Moors murderer Ian Brady kept the resting place of his last victim secret in a final “game” with his family as it was "all he had left", a crime author has claimed.
Police are currently digging on the Saddleworth Moors for murder victim Keith Bennett after a skull was found. The 12-year-old boy was snatched 58 years ago by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and his body has never been found.
The pair of killers abducted at least five children in and around Manchester in the 1960s in a string of killings that shocked the nation.
The search for Keith’s body has spanned decades, but now the skull believed to be of a child aged around 12 has been found on the moor.
Last night forensic anthropologists from Greater Manchester Police were examining potential samples of body tissue taken from the area.
Earlier this year, reports suggested that Brady’s locked briefcases could be opened to detectives if Home Secretary Priti Patel is able to pass a new bill through Parliament. Brady guarded them at Ashworth secure hospital, Liverpool, until his death in 2017, at which point they were handed over to his solicitor.
Crime fiction author Howard Linskey, who studied Brady and appeared on the Moors documentary Written in Blood, told the Daily Star he was sceptical the briefcases will hold new information.
However, he believes that detectives should still interrogate them for clues.
He said: "I suspect that they do not contain the whereabouts of the body that has not yet been found because I don’t think he’d be able to recall it frankly."
Mr Linskey added: "I don’t think there will be anything new in them but I certainly think they should be opened because you never know."
In 2012, Keith Bennett’s mum Winnie Johnson tragically died after years spent trying to track down his body.
Despite pleas from the family, the serial killer didn’t budge on giving up the location of Keith’s body.
Mr Linskey said: "He was not the kind of person who would voluntarily have ever given up anything like the location of the body because that’s all he had left.
"That was his only bargaining chip, his only collateral if you like. Once everybody knew where the bodies were and discovered them all there would be no real reason to give him any more attention."
He went on: "That’s to an extent what he craved. He didn’t really have anything else, he was a fairly sad individual.
"People tend to think of him as a bit of a criminal mastermind running the police and the families ragged, but that was the only game he had left to play.
"He had 51 years in prison and died there so if you look at his life it was a very sad and pathetic one.
"All he had left to deal with was this information that he teased that he may or may not have known for sure."
Keith - who was last seen on June 16, 1964 - is the only victim of the Moors murders who has never been found.
Hindley died in 2002 and Brady in 2017, but they never revealed the location of the boy's body.
The development came after author Russell Edwards put together a team of experts to try and solve the case.
Forensic archaeologist Dawn Keen, who specialises in the study of human remains, remotely supervised the "grave cut", reports the Daily Mail.
She said yesterday: "I do believe there are human remains there. They [police] have got to look.
"From the photographs, I saw the teeth, I could see the canines, I could see the incisors, I could see the first molar.
"It is the left side of an upper jaw. There is no way that it is an animal."
Another unnamed archaeologist added: "It is a human skull. It cannot be anything else."
Mr Edwards described the moment he made the discovery, saying: "The smell hit me about 2ft down. Like a sewer, like ammonia.
"It was on my clothes I stank of it. The soil reeked. I worked as a gravedigger when I was 19 that hits you, that smell of death. It is distinctive…
"I was overjoyed. Then we found blue and white striped material. Then I stopped. I put everything back as I found it."
The expert believes the skull belongs to Keith, but DNA tests will have to be carried out before this can be officially confirmed.
He added: "This is about peace for Keith and closure for the family."
