Mental Health Review Trust To Decide On Brady

Moors murderer Ian Brady has offered the police a macabre final deal. He says he will show them where he buried Keith Bennett – his only child victim whose body has never been found – in exchange for being allowed to kill himself.

Brady, 69, wants to return to the 1964 murder scene at Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester, and pinpoint where 12-year-old Keith lies to prove he is not insane so he can legally be allowed to starve himself to death.

Brady has given his backing to a sketch map, showing Keith’s grave, which was drawn by his partner Myra Hindley for a 2002 BBC documentary, Bodyhunt. He has also agreed with investigators that a fresh set of photos in the hands of his lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano – claiming to reveal the burial site – are completely correct.

Hindley died five years ago, aged 60, after suffering a serious chest infection following a suspected heart attack.

Despite extensive investigations by forensic archaeologist Professor John Hunter, of Birmingham University, and Greater Manchester Police, Hindley’s map did not lead to the discovery of Keith’s remains.

Brady has been on a hunger strike for seven years and has been force-fed at Ashworth secure hospital, on Merseyside. He is said to have made the new offer through his lawyer to prove he has a “retentive memory”.

Once he has proved that, Mr Di Stefano says he can be adjudged sane and be moved back into the prison system where he can stop eating and die. Mr Di Stefano said: “He has always said he will go back to the Moors and can reasonably remember where the bodies are but he wants to do so in return for being allowed to end his own life.

“He is not mad and he can prove it. One of the things you need to display to prove your sanity is a ‘retentive memory’ and Brady can do that. He wants the chance to prove that Hindley’s map relating to events more than 40 years ago is correct by going back to the Moors to pinpoint exactly where Keith Bennett’s body is.

“He has also backed a new set of photos taken by a team of investigators as correctly displaying the site of Keith’s body. It is up to the Mental Health Review Trust to give him the chance to prove his sanity. It costs £1.5million to keep him alive every year. All he wants is the right to die like any other prisoner. Why can’t he? The majority of the British people would be glad to see the back of him.”

Pauline Reade, 16, was first to die, in 1963. She was followed by John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey, ten, and Edward Evans, 17.

Brady is understood to have ignored written appeals by Keith’s mother Winnie Johnson to help recover his body. Before he quit as Home Secretary last Wednesday, John Reid demanded a fresh search for Keith’s body.

Brady first offered to find Keith’s body 20 years ago. But police, directed to a shallow grave on the Moors by Hindley, found Pauline Reade’s corpse instead.

Keith vanished on his way to his grandmother’s house, lured into a car by Hindley who asked him for help to find a lost glove. He was driven to Saddleworth Moor where Hindley watched from the top of a ravine as Brady sexually assaulted the youngster before strangling him.