Ian Brady advocate to avoid charges over letter

By ANGUS HOWARTH
Published on 12/02/2013 00:14

Moors murderer Ian Brady’s mental health advocate will not be charged over allegations she failed to tell the police about a letter which may have revealed where one of his victims was buried, the Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday.

Jackie Powell was arrested on suspicion of preventing the lawful burial of Keith Bennett after she told a television documentary that Brady had given her a sealed envelope to pass to Winnie Johnson, Keith’s mother, in the event of his death.

The letter was never found and Mrs Johnson died last August still not knowing where her son was buried.

John Dilworth, head of the CPS North West Complex Case Unit, said: “After careful consideration, we have decided that Ms Powell should not be charged, as it cannot be established that she knew the contents of the letter referred to, that the letter in question existed or what information it might have contained.

“The only evidence of the letter’s existence was in comments given by Ms Powell to an interviewer and she stated only that she believed it may contain information about Keith Bennett.”

Mrs Johnson died last August just days after the revelations about the letter emerged ahead of the Channel 4 documentary.

Tormented to the last after a lifetime of campaigning, the 78-year-old died without fulfilling her wish to find her son’s makeshift grave on Saddleworth Moor and give him a proper Christian burial.

Brady and Myra Hindley abducted and murdered the 12-year-old in 1964, the only one of the five young victims whose body has never been found.

At her funeral service at St Chrysostom’s Church, in Victoria Park, Manchester, where Mrs Johnson was a regular parishioner and Keith attended Sunday school, the names of her son’s killers were never 
uttered.