VICTIMS of the Moors Murderers could be buried on The Roaches on the wild moorland of Macclesfield.
A photo has been discovered of sadistic child killer Ian Brady at the picturesque Peak District spot - which investigators believe could be linked to a potential burial site where tragic victim Keith Bennett and other may well be hidden.
The chilling possibility that the notoriously evil couple Hindley and Brady could have buried victims on the Roaches came to light after the photo of Brady posing with the windswept backdrop was found in the possession of Myra Hindley's mother.
It was one of 200 pictures taken by Hindley which BBC investigators believe hold a secret code, which could reveal the burial sites of victims such as Keith Bennett.
The BBC 2 documentary screened last week, the Moors Murder Code, claims police began looking at certain photographs after they were handed letters Hindley wrote to her mother Nellie from jail.
The author of the documentary, Duncan Staff, says that after Hindley's death he was handed 200 pictures that were in her possession as well as her unpublished autobiography, which reveals that she and Brady were using pictures to record the sites of their victims' graves.
And one photo of sadistic Brady taken by his infatuated lover at the instantly recognisable spot reinforces fears cast by police over 40 years ago of a Macclesfield connection with the crimes that shocked the nation.
Deceased Chief Superintendent Arthur Morris of Cheshire Police, who led the murder investigation, claimed at the time that police knew that the couple had visited Macclesfield, and had been on the prowl for child victims a long time before they were caught.
The police chief, who later headed Macclesfield constabulary, and who was involved in inquiries leading to the couples arrest in Hattersley and searches on the moors, said over 40 years ago the couple HAD driven their car on the hills around Macclesfield and the Peak District.
He claimed there were two reasons for their trip; one was in the hope of claiming an unsuspected victim to abduct and murder and the other reason was to survey where the bodies could be hidden.
But whether there are bodies hidden on The Roaches may never be known.
Earlier this month, police were denied permission to search Ian Brady's room for further photographs, despite seeking a warrant after an investigation into letters and photographs left by Myra Hindley, after her death in November 2002, found they had secretly hoarded images of the graves long after they were convicted.
But the warrant was refused because of an obscure legal technicality; it could not be issued because there is no longer a possibility Brady would be charged over Keith Bennett's death.
Malcolm MacCulloch, who was Brady's psychiatrist and is now the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, examined the 200 photographs taken at the time of the Moors murders, and also claimed they showed burial sites.
Professor MacCulloch found that, over a number of years, Brady made repeated and insistent demands of a handful of the photos, which were being stored by Hindley's mother, Nellie.
The psychiatrist said it was common for serial killers to keep mementoes so they could relive the event.
The couples were sentenced to life for the murders of Lesley Ann Downey, ten, John Kilbride, 14, and Edward Evans, 17.
It was not until the 1980s that they confessed they had killed two or more children. the remains of Pauline Reade, 16, were recovered - but those of Keith Bennett have never been found.
Keith's elderly mother, Winnie Johnson, who went out on to the moors herself with spades in a bid to find her son, has repeatedly said she wants nothing more than to find Keith and give him a proper burial.
Greater Manchester Police have never closed the investigation into Keith Bennett's death. They recently hired an expert imager to look at all of Brad's pictures for images marking the grave of Keith Bennett, and the analysis of water samples from Saddleworth Moor for traces of a decomposing body.
The police say there is little they can do without new evidence to show them where to dig, and whether there are bodies hidden on the Roaches may never be known.
A spokesman said: "The work done on the photographs has proved to have been fruitless. The geological experts who have examined it have said that the location of the picture cannot be identified because of the lack of detail."
