THE bleak valley on Saddleworth Moor is again at the centre of a new search for Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett after killer Myra Hindley spotlighted it on a hand drawn map.
According to Hindley, 12-year-old bespectacled Keith was led along the meandering bank of the Hoe Grain stream to his death by Ian Brady.
She said she kept a lookout on top of one of the valley sides while the vile crime was carried out.
Today, on the moorland itself, there are no signs of the terrible history. But, as reported in yesterday's Manchester Evening News, Hindley has named the valley on three maps allegedly showing where Keith's body is hidden.
One man who knows almost every inch of the area on Hindley's maps is the dead boy's younger brother Alan Bennett.
Alan has welcomed the new maps but says he will never forgive 59-year-old Hindley, no matter what she does to help find Keith's body.
He still lives in Longsight, close to where he and Keith grew up and only yards from Eston Street where there remains a set of goalposts painted by the two young brothers on a redbrick wall.
Excavations
For years he has been trying to find his younger brother's body. He and his family hoped the extensive police excavations in the mid-1980s would bring their nightmare to an end. Detectives found the body of another victim Pauline Reade, but not Keith.
''People say it's very bleak and featureless but it's not - there are rocks, and streams and other things,'' said Alan.
The maps will be featured on a BBC documentary to be screened this week.
Alan is working with one of Britain's leading forensic archaeologists, Professor John Hunter, to find Keith using the new information provided by Hindley.
Their search begins in earnest next year, once winter has passed, also using new research by Prof Hunter which has discovered the moorland has changed dramatically in the near 40 years since the terrible murders.
''I think we are getting nearer all the time,'' said Alan. ''The expert opinion says he is still there to be found.''
However, the police maintain the maps provide no new information and say the area has been thoroughly searched.
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