The other of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady's girlfriend and accomplice who was involved in all five murders with Brady. She was convicted of two of three murders which were detected in 1965, and of being an accessory in the third murder, as she was not present when Brady committed the murder. The convictions of Brady and Hindley came just six months after the abolition of the death penalty, and less than two years after the last execution in Britain - although more than 10 years had passed since the last execution of a woman in Britain. In 1986, she and Brady confessed to two more murders and returned to the moors to help police find the body of one of the victims, although the final body has still not been found.
Hindley's trial judge recommended she should serve at least 25 years in prison, which was endorsed in 1982 by the Lord Chief Justice. Reports suggested that Hindley was rehabilitating in prison and had found religion and rejected Brady and her past, but her tariff was increased to 30 years in 1988 and, finally, to a whole-life tariff two years later, although she was not informed of the whole-life tariff until 1994. Hindley's supporters, including penal reformer Lord Longford, journalist David Astor and prison governor Peter Timms, claimed that the increase in Hindley's sentence was the response of a succession of Home Secretaries to public opinion, as there was widespread public opposition to Hindley ever being released. Relatives of the Moors Murders victims were at the centre of a campaign to keep Hindley imprisoned and several of them vowed to kill her[6] if she was ever paroled.

Hindley subsequently made three appeals against the whole life tariff, but each appeal was unsuccessful she died in jail at the age of 60 in November 2002, less than two weeks before a law lords' ruling which could potentially have secured her freedom.[7] Her case prompted more debate than that of any other prisoner of notoriety, with some high-profile backing from the House of Lords, but vitriol from the press and the public, as well as the families of her victims. Lord Longford, who died just over a year before Hindley, regularly condemned the media for their "exploitation" of Ann West, mother of one of the victims, who gave regular newspaper and television interviews to argue against any suggestion of release from prison, and vowed to kill Hindley if she ever was released.

Her death left only Rosemary West (jailed for life for 10 murders in 1995) as a confirmed female prisoner serving a whole-life tariff, until the addition of Joanne Dennehy, in 2014