Hardy was born in 1947 in Manchester and had a record of violence from his teens, including an attack with an axe.
He killed Janet Stewart, fifteen, on New Year's Eve 1974; Wanda Skala, seventeen, in July 1975; and Sharon Mosoph, seventeen, in March 1976. Each was beaten, strangled or stabbed and each body was mutilated after death; he removed parts of them. The Manchester press called him the Beast of Manchester.
He was arrested in 1976 after his girlfriend and his brother gave information to the police, and he confessed. He was convicted at Manchester Crown Court and on May 2, 1978 received three life sentences with a recommendation that he never be released.
He died at Wakefield prison on September 24, 2012, aged sixty-five, having served thirty-six years. He never applied successfully for release and had been told he would not be freed.
The case is unusually poorly known outside Manchester for its severity, which local writing has attributed to its overlap with the Yorkshire Ripper investigation and to the fact that it was concluded before that began. The entry records the killings and the sentence without reproducing the mutilation detail, which is documented elsewhere and serves no purpose here.