Winnie Johnson, the mother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett, spent the last days before her death "slipping in and out of consciousness" repeating: "We never found him, did we?"
Johnson, 78, died in 2012, and had spent many years campaigning for killer Ian Brady to reveal where her son's body was buried. Her surviving son Alan made an online post to mark the anniversary of her death, where he revealed the torment of her final days, reports the Mirror.
Son's account of final days
Alan wrote: "I wish I could look back on that day as a peaceful end to her pain and suffering, but the memory of her slipping in and out of consciousness, and in her confused state asking where Keith is and then saying, 'We never found him did we?' will haunt me forever."
Keith, 12, was abducted and killed by Brady and his accomplice Myra Hindley in 1964. He was taken as he made his way to visit his grandmother in Manchester, and his body has never been found.
Brady's letter and police probe
In 2012, as Johnson was dying, Brady's mental health advocate Jackie Powell told a television documentary he had given her a sealed envelope to pass to Johnson if Brady died. It sparked a police probe and Powell was arrested on suspicion of preventing Keith's lawful burial – but the letter was never found. The Crown Prosecution Service later said no further action would be taken against Powell, of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, because it could not "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".
Writing about the incident, Alan said: "I received a phone call from the police to inform me that two units were on their way, one to raid Powell's house and another to search Brady's room, in the hope of finding the letter or anything else that may help to bring Keith home." He added that when police arrived at Ashworth Hospital, Brady was "very animated and abusive to the police calling them all sorts of names and shouting for his solicitor".
Family's efforts amid media attention
Alan said: "We made sure that mam was unaware of what was happening all around us as she was slipping away but fighting to the end in those final few days. She had more than her share of hopes that turned out to be nothing more than false hopes while she was well, we made sure there would be no more in her last days."
He described the family taking turns around Johnson's bed while the media was "full of reports of the rest that was going on in the background, noticing Brady's face in the news and on the television in the hospice as if continuing to mock our family". Powell was arrested for questioning and no trace of the Brady letter was found, only an empty opened envelope at Powell's home. Police discovered a "huge amount of 'fan mail'" in Brady's room.
Brady's memoirs and missing pages
Last year a BBC documentary, The Moors Murders: A Search for Justice, claimed to have uncovered the first 394 pages of Brady's memoirs called Black Light, which he sent to a solicitor. They detail where the pair buried another victim on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester. But 200 pages of the manuscript, found in the attic of the solicitor who died in 2023, are missing. The missing pages are believed to have been deposited with Brady's solicitor, Robin Makin, in Liverpool, in a locked Samsonite briefcase. Makin has never disclosed its contents and has not commented.
Keith was the third victim of Brady and Hindley, who killed five children. The bodies of John Kilbride, 12, and Lesley Ann Downey, 10, were found at Saddleworth Moor near Manchester in 1965. Edward Evans, 17, was found at the killers' house after being murdered in 1965. The body of Pauline was found on the moor in 1987. Hindley died in 2002, aged 60, and Brady died in 2017, aged 79. They had been sentenced to life.
