Coroner seeks assurances over Brady’s ashes

IAN BRADY’S body will not be released until assurances have been given that his ashes will not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor, a coroner has said.

Opening an inquest at Southport Town Hall into the 79-yearold killer’s death, senior coroner for Sefton Christopher Sumner said he also wants assurances that a funeral director and crematorium willing to take Brady’s body have been found.

Coroner’s officer Alby HowardMurphy said Brady’s cause of death was cor pulmonale, a type of heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or lung disease.

Mr Sumner told the hearing he had received a request to release the body of Brady, also known as Ian Stewart-Brady.

He said: “I would like an assurance before I do so that first of all the person who asked to take over responsibility for that funeral has a funeral director willing to deal with the funeral and that he has a crematorium willing and able to cremate Mr Stewart-Brady’s body. Emotions are high, I have looked at some of the newspaper headlines, they are bound to be, not so much in this area but in the Manchester area.

“I also wanted to have assurance that when Mr Stewart-Brady is cremated his ashes will not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor. I think that’s a right and proper moral judgment to make.

“I think it would be offensive if Mr Stewart-Brady’s ashes were scattered on Saddleworth Moor.”

The court heard the serial killer had been treated by a palliative care team for the past two weeks because of his deteriorating health.

WHEN THE police search for Keith Bennett’s body on Saddleworth Moor was called off in 2009, Detective Superintendent Steve Heywood said he believed Ian Brady knew the exact location of the burial site.

The serial killer was said to have blamed changes in the landscape for being unable to trace the remains when he was taken back to the scene of his grisly crimes under police escort in 1987.

Following the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision not to prosecute Ian Brady over Keith’s murder, and that of Pauline Reade – whose remains were found earlier in 1987 – Greater Manchester Police launched a covert investigation, Operation Maida, to take another look at the case.

A team of detectives were gathered and, as a starting point, looked at the one obvious possible source of information – Brady. He was approached via his solicitor in July 2003 but refused point blank to co-operate.

He waved officers away without uttering a single word when he saw them arrive on the ward at Ashworth High Security Hospital in Merseyside.

They pressed on without Brady’s co-operation by analysing the original case file and reexamined the original statements of Brady and Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002.

They were convinced the clue to finding Keith’s body – likely to still be preserved in the peat of Saddleworth Moor – lay in photographs that Brady took of Hindley at the crime scenes. These were effectively souvenirs designed to act as signposts if they ever wished to retrace the path which led to their chilling deeds.

Det Supt Heywood told reporters: “Serial killers will generally try to use some sort of landmark – a way of coming back to a particular spot. They will revisit their activities on a daily basis. That is what they live for. People like Brady know what they are doing. They will have planned everything.

“He will have rehearsed daily what he did.

“It is my personal opinion that he knows where the body is.”