The brother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett has said no human remains have been found so far by police in a new search. An excavation of a small plot on Saddleworth Moor commenced on Thursday night (September 29).
It was triggered after a team brought together by author Russell Edwards reportedly recovered part of a skull in a remote location. His team is said to have taken a photograph of part of a lower jaw and shown it to GMP.
On social media, Alan, 65, who has spent more than 30 years looking for his brother, expressed his scepticism about any breakthrough. He posted last night (Friday): "The forensic team will determine what is there once and for all, no matter how long it takes to excavate the area. Those are the facts so far.
"In my last contact I was told that nothing at all had been found on the moor and they are about three feet down with the excavation. Apart from believing this is the wrong location for Keith and all the previous graves have been shallow, why, if the police were taken to the location, has nothing been discovered as yet?
"I cannot escape the feeling that we have been here before but all should be clear and final by some time tomorrow."
Today (Saturday) GMP forensic officers were back at the site where Mr Edward's team reportedly found the remains, continuing to excavate after it was guarded overnight. They are hoping to obtain DNA from any body tissue they discover so they can confirm it is Keith.
Keith was just 12 when he was lured into a van by Myra Hindley who asked him to help her with some boxes. Her lover and fellow killer, Ian Brady, was sat in the back on June 16th 1964.
Keith and his family were living in Eston Street, Longsight. Several nights a week to give their mother Winnie a break her children would stay with their grandma, Gertrude. Alan, then eight, his sister, Maggie, three, and brother, Ian, seven, arrived at their gran's in Morton Street, the other side of Stockport Road. Sister, Sylvia, 11, and step sister, Susan, 11, stayed at Eston Street.
Winnie walked Keith to Stockport Road to make sure he was safely across, then waved goodbye. He was never seen again. He would have walked down Dallas Street, where Hindley parked her van when visiting Brady who lived in Westmoreland Street with his mother.
Alan wrote dozens of letters to Brady and Hindley to try and extract clues as to where Keith's body was. In 1998 he met Hindley twice in prison. The police took Brady and Hindley separately to the moor, but without a breakthrough.
They had both been found guilty in 1966 of torturing and killing John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey, and Edward Evans. In 1985 they admitted killing Keith and Pauline Reade. Pauline's body was found on Saddleworth Moor in 1987 but Keith's has never been recovered.
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