Author Michael Attwell has spent nearly 50 years studying serial killers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. He tells how chilling images could be a sick clue to further murders.16:33, 22 May 2026Updated 16:48, 22 May 2026Moors Murderer Ian Brady pictured at Ramshaw Rocks in Staffordshire.(Image: SWNS)Chilling images of Myra Hindley striking a solitary pose at Staffordshire’s Ramshaw Rocks could be a sick clue to further murders. Dubbed the ‘tartan’ photographs. Author Michael Attwell, who has spent nearly 50 years studying serial killers Hindley and Ian Brady, says there are striking similarities in the style of these and the notorious images taken on Saddleworth Moor – where remains of three of their child victims were found.Michael, a TV producer, director and author, whose new book The Moors Murders, is out this week, tells The Mirror: “The famous ‘tartan’ photographs show her and Brady at the Ramshaw Rocks in Staffordshire, doing exactly the same sort of thing that we see in the photographs on Saddleworth Moor. They look like markers of some description.”READ MORE: Former CIA spy boss Peter Sichel tells of ‘lonely’ job that ‘leads to alcoholism’While there has been no evidence of children being abducted in the area at this time, he believes the photos – which along with those at Saddleworth were taken between August 1964 and October 1965 – could still be hiding a grim secret.Myra Hindley at Ramshaw Rocks. A Staffordshire beauty spot could hold the key to where the body of Keith Bennett and four more unknown victims of the Moors Murderers are buried(Image: SWNS.com)He says of Hindley’s eerie poses: “Those photographs are weird. It would not surprise me if one day it turned out there was something in that.” Sixty years ago this month Brady and Hindley were jailed for the Moors Murders, in which they abducted and killed five children between1963 and 1965.The bodies of Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, and Lesley Ann Downey, 10, were found buried in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. Edward Evans, 17, was found murdered and trussed up in their house, while 12-year-old Keith Bennett’s body has never been recovered.Hindley was serving a life sentence at Highpoint Prison in 2002 when she died, aged 60, at nearby West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds from respiratory failure and bronchial pneumonia. Brady died from terminal lung disease, aged 79, in 2017, at Ashworth High Secure Hospital in Merseyside, where he was also serving life.Michael Attwell, author of The Moors MurdersWhile many people believe Brady took Keith’s whereabouts to his grave as a final act of control, Michael disputes this. He thinks Keith’s remains could still be found at a location both killers gave.He says: “Both Brady and Hindley, who weren’t in contact in prison, gave a location which the police searched, but found nothing. I believe they both thought the information was correct. At that point, Hindley was shopping Brady for everything – she was no longer protecting him. For them to share the same location makes me think it was the truth.”Searches of the area yielded nothing and bones found in 2022 by someone researching Keith’s murder turned out to be from an animal. But Michael believes advances in technology and detection methods may, in the future, show traces of Keith’s body at the site.He says: “Radar imaging has improved to the point that it is now very good at finding physical remnants like rocks that leave impressions in the soil. Finding bodies is much harder because they’re organic and they decay. But I do believe the tech will get there and he may well be found. Either that or there will be an accidental discovery, after a time of erosion. Those are the two best hopes.”Photo of Keith Bennett. The 12-year-old was one of five victims of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, with three of them later found buried on Saddleworth Moor(Image: PA)Michael, who commissioned The Moors Murders docuseries in 1999 and produced Myra: The Making of a Monster in 2003, is deeply saddened that Keith’s mother, Winnie Johnson, died, aged 78, in 2012, without finding her son. Michael, who met her, says: “She was the sweetest, loveliest, perfectly ordinary woman in every way. You could just tell her whole life had been ruined.“She talked about how she’d started going up onto the Moors, taking flowers for his birthday, Easter and Christmas. She liked going up there and found a certain peace. She said, ‘I feel he is up there somewhere’. She just wanted him to come home and it’s terribly unfair, because in four of the five cases, the bodies were found. She never got that resolution.”And, in 2025, a lawyer for Keith’s family hoped to gain access to two briefcases belonging to Brady. Held by his solicitor, they were rumoured to contain personal papers providing clues about Keith’s grave.But Michael believes the subsequent silence means this was bogus. He says: “My strong suspicion is if there was anything in them that was of any use to anybody, no self-respecting solicitor would not have made that stuff available. I suspect the truth is there’s nothing there.Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley(Image: SWNS)“I think it’s one of those myths that has been built up, like the idea that Brady went to his grave knowing where the body was and not revealing it. I think it’s highly improbable.” Michael’s extensive research of the serial killers has given him a unique insight into their warped minds.Describing the male-female murder duo as “unheard of” at the time, he says: “It was worst nightmare territory. They photographed the victims, they tape recorded the whole thing, they killed them on the moors in the dead of night and buried them in secret.“Brady was a psychopath, impervious to other people’s pain and suffering. If you look into serial killers, almost all of them come from highly abnormal, dysfunctional backgrounds. There may be a genetic predisposition but the environment is critical.” Before he met Hindley in 1961, Brady’s childhood had cultivated his dysfunction.Michael says: “Brady was born in the middle of the depression at a time of extreme poverty to an unmarried waitress. She puts an advert in a shop window, when he’s a few months old, and a family in the Gorbals, Glasgow, takes him in. The environment is violent. He doesn’t know who his parents are. He knows that he doesn’t belong in this family.Winifred Johnson, mother of missing boy Keith Bennett, pictured on Saddleworth Moor, with a photograph of her son, 25th January 1995(Image: Mirrorpix)“So he becomes this angry little boy, throwing tantrums, banging his head against the wall, screaming and shouting. From about 10, he’s carrying a knife. He starts breaking into people’s houses and becoming a thief. At a very early age he’s living beyond the law and justifies it by saying he’s getting his own back on the world. He starts showing sadistic behaviour towards other children. When he’s 13 he rapes another boy.”Infatuated by him, Hindley helps Brady to live out his sadistic fantasies in one of history’s depraved murder sprees. Michael says: “However much she was under his sway and influence, the truth is she must have enjoyed it. It was their little secret.” For now, the location of Keith Bennett’s and whether there were, indeed, further murders, remain unknown.Only time will tell if the bespectacled boy with the big smile will ever be laid to rest or if the Ramshaw Rocks beauty spot is, indeed, hiding a very ugly secret. Michael says: “You could be searching for five years. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. “So the mystery of the Moors Murders murders continues and we’ll be talking about it for years to come.”*The Moors Murders by Michael Attwell will be published on 4th June by HarperCollins (HarperElement, £10.99)READ MORE: World’s worst serial killers as Ted Bundy nailed for ANOTHER murder
