One of Britain's most notorious killers, Moors murderer Myra Hindley, has died in hospital in the past few minutes.
Hindley was admitted to the West Suffolk hospital in Bury St Edmunds on Tuesday with severe respiratory problems. Her condition deteriorated in the last 24 hours and earlier today a priest administered the last rites at her hospital bedside, a prisons source said.
Hindley (60) spent several nights at the hospital with a suspected heart attack earlier this month. She also suffered from angina and osteoporosis and was a 40-a-day smoker.
The serial killer had been serving her 36th year behind bars at nearby Highpoint Prison, Suffolk. A legal bid for freedom by Hindley has now been defeated by her ill-health.
Before an operation for a brain aneurysm two years ago, Hindley is understood to have given orders to her lawyers that she was not to be kept alive artificially if she lapsed into a coma.
She also ordered that none of her organs should be offered for transplant if she died.
Instructions were given for a cremation and for her ashes to be scattered at a secret location, it was reported.
Hindley and Ian Brady (64) were jailed for life in 1966 for the sex abuse, torture and murder of three youngsters. In 1987 they confessed to two more child killings.
Pauline Read was the first child to suffer the consequences of Brady and Hindley's sadistic and warped minds. The 16-year-old vanished on July 12, 1963, on her way to a disco near her home in Gorton, Manchester.
It was not until 1987 that her body was found in a shallow grave on Saddleworth Moor after Hindley and Brady's jail-cell confessions.
John Kilbride vanished four months after Pauline - the day after President John F Kennedy's assassination in the United States. He was lured up on to the moor, sexually assaulted and murdered.
A photograph taken by Brady of Hindley posing on the edge of John's grave holding her pet dog would later lead police to the young boy's resting place.
The body of the murderers' next victim, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, has never been discovered.
He vanished after leaving his home in Chorlton-on-Medlock in Manchester on June 16 1964.
Lesley Ann Downey was murdered on Boxing Day, 1964. The 10-year-old - the youngest victim of the evil pair - was enticed from a fairground to the house Hindley shared with her grandmother in Hattersley.
In Hindley's bedroom, she was stripped, sexually abused and tortured as they forced her to pose for pornographic photographs.
The harrowing attack was recorded on audio tape by Hindley. The tape lasted 16 minutes 21 seconds.
Their fifth victim was Edward Evans (17) who died in a hail of axe blows.
The murder was witnessed by Hindley's brother-in-law Mr David Smith, who tipped off police.
PA