Street, the two girls cut north-east across a croft that led onto Railway Street, expecting to meet up with Pauline - who was walking along the pavement - there. They were puzzled when Pauline never arrived, and after waiting for a while, the girls assumed that she had second thoughts about going by herself. They ended up walking back home.

One of the two girls was reported to have had nightmares for years about those last glimpses they caught of Pauline.

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What exactly happened to Pauline after she was abducted in Froxmer Street depends almost entirely on whose version of events you believe - and again, I will not be detailing them in this post out of respect for tomorrow being the anniversary of Pauline’s death. So instead, I will include some extracts from the book Cause of Death: Memoirs of a Home Office Pathologist by Dr. Geoffrey Garrett and Andrew Nott. Garrett had examined Pauline after her body was found buried in a shallow grave on Saddleworth Moor on 1st July 1987:

We learned quite a lot about what happened to Pauline in the hours when she was at the mercy of the Moors Murderers, those last hours of her life. But the passage of so much time [24 years] had removed too many of the clues, the tell-tales, the signs that we rely on in forensic medicine so that the full details of what she went through were beyond our skills to uncover. Perhaps it was as well.

[…]

It didn’t take long to clear the earth from around the body and we could see many things straight away. Not least was that this was indeed Pauline Reade. Fortunately, [her family] were spared the need to view what Pauline had become. They would always remember the vivacious teenager with the broad, easy grin, full of life, and not this sad, pitiful sight, [REDACTED], a three-dimensional shadow of what she had once been.

[…]

Pauline was wearing a heavy woollen coat. The skirt and underslip were pulled up above her waist and we could see stockings with suspenders at mid-thigh but no knickers or suspender belt. She had been wearing a suspender belt the night she had vanished.

Brady admitted to sexually assaulting Pauline prior to her death,but aside from the clue mentioned above this could not be confirmed in the post-mortem exam due to the passage of time and deterioration of her body. This next extract is abridged from the conclusions that I believe Bryan North, the coroner, presented at the inquest, which gives full insight into her cause of death and the injuries she sustained:

We are satisfied that this is the body of Pauline Reade. Although no positive medical or dental identification can be made, the clothing and personal possessions have been positively identified. The X-rays of the bones show epiphysial union consistent with an age of approximately sixteen years. Direct inspection of the sutures of the skull tends to support this estimate of age.

>!The appearance of the neck is consistent with homicidal cut throat. […] The swelling in the centre of the forehead appears to be a haematoma and is consistent with the application of blunt force, either with a fist or an instrument. There is no mark upon the skin to give any further assistance. […] The general state of the preservation of the body is consistent with immersion in an acid peat bog for twenty to thirty years. The pushing of the collar of the coat into the wound of the neck appears to have been deliberate rather than accidental during the burial of the body and could well have been carried out in an attempt to reduce the amount of bleeding.!<

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Pauline’s disappearance had deeply affected the Reade family, in particular her mother Joan. In the 1990s, she recalled:

“It was just one living in hope, all the time, thinking she’d come home. I was sat with my coat on for about three months, waiting for daylight to come, to run out to see if I could find her. I was just crying and crying and thinking about what had happened, in my mind. And I kept thinking about it, it built up and built up and I think that’s what caused it – my nervous breakdown.”

For context, after years of suffering both ill physical and mental health Joan was admitted into Springfield Mental Hospital in Manchester after Hindley confessed in 1987. She was reported as being unable to speak, walk without support and had to be spoon-fed.

When Pauline’s body was found, Joan’s condition did start to improve significantly, but she was too ill to go to court for the inquest and at her daughter’s funeral, multiple witnesses recalled that she seemed confused and unaware of what was happening. She had to be physically supported by nurses, and Amos and Paul never left her side. But she battled through the day and left with some more peace of mind.

Her account from the 1990s continued:

“I always had a living hope that she was about somewhere. I never thought she was dead, or anything happened to her, in any way. I had a hope that she was alive and walking about somewhere. I was always looking. I even did an Avon job, going from house to house, thinking I’d find her in one of the houses. I went miles on my own, travelling on buses and everything, thinking I’d seen her on a bus and I’d be running after that bus.

“I never thought that Myra Hindley and Ian Brady was to do with it all, because her sister was a near neighbour, lived next door but one – Maureen. She went visiting there. Myra Hindley was talking to me normally and saying she was sorry about Pauline – knowing she had done that. I didn’t think till after. It all came back to me, what was what.”

Joan died in 2000; Amos had died four-and-a-half years before. Paul died in 2004 at only 56 years old, and is survived by his adult children. The family are buried together at Gorton Cemetery.

[PHOTO SOURCE: Daily Mail, 3rd July 1987](https://ibb.co/KWd2SHX)