'I'm Keith's mother. He's there on the moors. I want him back'

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 21:49

STOLEN away from a childhood of marbles and Beatles records, Keith Bennett has for 45 years lain beneath the moors chosen by his murderers.

Yesterday, since all hope of his recovery has faded, he received a special memorial service in lieu of the funeral his mother so dearly wished.

Standing in front of a large painting of her son, based on the famous black-and-white photograph of the smiling, bespectacled young boy, Winnie Johnson, now 76, spoke at the hour-long service at Manchester Cathedral of the 12-year-old abducted and murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

He is the only one of their five victims whose body has never been recovered from Saddleworth Moor.

"I'm Keith's mother…" said Mrs Johnson, breaking into tears, her loss still raw after 45 years. "He's there on the moors. I want him back. It's very hard to do what I have done. In a way I'm proud of myself, because I know each of you people are hoping for Keith to be found, but nobody more than me wants him found.

"I will still fight forevermore until I find him, and I hope I find him before I'm dead. I do wish one day he will be found."

Keith, the congregation heard, was a cheerful child and, in a time when children's experiences were confined to the neighbourhood where they were born, he enjoyed street games, marbles and cycling. He was a boy with a "happy-go-lucky attitude and a cheeky grin", who kept leaves in a scrapbook, collected coins and loved football.

The ceremony started with music, Till There Was You, a pop song from the 1960s by an emerging Liverpool band, The Beatles, whom Keith, like millions of other youngsters, had begun to follow.

Norie Miles, a friend of the Johnson family, told the congregation of about 300: "He had a huge heart. He was happy, wondrous, caring… a truly lovely Manchester boy."

Yesterday's public memorial service was in lieu of a funeral and came after police, who have spent five decades searching, made one last massive effort two years ago, using the latest technology, to scour the moors above Manchester. But they failed to locate Keith's remains and declared last July that, without significant new information coming to light, the search was at an end.

The service also heard from Professor John Hunter, an archaeologist specialising in finding the graves of missing people. He advised police on the search for Keith and personally undertook searches across Saddleworth.

"I can't think of any other case in the UK where resources have been deployed to such an extent so long after the event," Prof Hunter said. "I have no idea how many weeks I have spent on those moors in the last two decades, trying out ideas, trying out methods."

Prof Hunter said many people had offered support and some were still searching themselves.

He added that there was still hope for Mrs Johnson. "I have learned many things in looking for the missing," he said. "Above all else, I have learned the importance of closure in returning the lost ones, the importance of returning husbands to their wives and sons to their mothers, and the difference that that makes."

The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester, told the congregation: "The hills of Saddleworth Moor, for all their stark and awesome beauty, are the sombre backcloth for our act of memorial, but our words and worship lift us above and beyond to a Lord who, long ago upon another hill, had his life taken from him."

The depravity of Brady and Hindley, the luring of innocent children, their sexual torture and moorland burial, during the still relatively innocent Britain of the 1960s, made the Moors Murders one of the most infamous episodes in criminal history.

Almost half a century on from their crimes, the impact of the killing spree cannot be exaggerated, with many of those who attended the service of a similar age to Mrs Johnson, all who lived through that time in the city and unable to forget.

A personal, hand-written note from Home Secretary Alan Johnson, on behalf of all the MPs who have served as home secretaries since the murders, was given to Keith's mother.