Human remains are reported to have been found on Saddleworth Moor, the bleak stretch of the Pennine hills where Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley buried their child victims.

The discovery, reported by Sky News, raised the possibility that police may at last have discovered the final resting place of Keith Bennett, the third victim, whose body has never been found.

However, a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police has played down the likelihood of a link between the find and the Moors murders.

Officers were called around 1pm to reports of remains found at Wessenden Head Road on Saddleworth Moor, near Huddersfield. A spokesman said it was not clear whether the remains were human, adding: “Inquiries are on-going.”

Times Archive, 1966: Life for Moors case couple

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were both sentenced at the bodies on the moor trial to life imprisonment

• Topic: The Moors Murders

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David Kirwan, the solicitor acting for Keith’s mother Winnie Johnson, said police had not been in touch about any discovery.

Keith, 12, was abducted in June 1964 as he made his way to his grandmother's house in Gorton.

Brady and Hindley did not confess to his murder until 1986, after Keith's mother wrote a heartfelt plea to Hindley in prison begging her to put an end to the torment of not knowning what had happened to her son.

Mrs Johnson, now 74, has never given up hope that she will finally be able to bury him. Several years ago she said: "Keith was my eldest son and I won't rest until he is found. All I want in life now is to keep the story in the public eye and keep the case open until Keith is returned to me."

Brady and Hindley's murders began in July 1963 when they killed Pauline Reade, 16, after Hindley lured her into her car as she walked along a Manchester street. The couple drove her up onto on Saddleworth Moor where Brady hit her on the head with shovel, raped her, and slit her throat so deeply she was almost decapitated.

In November they struck again, luring John Kilbride into their car in Ashton-under-Lyme on the pretence of asking him for help with some boxes, and driving him to the moors, where he was sexually assaulted and strangled with a piece of string.

Keith Bennett was taken six months later, four days after his 12th birthday. When he finally confessed to the killing many years later, Brady said that he lured the child into a ravine and strangled him with string. Lesley Ann Downey, 10, was the couple's fourth victim, murdered on Boxing Day 1964, after Hindley forced her to pose for obscene photographs and then recorded the child begging for her life on reel-to-reel audio tape.

The two year killing spree ending only when David Smith, Hindley's brother-in law, whom the couple had decided to groom as an accomplice, witnessed the murder of Edward Evans, the fifth and final victim, and went to the police with his wife, Hindley's sister.

HIndley died of a heart attack in prison in 2002, at the age of 60. Brady spent 19 years in prison until he was declared insane in 1985, and placed in a high security mental hospital.

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