Moors Murder Victim’s Mum Speaks Up
‘Hanging’s too good for Hindley’: Mother of last Moors Murder victim says she WON’T back return of death penalty
Last updated at 5:28 PM on 6th August 2011
The mother of the last victim of the Moors murders is refusing to back the return of the death penalty insisting ‘hanging is too quick’ and child murderers must be made to suffer.
Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett is buried on bleak Saddleworth Moor on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire after being murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in 1964.
Brady only admitted Keith’s murder – along with Pauline Reade, 16 – while serving a multiple life sentence for killing three other children, but has always refused to reveal the whereabouts of his grave.
Keith Bennett’s mother Winnie Johnson on Saddleworth Moor. She said hanging murderers is ‘too quick’
The pair were jailed for life in 1966 after being convicted of the murders of three other children, Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. Myra Hindley died in jail in 2002.
Last night, Keith’s 77-year-old mother Winnie Johnson said hanging was too quick and child killers must be made to suffer.
It comes as almost 50 years after the death penalty was abolished there is an ever growing online petition calling on Parliament to hang child and police killers.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were jailed for life in 1966 after being convicted of the murders of three other children, Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride
The last hanging in Britain took place the year the schoolboy was murdered.
HANGING: A HISTORY
Until 1868 hangings were performed in public
In London, the traditional site was at Tyburn, but before 1865, executions took place outside Newgate Prison, Old Bailey, now the site of the Central Criminal Court
The death penalty was abolished in 1965 and renewed in 1969
The last woman to be hanged was Ruth Ellis on July 13, 1955, by Albert Pierrepoint who was a prominent hangman at the time
The last hanging in Britain took place in 1964, when Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester were executed for the murder of John Alan West
But last night Ms Johnson insisted she would not be signing-up to the first controversial issue the man-in-the-street wants debated in Westminster under the Government’s new ‘let-the-people speak’ decree.
She said: ‘Hanging is too quick. Child killers like Brady must be made to suffer, in the way he hurt my Keith and all the other little ones.
‘The rope is too simple a solution for his sort. Serial killers like him need to be left to rot, for years, when hopefully they will reflect on their appalling crimes.
‘People could be forgiven for thinking I would be among the first demanding a return to capital punishment, but that is too soft a sentence for Brady.
‘I really hope that he has suffered over the years and now, maybe in the twilight of his life, he will display a single shred of sympathy by telling me where Keith’s remains are located.
‘The gesture would mean so much, especially as all police searches for Keith’s body have officially ended.
‘If Brady had swung for his crimes against my son and the others, there would have been no chance – however slim it is – of him relenting and putting me out of my misery by pinpointing Keith’s grave.’
The search for Keith’s body on Saddleworth Moor has been going on for decades – but Brady has refused to reveal the grave’s whereabouts.
I can understand her hope of finding her baby’s grave through Brady, I just do not ever see him giving it. Serial killers enjoy the games, the attention and the pain that they produce in the families, the living victims.
I understand her hoping that he has spent years dwelling in the death he caused, but I doubt that he did.
Most serial killers love re-living their crimes, many even return to the murder / burial sites to masturbate. Some bring lovers o these spots for sex because the memories excite them.
I wish that her ideas could be truth but there is no real reason to believe that she can / will / has gotten what she hopes for.
Keith was lured into a car by Brady’s lover Hindley while walking to his grandmother’s house four days after his 12th birthday in June 1964 – two months before Peter Allen, 53, and Wynne Owen Evans became the last murderers to be hanged in the UK.
Brady killed Keith and buried him on the Yorkshire-Lancashire moorland while Hindley kept look-out.
When the e-petition reaches the expected 100,000 signatures, MPs will be forced to debate a return to the gallows.
I can not see any reason to keep serial killers, child killers or pedophiles alive. Medical science, psychiatrists, criminologists, history and more have proven that these offenders can not and will not be “fixed”. They are and always will be threats to society in general, to the weak and to our children in particular.
For these kinds of criminals, the most brutal, repeat, killers and tormentors I support capital punishment.
They add nothing but fear, threats, pain and insecurity to our society, even in prison. Why allow that?
They will never be able to be productive members of society and will always be a threat to anyone that has to come into contact with them (including but not exclusive to guards, doctors, nurses, teaches, visitors, maintenance people, and other prisoners) so why allow this risk to all for the few?
Let me know your opinions and why.
If you want to sign the petition there is a link (a few others as well) below.
The Petition To Restore The Death Penalty In England For Child and Police Killers.
This just seems relevant. A petition to refuse child killers new identities.
Real Life Monsters 