Will Keith be found at last? (From The Northern Echo)

Will Keith be found at last?

11:39am Wednesday 11th June 2008 in Leader

Sensational records of Myra Hindley's life in prison were revealed yesterday. From crying at letters to begging for hypnosis, Owen Amos examines how the icon of evil lived behind bars

JUNE 16, 1964. Myra Hindley lures 12-yearold Keith Bennett to Saddleworth Moor, between Leeds and Manchester. She claims she needs help finding a glove.

Once there, Hindley's boyfriend, Ian Brady, takes the boy to a ravine. He strangles him with string and buries the body. Hindley watches.

The body is not found and the murder not admitted.

November, 1986. Hindley - imprisoned for two other murders and being accessory to another - receives a letter, dated October 31, 1986, from Keith's mother, Winifred Johnson. "Not knowing whether my son is alive or dead, whether he ran away or was taken away, is literally a living hell, something which you no doubt have experienced during your many, many years locked in prison," the letter says.

So how did Hindley - icon of evil - react? Coldhearted condescension? Not quite, according to classified documents released yesterday. "She became extremely upset and tearful whilst reading it," a memo from staff at Cookham Wood Prison, Kent, said. Myra Hindley? Emotional? "It took a very long time for her to compose herself sufficiently to talk. This is most unusual, as Myra is normally very controlled."

Hindley - initially - denied knowledge of Keith's death. "I wish I did know something - I could at least then put the poor woman out of her misery,"

she said, according to more memos. But the denial didn't last long. Hindley's conscience flickered into life. On November 18, 1986, she and Brady admitted Keith's murder and that of Pauline Reade, a 16-yearold who was beaten, raped, then killed.

The revelations from the released documents don't end there. After Hindley admitted Keith's murder, Mrs Johnson wrote again. "The torture was not knowing what happened," she wrote. "Now I do know, and it is because of your compassion that situation has been brought about." But she did not forgive, or forget. "Keith was an innocent little boy who never did anyone any harm," Mrs Johnson wrote.

AFTER the admissions, police searched Saddleworth Moor for Keith and Pauline's bodies.

Pauline's was found in July 1987, but Keith's remained missing. Mrs Johnson, according to the released documents, wrote to Home Secretaries, Margaret Thatcher - even the Queen - to sustain the hunt. But her boy was never found.

Mrs Johnson also asked for Hindley to be hypnotised, to aid her memory and reveal where Keith was buried. Amazingly, Hindley herself requested this. In a letter from November 1987, she asked Douglas Hurd, then Home Secretary, for hypnosis. She even claimed Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, in charge of the inquiry, wanted Hindley to physically revisit the moors.

"If the proposed hypnosis is unsuccessful, at least it can be said that everything humanly possible has been done," Hindley wrote. "If it is successful the immeasurable relief it will bring to Mrs Johnson, the fact the police can finally close the file on the whole case, and the benefit to society knowing at last that the Moors case, which has haunted the psyche of the nation, is finally resolved and exorcised, will be no small matter."

In a memo, a Cookham Wood prison officer wrote: "One of her greatest regrets is, I believe, not being able to remember the whereabouts of the last child, and thereby not allowing him or his family to lie in peace at last. Myra lives' with her offences far more than any inmate I have ever known."

But Mr Hurd rejected the pleas for hypnosis. He said police had searched the whole area and hypnosis would not help. Mrs Thatcher agreed. In a letter to Mrs Johnson on April 6, 1988 - released yesterday - she wrote: "I am truly sorry, after so much effort has been expended on the search, that your son has not been found. But I hope you will be able to accept that everything which would be likely to help has been tried."

Eventually, in 1995, permission was granted for hypnosis - but Hindley's declining health prevented the plans.

Keith's body is still missing. Last week, Greater Manchester Police announced it had narrowed Keith's grave down to a 20-yard peat ridge near Shiny Brook, a remote area on hills high above Oldham.

Mrs Johnson, now 75, still hopes for resolution.

"I want Keith back before Brady dies," she said. "I want to write to him and tell him that he can't control me any more. Each new step in the investigation gives me a lift."

OTHER details, flecks from history now illuminated, emerged yesterday. Ann West, mother of victim Lesley Ann Downey, wrote to Hindley's prison, protesting at her walks in the park. Another person wrote to complain at Hindley's Open University degree. "Hindley will never change," the letter said. "I think it is degrading to let Hindley wear the gown of the Open University.

You have made her look like a hero instead of a murderess."

In 1972, an exchange of letters between Hindley's prison and Brady's prison explained their relationship was over - when Brady returned a bookmark Hindley had sent to him. "Brady asked that the bookmark be returned to Myra," a letter said. "It's obviously a symbolic gesture meaning the relationship is at an end." Brady - now 70 - is still imprisoned.

Hindley died in 2002, aged 60, after 37 years in prison. She suffered a heart attack. Hindley - who converted to Roman Catholicism in prison - was given the last rites. After death, her lawyers said she was sorry, but not even her mother attended the funeral.

The released records reveal what Hindley left in her cell: jewellery, photos, cards, clothes, a Westlife CD, a stereo system, a plastic rosary and cash credits of £501.42. What she really left, though, was five families with a lifetime's pain and an era's innocence crushed.