The confession that sparked hunt for Keith’s body
WINNIE JOHNSON always knew Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had murdered her son Keith Bennett in 1964.
But it took a dramatic confession from Brady to a journalist in 1985 to give her hope that she would one day be able to give him the burial he deserved.
It sparked a search on Saddleworth Moor but forensic teams were unable to find his body.
Brady later denied confessing to the murder but after Winnie sent a letter to Hindley begging for information, she agreed to help with the search. Hindley made two visits with police to the Moors in 1986 and 1987. On July 1, 1987, detectives found the body of 16-year-old Pauline Reade, another of the couple’s victims, but Keith’s remains could not be found. When Brady was told Pauline’s body had been discovered, he finally confessed to Keith’s killing.
He was taken to the moor twice in 1987 but claimed he could not remember where he had buried the boy.
Police have since used computer imagery to compare the cur- rent landscape to the scenery in pictures Brady and Hindley took in 1964. A team of top geologists also examined the movement of soil and peat over the past 40 years to work out where a body could be.
In 2008, an American spy satellite was used as part of a topsecret police operation to find Keith’s remains.
In the same operation, an expert Army team specialising in locating the graves of terror victims in Northern Ireland scoured an area of the moor.
Carbon vapours, believed by scientists to be emitted from corpses, were found at a location of ‘great interest’ to the police on hills above Oldham, but still no body was found.
As late as the beginning of this year Winnie employed a private security firm with sniffer dogs in a final bid to find Keith.
She has died without the answer to the one question she wanted answered.
Martin Bottomley, head of investigative review of Greater Manchester Police’s cold case crime unit, said: ‘The only comfort we can take is that Winnie is now at peace with the little boy she missed so much.’