Sunday 2 October 2022 12:36 AM A heart-rending dispatch from the moors as new police hunt for Keith Bennett ... trends now
How many times did that poor woman – picking her way over peaty Saddleworth Moor, looking for her 12-year-old son Keith – skirt the spot now marked by two blue tents?
It is an inescapable thought. Winnie Johnson went to her grave a decade ago never surrendering hope that her son Keith Bennett would be found.
Not alive, not that miracle, but whatever remained of him after Ian Brady and Myra Hindley pulled up in a van as he walked to his grandmother's house in Manchester one day in June 1964, lured him inside with sweets, then sexually assaulted, strangled and buried him in a shallow grave.
The Daily Mail exclusively revealed on Friday that author Russell Edwards believes he has located the youngster's makeshift grave following 'extensive soil analysis' which indicated the presence of human remains.
Keith Bennett was snatched by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1964. He is their only victim who has never been found
Mr Edwards believes that Brady meticulously planned where to bury his victims because he wanted to create the shape of a swastika.
The author believes that Brady, obsessed with Nazism, deliberately arranged the graves so that he could create the swastika shape.
Suspected human remains – including what experts believe to be a child's skull – are reported to have been found.
What else, if anything, the site shielded by the police tents may yet yield remains to be seen.
Nothing more was forthcoming yesterday when a cluster of forensic officers, who appeared from our vantage point beside the Oldham to Holmfirth A635 main road as tiny, distant figures, toiled under sullen skies.
Police are digging on the Moors for murder victim Keith Bennett for the first time in 35 years to investigate suspected human remains. Suspected human remains – including what experts believe to be a child's skull – are reported to have been found
Hopefully they work in emotional detachment.
'God love them, up there on that hill, knowing that dreadful story, looking for that poor boy's bones,' said Dawn McDermott, 79, as a police car drove past her in a nearby village.
Progress, hampered by erratic weather, was slow. Work began at 9.30am, with fire crews using pumps to drain a waterlogged patch of land. Using pickaxes, spades and sieves, officers collected potential evidence. Slabs of soil were carefully removed and bagged.
It had been Winnie's dearest wish to take her boy 'from the place his murderers buried him' and give him a proper funeral, then lay him to rest in a grave of her choice.
Always looming and receding in the distance, Saddleworth Moor was inescapable to Winnie after Keith's disappearance.
Haunted: Keith's mum Winnie, who died in 2012 without ever knowing where her son was buried. Pictured with the famous 'missing' poster of her son
Many times later she was drawn to it, in particular that gnarly, inhospitable knoll where Brady dispatched his young victims.
She pinned teddy bears and flowers to fences to mark anniversaries. She launched heartfelt appeals before TV cameras.
Then there were the times when new information brought police dogs sniffing for death, and when Brady, let out of prison for the day, wrapped against the cold, played his cruel games, pretending that he would take police to graves, only to feign last-minute forgetfulness.
If she were still alive today, Winnie would have followed every TV and radio bulletin, if not taken herself up to the moor itself.
A forensics tent is pictured on Saddleworth Moor as police search the area for Moor's murder victim Keith Bennett
The baton has been passed to another son, Keith's younger brother Alan, who shares his mother's indefatigable spirit.
He knows never to be ruled by hope alone. And so he waits for conclusive evidence.
What emerged yesterday wasn't exactly promising. In a statement Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said photographs of the site which showed what had been interpreted as a human jaw bone had not led to physical evidence being examined.
Of all the victims of
