Alan Bennett, whose 12-year-old brother Keith was murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, has revealed he has read the first chapter of Brady’s twisted autobiography
Moors Murderer Ian Brady wrote a sickening account of his killing spree which included details of his first brutal murder, it has been claimed.
The serial killer – convicted of murdering five children alongside his twisted girlfriend Myra Hindley – is said to have penned his autobiography before his 2017 death in a high security hospital. Victim Keith Bennett’s brother Alan says he has now seen Brady’s first chapter, which covers the killing of 16-year-old Pauline Reade in 1963.
But the rest of the book is missing and Alan says finding it could be key to retrieving 12-year-old Keith’s body from Saddleworth Moors where it has lay undiscovered for 61 years. Posting on social media, Alan said he had been handed files which had been obtained from one of Brady’s former solicitors.
Among “box files and loose papers in folders” were photos, a book of notes taken by a frequent visitor to Brady in prison as well as ones written by Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley during their trial. There were also voice recordings taken of calls between the killer pair in prison.
But Mr Bennett said the most shocking thing was Brady’s autobiography, which he claimed to have been writing since the early 1990s. Mr Bennett said: “I was never really convinced he had actually done it. Now I could see that he had written his account of the murder of his first victim on the moor.
“There was actual proof that I could see and read. The next part was moving on to his account of what happened to the next victim before it was cut short. Everybody concerned now is of the opinion that the rest does exist. The question is – where is it? There is documented evidence as each part was completed, Brady passed it on to other individuals to take out of Ashworth Hospital, where he was being kept.
“Obviously, this is of great importance to the investigation as there could be vital information in regard to the search for Keith. That now has to be the absolute focus of investigation, and it will be by all concerned, as I don’t think anything else in those files will help in the search for Keith.
“Brady claimed in letters to the families, and myself personally, that he had written his full account of what he and Hindley did, complete with diagrams and other detailed information. I could now see actual evidence of part of this. The police are taking this very seriously and they assured me that they would do all they could to try and trace any missing parts of Brady’s writings.”
Brady and Hindley – who died after serving 36 years – killed five children between July 1963 and October 1965. Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans were aged between 10 and 17.
The twisted pair were jailed in 1966. Brady died aged 79, while Hindley died in hospital in 2002 aged 60 today after suffering respiratory failure. Keith is the only victim whose body has never been found and he is thought to remain in a shallow grave on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester.
The closest thing to Brady’s autobiography is Alan Keightley’s book Ian Brady: The Untold Story of the Moors Murders. Keightley visited the killer frequently and the book is based on correspondence with him, but he admits in it that he never saw Brady’s self-penned book in its totality.
After Brady’s death on May 15 2017, Brady ordered that two locked Samsonite briefcases should be taken from his bedside and handed to his solicitor, Robin Makin. He had insisted they should not be opened until after his death. But police have been refused permission to see the documents, which they believed could lead them to Keith’s body.
The briefcases were considered particularly significant because the original 1965 investigation discovered that the killer had stashed sick mementoes of his crimes in the cases. These had been located at a Manchester railway station’s left luggage office. Speaking previously about the files, Alan said: “I am forever hopeful that Keith will one day be returned to us.”