A new and extensive police search will begin today on the Pennine Moors. It will be concentrated around the area where a body, thought to be that of a 12-year-old Ashton-under-Lyne boy, was found buried on Thursday.
While Professor Cyril Polson, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Leeds University, was yesterday examining the child’s body, which was found on Saddleworth Moor, near Greenfield, Mrs Sheila Kilbride, of Smallshaw Lane, Ashton, identified clothing that had been buried with the body as belonging to her son, John. He disappeared after last being seen in Ashton Market Square on November 23, 1963.
Throughout yesterday squads of police officers, some with dogs, continued the moorland search.
During the weekend police checkpoints will be set up on the moorland roads, within a 20-mile radius of Saddleworth Moor, and motorists and ramblers will be asked if they can recall seeing anyone digging or behaving in an unusual manner on the moors on previous visits there.
Gardens dug
The CID officers leading the investigation, under the direction of Assistant Chief Constable Eric Cunningham, coordinator of the North-west Regional Crime Squad, are looking for evidence that will help them in their inquiries concerning a number of children reported missing from their homes during the past year or two.
When Professor Polson had completed his post-mortem examination yesterday, Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Benfield, head of the Cheshire CID and one of five CID chiefs taking part in the investigation said: “The cause of death is not yet known. It is the body of a boy aged about 12, and Mrs Kilbride has identified clothing on the body as that of her son John.”
Police officers went yesterday to a house on an East Cheshire housing estate. Both the front and back gardens were dug over and samples of earth were taken away.
Police later confirmed that the body found was that of John Kilbride, one of three children killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. In 1987, the killers confessed to two more murders - Pauline Reade, whose body was subsequently discovered on the moors, and Keith Bennett, 12, who was never found.
