Moors Murderer: I Killed Four More People

Previously unpublished letters show Moors murderer Ian Brady claimed to have killed four more people.

The letters, which emerged as his bid to be transferred from a maximum security hospital to prison failed, show that he confessed to killing two men in his native Glasgow and a man and woman in Manchester.

Brady described the other murders as "happenings" and says his male victim in Manchester was killed "on the waste ground behind the station" and the other was a "woman in the canal".

One of his Glasgow victims was killed "above" Loch Long, at the mouth of the Clyde, Brady wrote.

The letters, which have been published in The Daily Telegraph, were written to journalist Brendan Pittaway in the 1980s.

On Friday Brady lost his £250,000 legal bid to be transferred to a jail after a week-long public hearing, meaning the child killer will remain at Ashworth Hospital on Merseyside on the grounds that he is mentally insane.

The tribunal was the first time Brady has been seen in public since the 1980s, when he was taken back to Saddleworth Moor in the search for the bodies of two of his victims.

Brady and his partner, Myra Hindley, were convicted of luring children and teenagers to their deaths, with their victims sexually tortured before being buried on Saddleworth Moor. Hindley died in hospital in 2002 at the age of 60, still a prisoner.

The brother of victim Keith Bennett, whose body was never found, has said Brady was "nothing more than a serial killer of children, a paedophile, a coward and a self-pitying liar".

Alan Bennett wrote: "I have to say now that I am glad Brady did have his say, he tied his own defence team in knots, never gave a definitive answer under cross-examination and went on to show anybody interested that he is nothing more than a self-pitying liar."

In Brady's letters he says Bennett's body was buried in Yorkshire, rather than the Moors as originally thought.

Responding to Brady's claims about the other murders, Martin Bottomley, head of Greater Manchester Police's Cold Case Review Unit, said: "In the 1980s, Brady 'confessed' to a number of other unrelated murders. All these claims were thoroughly investigated at that time and found to be completely unsubstantiated.

"GMP has been investigating Brady's horrendous crimes and their aftermath for over 40 years now.

"A week hardly goes by when we do not receive some information which purports to lead us to Keith's burial site.

"All of these claims are investigated and it remains our aim to find Keith for the sake of his surviving family members.

"Only one person knows where Keith is buried and he refuses to disclose that information, preferring to taunt Keith's loved ones."

Brendan Pittaway told Sky News Brady's state of mind in the letters was obvious.

"When he was more controlled and talking about subjects he wasn't so angry about, his writing was rational, the sentences were shorter," he said.

"When he was talking about Hindley and the authorities who he detested ... his language would be peppered with references to cranks and conspiracies."

The decision on Brady's appeal was given by the three-man panel headed by Judge Robert Atherton, who heard the tribunal at Ashworth Hospital.

Reasons for the decision will be given at a later date because of the length of the material the panel needs to consider.

After the ruling, Dr David Fearnley, medical director at Ashworth, said the judgement was "consistent with the expert opinions of our clinicians".

Brady - who claims to have been on a hunger strike since 1999 - told the hearing he was merely "a petty criminal" and described his crimes as "recreational killings".

His legal application challenged the order made under the Mental Health Act when he was transferred from prison to Ashworth in 1985, when he was diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic.

Brady's legal team argued that, despite his severe personality disorder, he is not mentally ill.

He suggested that, if he is allowed to go back to a jail, he would be "free to end his own life" by starving himself to death.

Brady has the right to challenge the decision, which would require a further hearing at an Upper Tribunal.