The owner of the property where Keith Bennett is believed to be hiding out said yesterday that he made a vow to the schoolboy’s dying mother Winnie that he would never give up hunting for him.
Chris Crowther, age 65, expressed his optimism that the 12-year-old Moors murder victim’s corpse will eventually be discovered.
After a curious bystander discovered what seemed to be human remains, Greater Manchester Police started a dig on his property on Friday.
Mr. Crowther concurs with author Russell Edwards’ notion that serial murderer Ian Brady arranged the graves precisely, burying the boys on one side of the A635 road and the female victims on the other.
Yesterday, the farmer made the first admission of his potential vulnerability to the Moors Murderers, who murdered five children.
He recalled how Brady stopped outside his school in 1963 as he and Myra Hindley were starting their murdering rampage, and how Brady drew up next to him.
For the first time, Mr. Crowther described the terrifying encounter, saying, “I can always remember waiting for a taxi from St. Mary’s Primary School in [the nearby village of] Greenfield at about 3.30pm and Brady stopped by the side of me and looked straight at me as I was waiting for a taxi to come home.”
“I sprinted back to class.” They were staring right at me with their menacing eyes. Never converse with strangers, my mum said.
I hurried back to school since it had been drilled into my head. I hurriedly retreated as he stood there and simply looked.
I informed my parents that a stranger was standing by the side of the road and observing me. I was maybe six.”
Brady would eventually run across him again on the moors months later. He recalled: “I was returning some sheep with my father Harold when they [Hindley and Brady] were making out on a rock, and my dad got crazy and begged them to go home.”
In 1963, it was shearing season. He always stared at my dad, and I’ll never forget that expression.
I will never forget those frightening gaze. Myra was wearing a leopard-print coat, and he was wearing a long mac.
It was located only half a mile from the burials and south of the property. We were barely a few hundred yards away from them. My dad used to regularly go off on one, but Brady never responded.
I was around the same age as the other kidnapped youngsters. The family has been affected by the notorious killings that took place on the 5,000 acres of property that the Crowthers have held for many generations. A family member was nine or ten years old when John Kilbride was discovered, he remembers.
I heard them, they said as they began. One night, he said, he overheard them pleading for their lives. They were impacted so severely that we had to hospitalize them for almost 10 days to calm them down.
They often claimed to have heard the cries. In any case, they heard something up there. They suffered a lot as a result. Their nerves had been destroyed. With the assistance of Mr. Crowther’s grandpa Dan, the police located 12-year-old John’s burial in October 1965.
The farmer said, “While my granddad was out there collecting some sheep, his dog rolled over John Kilbride’s grave. They went back and checked the area after it wouldn’t stop rolling, and that’s where they discovered John.
On the barren moorland, Mr. Crowther thinks a guy who looked like Brady was also following his mother Freda.
When the sheep were lambing, he followed her quite close to where they discovered one of the dead, he said.
She fled home when a suspicious guy approached her from behind. She said that she would never return up there alone since it frightened her so much.
In 2015, Mr. Crowther decided to assist Mr. Edwards in his hunt for Keith in the hopes of eventually keeping the promise he made to the schoolboy’s mother Winnie, who passed away in 2012.
I’ll be happy if they locate Keith, the man added, since Winnie came up to visit me when she was very ill with cancer. She requested me to continue searching for Keith when she came up for a cup of coffee.
Will you promise me that you will continue looking while you are collecting sheep, she replied to Chris? Yes, I answered, I’ll check to see what I can see every time I walk outside.
Since then, I have continuously searched for anything that would provide a hint as to Keith’s whereabouts. I had been seeking for a long time.
I’ve always predicted that Keith and John Kilbride won’t be that far apart. He’ll arrange to bring them both together. He paired the women, and he will [have] paired the men.
He is returning to the burial site where he got away with it with John. It seems a little spooky when I’m out there on the property.
“I constantly consider it when I’m up there.” It stays with you when you are up there with a Moors murder victim. I simply want them to locate him.