The location of Moors murderer Ian Brady’s final victim could be hidden inside the missing pages of the serial killer’s autobiography, a new documentary suggests.
Brady’s manuscript, titled Black Light, thought have been left unpublished with his long-time solicitor, may include his account of 12-year-old Keith Bennett’s 1964 abduction, murder and burial, it is hoped.
Keith’s body is the only one of Brady and Myra Hindley’s five victims to have never been recovered from their preferred burial site on the Pennine Moors above Manchester.
Alan Bennett, Keith’s brother, has called for any newly discovered text to be handed to police in case it contains ‘vital information’.
He was tipped-off to the discovery of an extensive collection of documents by the makers of a new BBC documentary, The Moors Murders – A Search for Justice.
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Among the paperwork unearthed by presenter Duncan Staff are exhibits from Brady and Hindley’s trial, said to include never-before-seen photographs which raise questions over the searches for their victims.
Moors murderers Brady and Hindley – so named after Saddleworth Moor near Manchester where they buried their victims – are among the most notorious killers in British criminal history.
They were jailed in 1966 for the killings of Lesley Ann Downey, 10, John Kilbride, 12, and 17-year-old Edward Evans, and confessed decades later to having murdered Pauline and Keith.
Pauline’s body was found on the moor in 1987, but Keith’s has never been found, despite his family repeatedly pleading with Brady to reveal the location.
Hindley died aged 60 in 2002. Brady died in 2017, aged 79.
Theologian Dr Alan Keightley spent hours interviewing Brady at Ashworth high security hospital, where he was detained.
Those conversations formed the basis of a book about the serial killer published after his death.
In it, Dr Keightley – who himself died in 2023 – writes that Brady told him ‘Black Light’ ran to at least 600 pages.
The copy in his own archive stops abruptly at page 394.
But it includes a meticulous account of Pauline’s murder and the disposal of her body, leading to renewed hopes that Keith’s body may finally be found if his death is recounted in similar detail.
Dr Keightley claimed Brady once asked him to deliver a ‘double sealed parcel’, which he assumed to contain the autobiography, to a solicitor in London, Benedict Birnberg.
Mr Birnberg also died in 2023, and his firm told the BBC any material left with them has since been transferred to Brady’s other solicitor, Robin Makin in Liverpool who did not respond to enquiries.
Mr Makin has previously said he did not believe Brady had any information that could lead to the discovery of Keith Bennet’s body.
Winnie Johnson, 78, the mother of Keith Bennett, died in 2012, without fulfilling her life-long wish to give her son a Christian burial.
Greater Manchester Police have said they will never close the case of Keith Bennett, and while they are currently not actively searching the Moors they will act on ‘credible and actionable’ information that would help them locate his body.
Their last search, in 2022, prompted by claims from a member of the public researching the murder, resulted in nothing being found.
The Moors Murders: A Search for Justice is on BBC Two at 9pm. Both episodes are available on BBC iPlayer now.
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