How many times did that sad mom, searching for her 12-year-old son Keith while trudging over the peaty Saddleworth Moor, avoid the area now delineated by two blue tents?
I can’t help but think about it. Ten years ago, Winnie Johnson went to her grave, never giving up hope that her son Keith Bennett would be located.
Not alive, not that miraculous, but whatever was left of him when Ian Brady and Myra Hindley drove up in a vehicle as he was on his way to his grandmother’s home in Manchester one day in June 1964, enticed him inside with candy, and then raped, murdered, and buried him in a shallow grave.
Author Russell Edwards told The Daily Mail in an exclusive on Friday that he thinks he has found the child’s improvised burial after doing “extensive soil analysis” that proved the presence of human bones.
Mr. Edwards is of the opinion that Brady carefully considered where to bury his victims in order to get the design of a swastika.
Brady, who was fixated with Nazism, is said by the author to have purposefully placed the graves in such a way as to produce the swastika design.
There have reportedly been discoveries of presumed human remains, including what specialists believe to be a child’s skull.
It is unknown what more, if anything, the location protected by the police tents may yet reveal.
From our vantage position alongside the Oldham to Holmfirth A635 major road, a group of forensic officers labored under gloomy skies yesterday, but nothing more materialized.
I hope they practice emotional distance.
Dawn McDermott, 79, said, “God love them, up there on that hill, knowing that horrible tale, hunting for that poor boy’s bones,” as a police vehicle passed by in a neighboring town.
The unpredictable weather made progress difficult and sluggish. At 9.30 am, work started with fire men using pumps to drain a soggy area of ground. Officers gathered possible evidence using pickaxes, spades, and sieves. The earth was carefully removed in slabs and packaged.
Winnie’s most cherished dream had been to remove her son “from the site his killers buried him,” give him a proper burial, and then bury him in a grave of her choosing.
After Keith vanished, Winnie was trapped by Saddleworth Moor, which was always looming and vanishing in the distance.
Later on, she kept returning to there, especially to that gnarled, hostile hilltop where Brady had killed his young victims.
On commemorate anniversaries, she hung flowers and teddy animals to fences. Before the television cameras, she made sincere appeals.
Then there were the occasions when fresh intelligence sent police dogs searching for bodies, and Brady—who had been granted a day release from jail—played his sadistic games by leading the police to graves while feigning amnesia at the last minute.
If Winnie were still living today, she would have listened to and watched every radio and TV news report, if not gone up to the moor itself.
Alan, the younger brother of Keith, who has his mother’s unflappable personality, has taken over as the new leader.
He is aware that one cannot live just on hope. He thus watches for convincing proof.
Yesterday’s developments weren’t exactly encouraging. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) stated in a statement that physical evidence had not been reviewed despite photos of the scene seeming to reveal what appeared to be a human jaw bone.
Keith is possibly the most famous victim of Hindley and Brady because of a picture that captures him in the moment as an innocent youngster peering out at us through wire-framed NHS spectacles.
The arms of the glasses, which were designed to circle a child’s ears to prevent them from sliding off, bent inward and pinched Keith, who was short-sighted, irritating him as they did hundreds of other children.
Two days before to his disappearance, he shattered them while on a school trip, and they were left broken for years in a drawer at his mother’s house.
With him, she wanted to bury them. A poem that began, “From that day to this / I pray both day and night / That I will find my Keith / And put his spirit to rest,” was placed on a wall at her house.
Ultimately, as time ran out, Winnie and the glasses were buried.
She wrote to Brady multiple times, even sending him a DVD informing him about her illness, knowing that he held the key to her son’s location.
Although he had previously responded in 2005, he never did so this time around. Instead, he complained about his circumstances at Ashworth Hospital and made illogical claims about governmental plots against him.
He said in 2006 that he had “clarity” on Keith’s final resting place, but it was in vain.
He wrote to Winnie once again in 2009, this time complaining that the police had “bungled the search” and added, in a last cruel jab, “This is my last word on the topic.”
I begged [her] to tell me where Keith’s burial was, but in my heart I knew she was a cruel sadist who would never divulge and would take her horrible secret to the grave, Winnie wrote to Hindley in 2002.
Hindley agreed to assist in finding Keith’s corpse, but she was unsuccessful.
Yesterday, it was hard to avoid thinking about Hindley while standing by the side of the road and gazing over the dig site and Dovestone Reservoir in the distance.
Maybe she had already seen Brady dragging Keith to his death from a nearby location. I remember thinking then, as I subsequently told to the police, that he looked like a small lamb being carried to the slaughter,’ she reportedly remembered the incident to an author.
With his siblings and other volunteers, Alan spent years searching the moors, and he also tried to contact Brady and Hindley but was unsuccessful.
Keith was “one of life’s more sensitive souls,” he said on a webpage he created for his brother, adding that “Keith was an average, simple youngster, with his head in the clouds.” He had a passion for animals and the natural environment.
In a statement released yesterday, the police said: “Specialist officers have today recommenced excavation of a location identified to us after information received which suggested that suspected human remains had been recovered on the moors.
This data showed images of the location and what specialists collaborating with the informant identified as a human jaw bone.
There is no known physical proof of a jawbone or skull. However, based on the images and details provided, and in keeping with GMP’s custom of investigating all claims of human interment, we started looking for the place of interest.
We have not discovered any identifying human remains, but we are still excavating the site. Because of the challenging conditions, it can take some time for us to finish the excavation completely, but we’re devoted to making sure it’s done completely.
Brady and Hindley killed Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, Edward Evans, 17, and buried their remains on Saddleworth Moor between July 1963 and October 1965.
In 1966, the pair received a life sentence. Hindley, 60, passed away in 2002. Brady, the prisoner who had served Britain’s longest, passed away in May 2017 at the age of 79.