Brady’s death left detective ‘with no closure’

THE RETIRED detective who led the investigation into two of the Moors Murder victims has revealed that serial killer Ian Brady’s death has brought him no closure.

Peter Topping, 77, oversaw the re-opening of the inquiry in the 1980s into the deaths of Pauline Reade, 16, who disappeared in 1963, and Keith Bennett, 12, who was snatched in 1964 but whose body has never been found.

Mr Topping said: “The fact that Brady’s passing has come, quite frankly, is a good thing because he was never going to give any more information.”

Speaking at his home in Argyll, the former head of Manchester CID, who commanded a team of 932 CID officers working on the Moors Murders, said: “It ends a chapter, a very important chapter. Brady is gone, no longer a drain on the state, which I think is a good thing. He is no longer able to do his manipulation and use people.

“For that, there is a form of closure but, as far as the case is concerned, I will never get closure and my team that worked on it in the 1960s – and others who worked on it after that – you can only get closure after they have found Keith Bennett’s body.”

The re-investigation into the deaths of Keith and Pauline came 19 years after Brady, who died at the high-security Ashworth Hospital in Liverpool on Monday last week, and fellow killer Myra Hindley were jailed for life for the murders of John Kilbride, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17, in the mid-1960s.

Glasgow-born Brady and Hindley, who herself died at the age of 60 in 2002, admitted in court in 1987 to Keith and Pauline’s murders after confessing their crimes to Mr Topping, who led the investigation from 1985 until he retired in 1988.

He said: “Brady tormented the families of the victims. Having committed these horrific murders of the children of those families he then cruelly tormented the families, first of all denying his guilt when he was arrested by a team of detectives in the 60s. He resisted helping them to locate the bodies of those children.”

Recalling the case’s re-opening in the 1980s, he said: “Hindley made a very detailed confession; she was seeking, by doing that, some form of parole in the future as she was quite desperate to get parole. Brady then made a confession but not as full as Hindley’s.

“I took both of them to Saddleworth Moor on two occasions.

“There was a very detailed search by a team of detectives and we recovered the body of Pauline Reade and that had a tremendous effect of the health of Pauline’s mother Joan, who had been really suffering with her health, not knowing what had happened to her daughter.

“That was a tremendous thing and I think that poor lady and her family, they did benefit from that discovery, the confessions – and the recovery of Pauline’s body.

“We got a lot of information from Hindley and Brady – mainly Hindley – about the possible location of Keith Bennett’s body but despite the very dedicated work that was done, by the skilled team of detectives, we were not successful in finding his body.”

He claimed that Brady’s death, at the age of 79, made no difference to the case, and said: “The information we had at the time was searched to exhaustion, the case will always remain open and any information that comes into the hands of the police will be fully investigated by them, to see if there is any hope of recovering Keith’s body.”