Moors murderer Myra Hindley died last night, leaving the British public to revisit the 1960s crimes of child sex abuse, torture and murder which for many became the benchmark of evil.
A brief statement said Hindley - described by the tabloid press as "the most evil woman in Britain" - died at West Suffolk hospital in Bury St Edmunds following respiratory failure.
Hindley became a devout Roman Catholic following her life imprisonment for the murder of two children and as an accessory to a third in 1966. A priest administered the Last Rites on Thursday night. She has had a succession of illnesses while in jail.
In 1987, she and former lover Ian Brady admitted to two further murders, and last night the mother of one of their victims - 12-year-old Keith Bennett, whose body has never been recovered - was anxiously waiting to learn whether Hindley had made any death-bed confession about the location of her son's grave.
Ms Winnie Johnson said: "I always hoped she would be able to tell me something of what I wanted to know, and I've never given up that hopeDon't ask me if I have got any sympathy for her because I haven'tShe'll not do it again; she'll go straight to Hell where she belongs."
As police guarded Hindley's body in case it might be mutilated or photographed, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, Mr Phil Woolas, said no one would miss Hindley. "Whilst nobody would wish anybody suffering and pain," he said "it is with a sense of relief that we can now begin to put this nightmare behind us."
The MP, whose constituency includes Saddleworth Moor, where the bodies of Hindley and Brady's victims were buried, continued: "She never expressed any remorse and refused to co-operate with the investigations into Leslie Ann Downey's and Keith Bennett's deaths, and nobody in this part of the world will mourn her passing."
However, solicitors Taylor Nichol, who acted for Hindley, said she had "truly repented" for the suffering she and Brady - who remains alive only through force feeding in official defiance of his hunger strike - had caused.
Expressing regret at news of her death, the firm said: "Myra was deeply aware of the terrible crimes she had committed and of the suffering caused to those who died and to their relatives. During her 37 years in prison, those who came to know Myra - prison officials, doctors and lawyers - knew well that Myra repented for what she did." And a Methodist minister, Mr Peter Timms, a former governor of Maidstone jail, said Hindley's treatment was "a scar on the judicial system". He said: "I have supported her only because I think she has been treated grossly unfairly in comparison with other life-sentence prisoners."