Moors Murders: 'I'm convinced I found Keith Bennett'

Image source, PA Media

Image caption,

Keith Bennett, who was killed in 1964, is the only victim whose remains were not found

The man whose hunt for the last unfound victim of the Moors murderers led to a new search has said he is "convinced" he found the boy's remains, despite police saying otherwise.

Author and investigator Russell Edwards said he had spent seven years looking for Keith Bennett on Saddleworth Moor.

He recently passed his findings to police, sparking a new search.

Greater Manchester Police said "no bones, fabric or items of interest" were found at the site he identified.

Keith Bennett was one of five youngsters killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the 1960s and he remains their only victim whose remains have never been found.

The 12-year-old went missing while on his way to see his grandmother in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester on 16 June 1964.

His mother Winnie Johnson, who died in 2012, spent her life trying to locate her son's body, even taking to the moor herself, armed with a spade.

Image source, PA Media

Image caption,

Police began a new search for Keith's remains on Friday, after receiving information from Mr Edwards

Police began searching Saddleworth Moor in Friday after the force said it received a report of "possible human remains".

On Tuesday, Det Ch Insp Cheryl Hughes said forensic archaeologists and forensic anthropologists had "completed a methodical archaeological excavation and examination of the area [and] no bones, fabric or items of interest were recovered from the soil".

She said a wider search of the surrounding area was continuing.

The search was a result of evidence gathered by Mr Edwards, who said he had passed everything to police after having his findings considered by a number of experts and had been to the moor with officers "to show them where it was found".

He told BBC Radio Manchester he and his team had found items which suggested there were remains at a site on the moor close to where the pair's other victims were buried and had documented everything they found in photographs.

He said the evidence was "clear" and he was "not wasting anyone's time".

"I've been looking at Keith's picture for seven years, he's my inspiration.

"It wasn't a case of I just walked on the moors one day and found a dig site and dug it up."

He said he sent the photographs to forensic archaeologist Dawn Keen, who analysed them and told him that there could be evidence of remains in one of them.

Image source, PA Media

Image caption,

Police have said forensic experts are continuing a "controlled excavation" of the area surrounding the identified site

Ms Keen said she believed they were Keith's remains, "because no other youngster has been murdered and not found on that side of the moor".

Mr Edwards, who was part of a search for Keith in the 1980s before starting his investigation in earnest in 2015, said he was "convinced that where we were, that's where Keith was".

He said that whatever the outcome of the police investigation, he had "no intentions or desires to visit Saddleworth Moor for the rest of my life".

"My search is done," he said.

"I've gone the furthest I could ever go with this."

Video caption,

Daniel Sandford looks back at the revulsion caused by Brady's crimes

Brady and Hindley tortured and killed five youngsters between 1963 and 1965.

Brady, who was born in Glasgow but later moved to Manchester, was jailed in 1966 for the murders of John Kilbride, aged 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17.

In 1985, after being moved to a secure hospital, Brady also admitted murdering Keith and 16-year-old Pauline Reade.

Edward's body was found by police at Brady and Hindley's shared home in Hyde, Greater Manchester, while the remains of Lesley Ann, Pauline and John were found on Saddleworth Moor.

Police have carried out a number of searches of the moor to try and find Keith's remains, including two in which they were joined by the murderers, but his body has never been found.

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