Police searching for body of Ian Brady victim Keith Bennett 'refused permission to search killer's briefcases'

Patrick Grafton-Green19 February 2019
WEST END FINAL

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Detectives still searching for the body of Ian Brady victim Keith Bennett have reportedly been denied access to his briefcases and papers.

Before he died in May 2017, Brady asked for two locked cases which were in his room at Ashworth Hospital, Merseyside, to be put into secure storage.

A district judge at Manchester Magistrates’ Court has refused to grant police a search warrant to open the cases, saying there is no chance of a prosecution because Brady is dead, The Times reported.

The newspaper said Robert Makin, Brady’s solicitor and executor of his will, has also turned down the request from officers.

The ashes of Moors Murderer Ian Brady have been spread at sea without ceremony
PA Images

Brady took the secret of where 12-year-old Keith is buried to his grave.

Killed: 12 year old Keith Bennett, whose remains have never been found

Keith’s brother Alan Bennett told The Times: “There is a desperate need to look for anything that may help in the recovery of Keith’s body and there may be something in those cases.

“The refusal by Mr Makin to help any further is a great cause of distress considering that my brother’s body still remains on the moor.”

Brady tortured and killed five children with Myra Hindley (Getty)

Brady tortured and killed five children with partner Myra Hindley in the 1960s. He died aged 79 from cancer and emphysema, after spending more than five decades behind bars.

He was jailed for the killings of John Kilbride, 12, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, 17, in 1966.

He went on to admit the murders of Keith and Pauline Reade, 16.

The remains of three of his victims were found on Saddleworth Moor. The body of another was found at Brady and Hindley’s house.

Hindley died in jail in 2002, aged 60, after suffering respiratory failure following a heart attack.

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