THREE years ago this week the discovery of a man’s body on Saddleworth Moor created a worldwide media storm.

Here, award winning investigative journalist KEN BENNETT, who broke the original story, revisits the scene and finds there are still more questions than answers:

I AM talking to a former pub landlord who possibly holds the tragic distinction of being the last person to speak to a man who became known as The Mystery Man of The Moor.

Mel Robinson was manning the bar at The Clarence, Greenfield, on a cold, cloudy December 11th afternoon three years ago when at about 2pm the man walked into, then bizarrely, out his life.

“He asked for ‘the way to the top of the mountain'." Mel recalls. “He was dressed in a light mac, open neck shirt, normal trousers and slip-on shoes. He just looked like a bloke going for a stroll.

“I took him to the pub door and gave him directions to the moor. I repeated the directions and added he couldn’t get to the top of the mountain and back again before going dark.

“But I went to bed that night still thinking about the man ... then police came the following day after finding a body.”

The body was two-and-a-half-miles from the pub’s front door, lying face upward in the loom of Robbs Rock on Chew Track leading from Dovestone Reservoir to the smaller Chew reservoir, which, when built in 1912, was England’s highest, at 488 metres.

Police found £130 in £10 notes in his right trouser pocket, no loose change, and in the left coat pocket three train tickets from the previous morning.

They were a single from Ealing Broadway to Euston and a return from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, getting him in just after midday.

However, the means of transport he took from Manchester to Greenfield on his last fateful journey is still open to speculation.

He wore no watch, carried no mobile phone and no hint of personal identity. But a small medicine bottle found on his body marked as treatment for a thyroid condition revealed traces of the deadly poison strychnine.

So why had he come to die on Saddleworth Moor?

With incredible tenacity and doggedness, Det Sgt John Coleman and fellow detective constables Kelly Bragg and Nichola Chapman from Oldham CID began a vertical, often totally frustrating climb, to piece together the life and times of a man originally tagged Neil Dovestone by mortuary attendants.

And it was a year to the day, after tracing medics who had repaired the dead man’s femur, he was finally identified as David Lytton from London who had sold up and moved to Lahore in Pakistan 10 years earlier.

Delph-based Sarah Hey turned the unfolding investigation into a compelling award-winning documentary, The Mystery Man of the Moor, for Channel 4 Despatches.

She tells me: “While we now know who he was, his life and circumstances of his death are still cloaked in mystery.

“Following Oldham CID as they painstakingly pieced together what information they had to discover his identity was both fascinating and frustrating.

“So many questions remain unanswered and the key to those most likely lies in Pakistan.

“Why did he leave when he did? Why was his money in Pakistan spent months after his death? Was the house he lived in in fact his?

“I would love nothing more than getting to the heart of David’s story but with the answers lying almost 4,000 miles away, I fear that while we now at least know who the mysterious man on the moor was, the truth about his life and reason for his death will never be solved.”

For 30 years of his life David Lytton had a soulmate, Maureen Toogood who lived near his London home.

Tragically, a delicate, elegantly-crafted crystal swan he gifted her is the only tangible reminder the retired nurse has of her life and times with him.

And, like all the principal characters in this story, she still ponders why he came to Saddleworth Moor.

Mel Robinson adds sagely:”The only one who knows that answer is Mr Lytton himself ...”