Tearful tribute by mother of Moors murder victim

Nearly five decades after the 12-year-old was abducted and murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, he is the only one of their five victims whose body has never been recovered from Saddleworth Moor.

Winnie Johnson, now 76 and frail, spoke at Manchester Cathedral during the hour-long service, in front of a large painting of her son.

“I’m Keith’s mother...” she said, breaking into tears, her loss still raw after 45 years. “He’s there on the Moors. I want him back.

“It’s very hard to do what I have done. In a way I’m proud of myself because I know each of you people are hoping for Keith to be found but nobody more than me wants him found.

“I will still fight forever more until I find him and I hope I find him before I’m dead. I do wish one day he will be found.”

Keith, the congregation heard, was a cheerful child, and, in a time when children’s experiences were confined to the neighbourhood where they were born, he enjoyed street games, marbles and cycling.

He was a young boy with a “happy-go-lucky attitude and a cheeky grin”, who kept leaves in a scrapbook, collected coins and loved football.

Yesterday’s public memorial service was in lieu of a funeral and came after police, who have spent five decades searching, made one last massive effort two years ago using the latest technology to scour the Moors above Manchester.

But they failed to locate Keith’s remains and declared last July that, without significant new information coming to light, the search was at an end.

The service also heard from Professor John Hunter, an archaeologist specialising in finding the graves of missing people. He advised police on the search for Keith and personally undertook searches across Saddleworth.

“I can’t think of any other case in the UK where resources have been deployed to such an extent so long after the event,” Prof Hunter said.

Prayers were also said and candles lit for Brady and Hindley’s other young victims.

Keith Bennett was the third of the Moors murderers’ five child victims. He was snatched on June 16, 1964, after he left home in Longsight on his way to his grandmother’s house nearby.

Pauline Reade, 16, disappeared on her way to a disco on July 12, 1963, and John Kilbride, 12, was snatched in November the same year. Lesley Ann Downey, 10, was lured away from a funfair on Boxing Day 1964 and Edward Evans, 17, was killed in October 1965.