Brady’s cases will have to be opened..their contents may reveal where Keith Bennett’s body is buried

Victim’s family’s last hope of closure

brought on by lung disease. The hearing in Bootle, Merseyside, was also given details of Brady’s mental health, with specialists confirming for the first time that he was a paedophile.

Dr Thomas said Brady was a paranoid schizophrenic with an underlying “narcissistic and “antisocial” personality disorder, adding: “He was also thought to suffer from a number of deviant sexual disorders, to include sadism and paedophilia.”

But Brady would not engage with psychiatrists or take anti-psychotic drugs. He would verbally abuse staff and demand a move to a mainstream prison, but was refused. Dr Thomas also dismissed Brady’s 18-year “hunger strike”.

He said the prisoner was fed by a nasogastric tube up his nose but also took solid food and drinks.

The doctor added: “Clinical teams regularly sought to bring an end to his reported ‘hunger strike’, recognising he was regularly accepting diet and fluids, alongside or substituted for his NG feed.

“Any attempt at negotiating a discontinuation would be met with hostility such that Mr Brady would then commence absolute fluid and food refusal.” Pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers, who carried out a postmortem, said Brady weighed 9st 8lb at the time of his death with no sign of “emaciation”. The inquest failed to shed light on what became of Brady’s corpse, which was released to lawyer Mr Makin on May 18. The coroner, Christopher Sumner, had wanted assurances the ashes would not be spread at Saddleworth Moor near Manchester– the burial site of tragic John, Lesley and Pauline.

Brady never revealed what happened to Keith’s body, revealing nothing when he spent a day searching the moorland with police in 1987.

His accomplice Hindley died in 2002, aged 60.

ON PATIENT IAN BRADY