ANN WEST, whose daughter Lesley Ann Downey was killed by the Moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, died after a long battle against liver cancer.

Mrs West, 69, had campaigned tirelessly to ensure that Hindley was never freed. She had prayed to outlive Hindley who, with Ian Brady, tortured, sexually assaulted and strangled Lesley Ann, 10, after luring her from a fair in 1964.

When she learned she was dying, Mrs West said: "I hope my name lives on and will haunt Hindley every day in a cell until she dies. I want her to know that even from beyond the grave I am helping to keep her behind bars. How could I ever forgive or forget her? She took my daughter's life and destroyed mine."

Mrs West, who died at home in Fallowfield, Manchester, had asked to be buried alongside her daughter. She said recently: "I believe that I am going to be with my little girl - that after all this pain and torment we will finally be together again."

Mrs West's second husband, Alan 62, said: "My comfort is in knowing she is at last out of pain. Ann suffered in her life more than anyone should have to. But she never lost her faith in God."

Mrs West, who had three sons and 14 grandchildren, had endured hearing Brady and Hindley's tape of Lesley Ann pleading: "I want to see my mummy." She had suffered cancer and heart attacks and had been given weeks to live in 1997. But she had continued to campaign against her daughter's killers, saying: "As long as those two killers breathed, I vowed to keep them where they should be. I owed it to Lesley and myself. It has been a life sentence for me, but now that life sentence is coming to an end."

Winnie Johnson, 65, mother of Keith Bennett, 12, who was also killed by Hindley and Brady, said last night: "She was a remarkable woman and an inspiration. The campaign to keep Hindley in prison will be strengthened by her memory."

Hindley and Brady were jailed in 1966 for murders including Lesley Ann's. In November 1998 three Appeal Court judges rejected Hindley's attempt to overturn a ruling by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, that her life sentence "means life".