Moors Murders
Missing photos that may lead to Keith Bennett
The death of the Moors Murderer Ian Brady has, inevitably, led to a review of the murders he committed with his accomplice, Myra Hindley. But to get lost in the grim detail of what they did is to miss their true significance. To understand why they have cast a shadow over the past half century you must examine how Brady manipulated the victims’ families, the police and the press from behind bars.
Brady and Hindley were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966 for the murders of three children: 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, 12-year-old John Kilbride and 17-year-old Edward Evans. It was another two decades before Brady revealed to a journalist that they had also killed 16-year-old Pauline Reade and 12-year-old Keith Bennett.
The Moors Murderers’ fate was sealed from the moment a tape recording of Lesley Ann Downey was played to a hushed courtroom at their committal hearing. Hindley’s voice boomed off the oak panelling as she shouted at the terrified child to “shurrup crying” and stop spitting out the gag in her mouth. There was a clacking sound as Brady moved a tripod round the room, taking photographs. In the background a recording of The Little Drummer Boy played on a gramophone.
At the time of their sentencing Brady and Hindley were still in love. Incredibly, they had been allowed to see one another while on remand and continued to exist in “the world above” that Hindley described to me in letters 30 years later. I was questioning her for a BBC documentary that scrutinised her bid for release. Hindley had never allowed herself to be interrogated before. Her appeal was due before the House of Lords and she was anxious to make a public case.
Every Monday I sent her questions and every Friday her reply fell through the letter box – five or six sheets of closely typed writing. I talked to her on the phone to push her on points she had failed to deal with. There was one she never did: the death of Lesley Ann Downey. The tape recording was irrefutable evidence that she was a willing accomplice to Brady rather than his battered girlfriend.
Before the film was broadcast, I visited Hindley in prison to push her on this omission. The woman I met was impeccably groomed and perfectly composed. She had a direct, unfaltering gaze. Over prison tea and biscuits, she made it quite clear that the reason she had co-operated with me was to try to secure her freedom. Weeks later, after the film had been broadcast, she called me. “It was fair, but you did me no favours.” We never spoke again.
When they were sentenced, Brady knew he would die behind bars. He thought his lover would one day be released. She could then send “sights, sounds, smells” back to him to enjoy in prison. As well as dreams of the future, they had a shared knowledge of the past. Hindley wrote to her mother, Nellie: “Dear Mam... keep all the photos for us, for reasons, the ones of dogs, scenery etc.” During the murders, Brady had taken hundreds of photographs. Hindley’s unpublished autobiography reveals that these images were “the system” they used to record their crimes. They would photograph grave sites before, during and after killings.
It was police photographic officer Ray Gelder who first worked out the existence of the system. He was there during the exhumation of Lesley Ann Downey, in 1965, to take pictures. In the intervals, he paced back and forth with one of Brady’s pictures in his hand. It showed Hindley, clutching her dog Puppet, peering at the ground beneath her winklepickers. In the background stood a blurred line of hills. Eventually Gelder lined the image up with the landscape before him. He was standing on the spot where Brady had taken the photograph.
At trial, the prosecution counsel described the photographs as “tomb stones of your making”. Yet, somehow, the significance of the pictures appears to have been forgotten as the prison doors swung shut behind the murderers. The investigating team was disbanded.
Brady and Hindley, however, swung into action. They instructed their solicitor, Robert Fitzpatrick, to take legal action against the attorney general. Its purpose? The return of Ian Brady’s photographs. Just 18 months after they were sent down, the pictures were sent to Nellie for “safe keeping”. But Nellie clearly knew what the pictures were and persistently refused to send them to “Neddy” as Hindley called him (after his favourite Goon). Hindley badgered her mother in letter after letter to send five of the pictures to Brady. Eventually, on May 11 1972, Nellie relented. In a subsequent letter, Hindley told her mother that Neddy was “delighted”.
Hindley revealed that these images were ‘the system’ they used to record their crimes
It is possible Brady was savouring pictures of the grave of Keith Bennett. When I discovered this passage in Hindley’s letters, I told Greater Manchester Police. They sought a warrant to search Brady’s cell at Ashworth Special Hospital – but, astonishingly, were advised by Treasury Counsel that they could not have one. The reason given was that Brady could no longer be charged with the murder of Keith Bennett and a warrant could only be issued if there was a prospect of charge. When a detective called to break the news to me, she said “there was a lot of anger here when we were told”. Brady was able to retain these images – in Ashworth, or perhaps elsewhere – to the last. It is a deeply uncomfortable thought that they could have led detectives to Keith Bennett’s grave.
This pattern of manipulation endured throughout Brady’s imprisonment. In the early Seventies, Hindley realised her association with him would condemn her to a death behind bars. So she ended the relationship and started to campaign for her release, and by the mid-Eighties it seemed she might succeed. Wounded by Hindley’s betrayal, Brady sought revenge. He told Today newspaper there were another two victims buried on Saddleworth Moor: Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Keith’s family had campaigned for years to have the case reopened. His late mother, Winnie Johnson, pleaded for action so she could “bring him home”. She never did.
Faced with Brady’s claims, the police had no choice. The case was reopened under Det Chief Supt Peter Topping. His team re-examined every detail and started a search of the moor. Brady and Hindley said they were ready to help and visited the moor with the police. The visits were fruitless. Hindley became disorientated and Brady told detectives that “the sheep pens have moved”. Derision was heaped on the police. The criticism reached a crescendo with the thundering Manchester Evening News headline “Stop this farce now”.
Topping’s deputy, Det Insp Geoff Knupfer, rang Hindley’s prison with the paper lying on the table in front of him. She described the view of the landscape from Pauline Reade’s graveside. She said she could see “nothing, except the body, and the dark outline of the hills against the sky”. It was enough. Hours later they exhumed the body of Pauline Reade. It was in Hindley’s interest for Pauline to be found – it was not in her interest to admit she had been buried according to a system. That would have been to admit to complicity with Brady when she was still portraying herself as the battered girlfriend, him the abuser. In reality, they were still bound together by lies.
The truth only emerged when I was given access to her archive, following her death, in 2002. Her estate, anxious to help in the search for Keith Bennett but unwilling to deal with the police, had selected me as an intermediary. I would go through the material, pass it on to detectives, and only publish once they had done their work.
I wrote to Brady, asking for his help, but he was furious I had gained access to his secrets and tried to take legal action against me. Brady’s former psychiatrist, Professor Malcolm MacCulloch, helped me work through Hindley’s archive. He, perhaps better than anyone, sums up Brady’s attitude to the continuing pain endured by the family of Keith Bennett: “I know, you don’t know, you want to know and I’m not going to tell you.”
The likelihood of Keith Bennett’s remains being found diminish with each passing year. His family and a band of volunteers are still looking. One must hope they succeed and, in the words of his mother, “bring him home”.
If there is one lesson to be learnt following Brady’s death, it is that he has manipulated all of us: police, press and, tragically, the families of his victims.