Moors murders: police call off search
Updated on 01 July 2009
Greater Manchester Police announce they have ended their search for the remains of 12-year-old Keith Bennett, who was killed in 1964 by Mrya Hindley and Ian Brady.
Police said that searches based on the words and photographs of Hindley and Brady - known as the moors murderers - had failed to yield results.
Keith was the third of the moors murderers' five child victims. He went missing on June 14, 1964.
A police spokesman said: "The search for the body of moors murders victim Keith Bennett is to enter a dormant phase after Greater Manchester Police exhausted all the avenues currently available."
Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Heywood, head of GMP's serious crime division, said that although the search was over, the case would never be closed.
"As a force, there is nothing we would have liked more than to draw a close to this dark chapter, and we are very disappointed that we have not located Keith's remains but, we will never close this case and remain open to any new lines of inquiry which may come about as a result of significant scientific advances or credible or actionable information," he said.
In 2003 police launched Operation Maida in an attempt to locate Keith's body. Their searches were based on information from Brady and Hindley, who died in 2002.
The police spokesman said: "The operation used information which was already in the public domain about what Hindley had said about where Keith's body was buried along with photographs taken by Brady at the time.
"Brady had taken photographs of Hindley over the graves of the other victims. Detectives believe that if those areas could be located it would provide a credible search area."
Detectives used tools from spades to the most sophisticated equipment available in an effort to find Keith's remains.
The scientists whose expert help they called upon were confident that the soil on the Moors would have preserved Keith's remains.
In February of this year Ian Brady wrote a letter to Nick Martin, Channel 4 News northern correspondent, in which he confirmed he was continuing with his hunger strike, now into its eighth year. To read Ian Brady's letter, click here.
Moors murders timeline
- Ian Brady and Myra Hindley committed the moors murders between 1963 and 1965. The killings became known as the the Moors murders because the bodies were discovered buried over Saddleworth Moor.
- 1st victim: Pauline Reade (born 18 Feb 1947)
Disappeared on 12 July 1963 on her way to a dance in Crumpsall. She was buried in a grave just three feet deep which was not discovered until 1 July 1987.
- 2nd victim: John Kilbride (born 15 May 1951)
Picked up at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne on 23 November 1963. Kilbride's body was found buried in a shallow grave two years later on the 21 October 1965.
- 3rd victim: Keith Bennett (born: 12 June 1954)
Four days after his 12th birthday he was lured into a ravine by Brady where he was strangled. Following a renewed search for the body in 1987 both Brady and Hindley visited the moors under police escort to locate the grave. The search was unsuccessful. Bennett's is the only body still undiscovered.
- 4th victim: Lesley Ann Downey (born: 21 August 1954)
Picked up at a fairground in Ancoats on the 26 December 1964, the 10-year-old was taken to Hindley's home and stranged with a piece of string. Her body was then taken to the moors where it was buried.
- 5th victim: Edward Evans (born: 3 January 1948)
Brady met Evans at Manchester Central Railway Station on 6 October 1965. Brady took him home where he killed him with an axe.
- Trial: Brady and Hindley's trial was held over a fortnight in April 1966 at Chester assize crown court.
- The following month, on 6 May 1966, Brady was found guilty of the murders of John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey, and Edward Evans. Since the death penalty had been abolished just 5 months earlier he was given three life sentences.
- Myra Hindley was found guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans and given two concurrent life sentences. She was also given seven years for harbouring Brady knowing that he had murdered John Kilbride.
- Myra Hindley died in 2002.
