The boy who never came home

The Manchester boy who never came home … brother Allen Bennett talks openly again.

On June 16th 1964, four days after his twelfth birthday, Keith was going to spend the night at our gran’s house, my mother was going to bingo and she walked with Keith to the zebra crossing at busy Stockport road.

Once he had crossed and they had waved goodbye to each other they went on their way, Keith was only a few streets away from the safety of gran’s house.

Keith would have passed a small side street (Dallas Street) that led through to Westmoreland Street where Brady lived. It is now known that Hindley used to park in that street waiting for Brady to join her.

Somewhere along the very familiar route Keith took to gran’s house, the vehicle with Hindley driving and Brady in the back pulled up alongside Keith. Keith was enticed into the vehicle by Hindley and later climbed into the back of the vehicle after being persuaded to do so by Brady. Hindley drove to Saddleworth Moor, where Keith was led into the moor, sexually assaulted, murdered and then buried.

It is, and always will be, very hard to accept that later that night the rest of us slept safe and sound in our beds. It was not until the following morning that we all discovered Keith had disappeared. When my gran got to my mother’s house the following morning, I heard the question ‘Where is Keith?’

Neither my gran nor my mother had a telephone at home, my mother thought Keith had arrived at my gran’s, my gran had thought that Keith had changed his mind and had decided to stay at home.

I will never forget the confusion of that morning that quickly turned to complete panic and terror. We grew up with the terror, thoughts and fears of that morning and it was to be over 20 years until we discovered, or rather had confirmed, that Keith had been a victim of Brady and Hindley. Something the police and us as a family had always thought to be the case.

Keith’s ‘imagine’ was all around us but Keith was nowhere to be seen in reality.

Can I ask you to please, once again, spare a thought for Keith? 

Denied the life he should have lived and all he could have been.

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