THE mother of a 12-year-old victim of the Moors murderers said she hopes her son’s body will be found while Ian Brady is still alive, because that would ‘kill’ him.

Keith Bennett was snatched by Brady and Myra Hindley in 1964 on his way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight near Manchester.

A privately-funded search for the youngster’s grave is now under way on Saddleworth Moor, and his mother, Winnie Johnson, 76, said she hopes to find her son and bury him.

“That’s all I want out of life now because I want him found before I die, and before Brady dies, and that will kill Brady.”

But her hopes may never be realised. The expert search team on the bleak moors are wiling volunteers but their task is immense.

The moors have harboured the secret of Keith’s last resting place for 46 years and a huge police investigation – including taking the killers to the moors – failed to find his body.

It was in 1987 that Brady and Hindley finally admitted killing Keith, as well as 16-year-old Pauline Reade.

Both Moors Murderers were taken back to Saddleworth Moor that year to help police find the remains of the missing victims but only Pauline’s body was found.

Brady made two visits, one in July and one in December, to try and help police find the body.

Much of that search was concentrated at Shiny Brook, on Wessenden Moor, high above Meltham. But again, the search proved fruitless – as did those in the subsequent months, carried out by a team from Greater Manchester Police.

Mrs Johnson said: “He (Brady) knows where he is, he admitted it and that’s how I knew I would never find him alive again.

“I want the closure, yes, and I want him buried before anything happens to me. But I also want him buried knowing Brady’s alive when they do it, because it’s getting on his goat now.

“He knows where he is, but he doesn’t want him found.”

A voluntary search and rescue team from Wales started making preliminary investigations on the moor on Sunday.

Hundreds of people donated to a fund set up to finance the hunt, but as yet the money has not been transferred to the charity team.

Search team leader David Jones said: “It’s no good taking this job on and just coming here every so often for the day or two days.”

Mrs Johnson and her supporters hope more money will come into the fund to help keep the project going.

She said: “I’ve fought long and hard over it, so I should get some kind of satisfaction.

“I hope to bury him. That’s the main problem in my life now is to bury him, and let my family see that I’ve fought to fetch him home, because that’s all they want.”

Mr Jones said there were potentially 19 sites that have been earmarked for the team to scour.

They are also examining a new location near the village of Greenfield.

And Jones, director of the International Rescue Training Centre in Wales, who is leading the search, said it could take 12 months to investigate the area as it was so large.

“If we’re looking at all the sites we’ve been given, we could be here for months, years – it just depends which area we’re given and where we can locate a body,” he said.

He added: “We’ve had jobs like this in the past.

“It gives our dogs work in this specialist field and the dog-handlers more knowledge of working these sites. Also at the end of the day we’re looking at closure for Mrs Johnson.

“Cadaver detection dogs have been widely used around the world for many years. Their inherent search for food has made them the ideal tool to assist law enforcement officers in the gruesome and arduous task for searching for human remains.”