World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 4 - Raoul Moat - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[ Suspenseful music plays ] -In July 2010, one man declared war on the Northumbria Police force.
After being released from prison, 37-year-old Raoul Moat shot his ex-girlfriend;
killed her new partner; and critically injured a police officer, shooting him at point-blank range.
-Moat rang the 999 system again and just basically asked Northumbria Police, "Do you believe me now?
I've just downed one of your guys." -The search for Raoul Moat had become the biggest news story in the country.
-People were following every move of this and, during that week of the manhunt, people had their televisions and their radios switched on
round the clock. -After a dramatic standoff with police aired live on British television,
Moat turned the shotgun on himself and pulled the trigger. -He wanted to be iconic.
He wanted to be infamous. He wanted to go out with a bang and not a whimper. -In just seven days, Raoul Moat had etched his name in history
as one of the world's most evil killers. [ Suspenseful music climbs ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ] It was a news story that gripped the nation. In the early hours of Saturday, the 10th of July 2010,
37-year-old Raoul Moat shot himself after a six-hour standoff with Northumbria police.
One of the biggest manhunts in UK history had come to a dramatic end. Moat had been on the run for seven days
after critically injuring his former girlfriend and killing her new boyfriend. He'd gone on to declare war on the police
and shot a uniformed officer. Moat was armed, full of rage, and extremely dangerous.
Jim Napier was the senior investigating officer at Northumbria Police. ♪♪ -It was clear that his intention was wider
that just targeting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. He was, in his words, now targeting police officers.
Therefore, it was clear that the risk and the threat had gone up quite significantly.
More armed officers had to be brought to the area to support the hunt, to find and arrest Moat,
because that's all we ever wanted to do, was find and arrest him and bring him to justice.
-He's making a lot of threats. He's saying, "This is it. You've taken my life. I'm going to take yours."
It's this real vendetta against the police. He's basically saying, "I'm doing this
because I'm entitled to. You better take me seriously." [ Melancholy tune plays ] -Former Sky News anchor Jeremy Thompson
was following the story as it unfolded. -It was a July day, the start of summer,
and not a lot of other stories around, so, one story can suddenly take hold and dominate the news agenda,
so, without much else around, every news outfit in the country sent their best resources up to the Newcastle area
to find out more about this story and to find out more about the man that the police believe was behind it all: Raoul Moat.
[ Piano plays suspenseful tune ] -And this killer's story begins in 1973. Raoul Moat was born on the 17th of June
in Gateshead, in the northeast of England. -He was raised largely by his grandmother.
His mother had some mental health issues, but she lived in the local area, so, he did have some contact with her,
but it wasn't anything really out of the ordinary. A lot of families have to cope with that kind of thing.
-During the 1970s and '80s, the northeast of England was an area in economic decline.
Its traditional heavy industries, such as shipbuilding and mining, were phased out
and many men lost their jobs. -It wasn't a particularly economically prosperous area,
so it was always gonna be a challenge for Moat to find his way in the world as a man.
Many teenagers go through a lot of changes, particularly at momentous points in their teenage years.
When Moat was 16, he left school and there were some changes in him around about that time,
so, he became quite fixated on bodybuilding and this is something that you often find
with young, working-class lads in an area where the prospects of those traditional
kind of tough, men's jobs are few and far between. They look to other ways to become men,
to make themselves visibly masculine, and I think that was what Moat was doing. -When you see the results, then, in anything, you get more,
"Oh, wow. This is working." So then he wanted more and more and then he started to get into steroids.
-It was clear that Moat had had some serious psychiatric problems growing up and he'd obviously desired to express himself
as the big feller around town. He was 6'3", 17 stone, and liked this idea of being a large, well-built, muscled bodybuilder
and he clearly used a lot of steroids and people who were close to him talked, time and time again,
about just what a terrible temper he'd got. -Moat was somebody who has what I would describe
as poor behavioral control, so, somebody who flies off the handle quite easily, somebody who's quite readily aggravated,
and, if you throw steroids into the mix, you get what people often refer to as roid rage, you know,
a real inability to control your temper, and it increases the levels of testosterone in the body.
So, when somebody has a predilection towards aggression and then you add that on top of it,
you've got a really toxic mix. -Moat had found work as a tree surgeon and his physical appearance came in handy
in his other role, as a nightclub doorman. By 2005, the 32-year-old was caught by the police,
carrying a knuckle-duster and a samurai sword. He'd fallen foul of the law on numerous occasions.
-He was known to the police for incidents of domestic abuse. He had a number of partners with which he had
troubled relationships with and the police were involved. He had had arrests for, generally speaking,
low-level violence. -By 2010, 37-year-old Moat had fathered several children with different partners.
His latest girlfriend, Samantha, was 15 years his junior. They'd been in an on-and-off relationship for six years
and had a daughter together. -Well, the relationship between Samantha and Moat was an incredibly controlling one.
It's one that I classify as coercively controlling. So Moat believed that Samantha was his possession.
He was in control; he decided what happened and she basically had to suck it up and get on with it, so it was his rules.
Everything was focused around him. -And he would control everything. [ Melancholy tune plays ] He would control her movements,
what she could buy or could not buy, what she did, you know, who she talked to on the phone.
So, obviously, Samantha would probably feel like completely controlled. She didn't have the right to do anything.
-You often find, in relationships like this, women are kind of treading on eggshells,
trying not to upset their abusive partner, but at the same time, it's very, very difficult for them to leave.
Often, looking from the outside, we say, "Well, why are you staying in this relationship?"
And, often, it's to keep themselves safe because they know that, if they were to leave,
they'd put themselves in quite a significant amount of danger. -Samantha was desperate to leave Raoul Moat
and, in the spring of 2010, a chance presented itself. Moat was convicted of assaulting a family member
and sentenced to 18 weeks in Durham Prison, something that only aggravated him further.
-I am not a psychologist, but, it was clear to me that Moat was a bit of a psychopath.
He was always willing to blame others for everything that he did wrong. Everybody else was responsible.
The social services were wrong. His legal team were wrong 'cause they gave him bad advice
and the police were picking on him. -He's always laying the blame at somebody else's door
because he doesn't think that he can do anything wrong and that's a classic trait of somebody who's narcissistic.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -Raoul Moat was locked away, but he was a man holding a grudge and wanted revenge.
For the past six years, he had been in an on-and-off relationship with his 22-year-old girlfriend, Samantha.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] -Moat being in prison had a significant impact on his relationship with Samantha.
For a man like Moat, it's very, very important to be in control all of the time,
especially in terms of your personal relationships. When he's removed from that domestic picture,
he has to try really hard to keep control, so, he's on the phone to Samantha quite a lot.
He has one of his friends essentially stalking her and checking what she's up to.
-While Moat was in prison, Samantha did keep in contact with him. She had a daughter to him,
and she kept in touch with him for the sake of that child. -Samantha tried to convince Moat over the phone that it was over,
but any talk of separation fell on deaf ears. -She was probably scared of him. You'd be scared, if you have,
you know, a man that big saying, "I am the man and, if you don't do what I tell you, you know,
you're gonna get hurt," or something. So she didn't know how to escape. So, him being put in prison, to her, it was like, "Whew!"
You know, something helped her out here. You know, she finally was away from him.
But the problem was Sam knew he was coming back. -In his mind, the relationship wasn't over.
In his mind, they were going to reconcile, but, she didn't have that plan at all and the sort of straw
that appears to have broken the camel's back was her announcing the fact that she was
in a new relationship with Christopher Brown. ♪♪ -Christopher, a 29-year-old karate instructor
originally from Berkshire, moved to Newcastle in October 2009. He met Samantha in June 2010, whilst Moat was still in prison.
Christopher's mother, Sally, was unaware of their relationship. -As far as I know, Sam and Christopher
only met each other a couple of weeks. They hadn't been going out with each other for very long at all.
Christopher went up to Newcastle. He said he was going for the weekend. I said, "Okay, fine."
And then I got a phone call sort of like a few days later and he said, "Well, Mum, I've got a chance
for work here with karate. I'm gonna stay." Didn't like it, but, okay, fine, and that was it.
He seemed to settle down. He loved what he was doing. -Samantha had told Moat that her new boyfriend
was a police officer. -Christopher was never a police officer, never. He was a karate instructor.
Um -- Never even thought of joining the police force, so, I think she was just trying to back Moat off,
so I think that must be the only reason she told him that. -She'd lied to Moat because she was afraid of Moat
and she knew that, when he came out, he would've gone to her and to the new boyfriend.
So she started saying that he was a police officer 'cause that would intimidate people.
She also said that he was a karate instructor, a black belt in karate. -Periods of separation are a really high-risk time
for people who have just come out of an abusive relationship because the abuser has essentially lost control,
at this point in time. The victim has taken some power back and has some authority,
now, over their own lives, and the abuser hates that and they're gonna resort to quite drastic measures
to get that control back. -So the only thing he had to look forward to is going back to Sam, to the person he loved,
and then she took that away from him, right? And that would just like completely
bring his anger to the surface, like crazy. -There's no doubt at all that those conversations,
while Moat was in Durham Prison, were the blue touch papers that ignited the bonfire that became Raoul Moat.
♪♪ -Moat's anger was uncontrollable. He decided he was going to kill Christopher Brown
as soon as he got out of jail. He enlisted the help of a friend -- Karl Ness. ♪♪
-Moat started planning this while he was in prison. He recruited or he used Karl Ness
to keep an eye on Samantha and do what we would call surveillance, by watching her house,
seeing who comes and goes, identifying vehicles, and trying to identify who the new boyfriend was.
-On Thursday, the 1st of July 2010, 37-year-old Raoul Moat was released from prison.
He didn't waste any time. It's alleged that Karl Ness had found a shotgun for him to use.
-The way in which Moat planned this was quite meticulous. He took steps to try and identify the karate instructor,
i.e. Christopher, by making phone calls to health centers, to karate clubs, to the extent that he actually drove around the routes
that they took on the fatal night. He actually had a dry run, if you like, on the Thursday night.
-On Friday, the 2nd of July, staff at Durham Prison warned Northumbria Police that Moat might pose a risk to Samantha,
but, unfortunately, the information wasn't acted upon. The same day, Moat was captured on CCTV in Newcastle,
sporting a Mohican hairstyle. Later that night, Karl Ness drove Moat to nearby Gateshead,
where Samantha and Christopher were at a house party. -Moat was dropped off quite near the address
that Samantha and Christopher were visiting and he was able to walk in there and hide himself underneath the front window,
next to the front door, where he was able to listen. Because it was a July night, the window was open.
It was warm. -He could hear people talking and saying things and he picked up on things that were being said about him
or things that he perceived to be about him and he started texting his friend Ness
and expressing his anger and frustration at what he was hearing. "This is going on. It's really annoying me."
He's essentially venting and this is something that you see narcissistic people do quite a lot.
They want an audience for their complaints and their rants. They want validation.
They want other people to agree with them and say, "Yeah. You're completely reasonable."
♪♪ -Moat lay in wait outside the house. ♪♪ -Round about 2:30 in the morning, Samantha and Christopher leave
and, as they come out of the front door, Moat stood up. He was clearly armed with a gun and pretty much without warning,
he immediately shot Christopher. Christopher started trying to run away and, as he's trying to run across the grass area,
he was shot again, which was was enough to make him fall. Moat then calmly walked over,
reloaded his gun in front of witnesses, and then shot him a third time, causing his death.
It was nothing more than a cold and calculated assassination. -It was a public execution.
[ Gunshot ] Moat had used a sawn-off shotgun to shoot Christopher Brown at point-blank range.
-Certainly, with a close-range discharge of a shotgun, even with small pellets, you're going to get a large mass going into the body.
That's going to lacerate major organs, major blood vessels, very likely to be fatal.
-To create maximum damage, Moat had loaded his shotgun with lead fishing weights.
-They're bigger. They're heavier. They do more damage. They're going to make those discharges more lethal.
-Christopher had no chance of survival, but amidst the horror unfolding in front of her very eyes,
Samantha had managed to run back into the house to seek refuge. -After he'd shot Chris, he then turned round
and walked towards the house that they'd been in. He could clearly see that Samantha was
in the sitting room there and he fired a shot at Samantha which went through the window and struck her in the abdomen,
causing her some critical injuries. So he had fatally wounded one victim; he had critically injured a second victim,
and then he calmly walked away from the scene. [ Suspenseful music climbs ] -Moat had no idea
whether he'd killed Samantha or not. -Well, most people, when they commit a murder,
they are absolutely horrified at what they've done. They can't quite believe the magnitude of it.
They often go into a state of shock and literally don't know what they're doing afterwards,
but Moat was very calm; he was very calculated. He phoned his friend. He said, "I'm full of beans,"
and the reason for that was because he thought he'd restored the natural order of things.
He felt entitled to carry out those shootings. -Moat had casually left the scene armed with his shotgun.
-For him, it seemed to have been a bit like "Mission accomplished," and he seemed quite calm and pleased with hisself.
-But he would not remain calm for long. Raoul Moat had killed Christopher Brown and critically injured Samantha in front of other party guests.
[ Siren wailing ] The police were searching [ Suspenseful music plays ] for the 37-year-old,
but he was one step ahead. Moat had left a letter with a friend to deliver to detectives later in the day.
It warned the police would "pay for what they've done." -He had a 49-page letter that he'd written,
outlining his complaints about various things, and you often see this with people who are narcissistic.
When they have a complaint, when they're angry about something, it's not enough for them to just make a concise statement
and sum it up neatly. They will go on and on and on and, in these statements and these letters, they'll be saying, you know,
"This is all about victimizing me. I'm the victim here. Everybody's out to get me."
And it goes on. It's embellished. It's exaggerated. He's a classic narcissist. -The same day, 300 miles away, in Berkshire,
uniformed officers paid a visit to Sally Brown, the mother of murdered 29-year-old karate instructor Christopher.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] -It was our local police that came round to me. They just said that there'd been an incident
and that Christopher was dead, but then I had the family liaison officer from Newcastle
[sniffling] on the phone and they didn't tell me too much over the phone. I think it was a case of I wasn't listening, anyway.
All I heard was, "Your son's dead." That was it. It's -- You seem to sort of cut everything else off when --
When you're told something like this, you -- I think your body and your brain just goes into --
Um, how could I describe it? You're hearing people; they're talking to you. And, at the time, I was at home.
I was listening to these people on the phone and I was talking to the police officers
at the house with me, but I could also hear my daughter screaming in the background.
She's absolutely gone hysterical. ♪♪ He was a lad. He was a typical little boy. He was just very happy, laughing all the time,
and he would help anybody, if he could. He wouldn't let anyone get hurt. He was just a nice lad.
But then I'm biased, I suppose, [laughing] 'cause he's my boy. When you lose one of your children,
you just can't describe it. Can't describe it. [sniffle] It's horrendous. -While the Brown family mourned,
Raoul Moat was still on the run. His hatred towards the police was rising. Samantha had told Moat
that Christopher Brown worked for them. -I think he was on the understanding Christopher was a police officer because Sam had gone in
and told him that he was a police. Christopher's never been in the police force.
He's... a karate instructor and, whether she thought telling him that he was would back him off a bit, I don't know.
-Moat's hostility towards the police was turning into a vendetta, and he was keen for them to know who they were dealing with.
In the early hours of Sunday, the 4th of July, after being on the run for 24 hours,
Moat dialed 999. You've had too much from me. ♪♪ -Raoul Moat spent a number of minutes ranting on the phone,
effectively declaring war on Northumbria Police and saying, "I'm coming to get you.
Youse have ruined my life. I'm coming to get you." -Essentially, he wants an audience.
He wants to vent, and this call really is a poor-me monologue. He's saying to the operator,
"This is all your fault," "you" being the police. "You've done this to me." It's all about him.
It's saying, "These are the reasons why I've done what I've done, because I've been driven to it by other people.
I'm not responsible." -After making the 999 call, Moat had stepped up his vendetta against the police.
A friend, Qhuram Awan, was driving him around in a black Lexus. Moat was actively hunting for police officers.
-Moat's two closest associates in the criminal underworld were Ness and Awan. They assisted him the moment that he left Durham Prison.
-Just 12 minutes after making his threatening call to police, Moat spotted a sitting police car
at a roundabout in the Denton area. Inside was 42-year-old PC David Rathband. -Moat approached the car from behind,
tapping the passenger window, and David turned and, as soon as he turned, Moat shot...
[ Gunshot ] ...once through the window, which hit David right in the middle of the face.
He fell into the foot compartment of his car. -Despite his serious condition, PC Rathband tried
to activate the emergency button in his vehicle. Moat then shot him for a second time and calmly walked away.
-Moat was on the angry rampage. If he had passed another police officer on a motorcycle,
he probably would've stopped and shot him as well. If there was a police officer in the shop,
he'd probably shoot him as well. It's because he only found one. If he had found more, he would've shot more.
-When Raoul Moat shot PC David Rathband, it signified a real escalation in his offending.
This wasn't just about Raoul Moat and people who had annoyed him. -It was a callous attack.
David Rathband had sustained life-threatening injuries. He had survived, but he would never see again.
-As a forensic pathologist, if you're told somebody has been shot at very close range, in the face, with a shotgun,
you're expecting to perform an autopsy. That person is almost certainly dead. I think it's almost miraculous
that David Rathband survived what happened to him. You can see, from the X-rays,
the number of little pellets in him. Any one of those could easily have gone and struck something utterly vital and killed him.
He's been shot in the face. -Moat made yet another 999 call. He was determined to make sure the police knew it was him
who'd shot the 42-year-old father of two. -Within maybe an hour of that incident,
Moat basically asked Northumbria Police, "Do you believe me now? I've just downed one of your guys
and just remind colleagues in Northumbria that I'm coming to get you," and that was a big, big game-changer in this manhunt.
-What appeared, at first, to be a domestic dispute with a fatal outcome was quickly evolving into a much bigger story
with nationwide interest. Jeremy Thompson was the anchor for Sky News. -Within 24 hours,
policeman David Rathband had been shot in the face, a rare occurrence, for a policeman to be shot in Britain.
That really ramped up the story. The media poured into the Northeast very quickly.
It became an unprecedented manhunt over that long, hot, July week up in the northeast of England
and the media interest was intense. People had their televisions and their radios switched on
round the clock. -It was a difficult time for the Brown family. -I couldn't turn the news on because [sniffle]
every time something came up about it, it was always Raoul Moat's photo that they were showing
because he was the one that was on the run and what have you, but, even afterwards [sniffle] I said to the police, once,
that, "It seems as though [sniffle] Christopher was a number put under the carpet."
-The following day, Monday, the 5th of July, it emerged that Moat had posted on his Facebook page,
"I've lost everything. Watch and see what happens." With his behavior becoming increasingly erratic,
the authorities were warning the public not to approach him. -This wasn't just about Raoul Moat
and his personal issues with his relationships. This represented a real risk to the public, so,
the scale of this case, now, was incredibly significant. -It was an operation that was supported
by police forces from across the country, colleagues from London, Liverpool, Manchester.
There was equipment sent from Northern Ireland. There was a huge response to this
because day-to-day policing had to continue in the Northumbria Police area. They had to be there in numbers
and they had to have the right equipment. They had to be armed. -It was on an epic scale.
They had not only got 160 armed officers, but also, they'd got special armored vehicles.
They'd got specially trained tracker dogs. They'd got helicopters up and they'd even got an RAF jet up there,
running reconnaissant missions over that whole area. It was an extraordinary reaction to what they knew, at the time,
to be perhaps no more than one man with a gun on the loose. -After shooting and blinding PC David Rathband
at point-blank range on Sunday, July the 4th, Moat had gone off the radar. -Two shooting incidents in 24 hours and then gone.
No more phone calls; no more messages. He just vanished into thin air. -We did not know where he was.
He had come down, caused all that damage and then disappeared. -Police appeal to the gunman to turn himself in,
but Moat remained on the loose, armed, and extremely dangerous. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
On the 6th of July, the black Lexus Moat had used when he shot PC Rathband was found abandoned
in the small town of Rothbury, 30 miles north of Newcastle. Police set up a two-mile exclusion zone
and urged residents to stay indoors. -The hunt suddenly started to focus on a very pretty market town called Rothbury,
right on the edge of the Northumberland National Park, a beautiful little town on the Coquet River,
surrounded by glorious, but pretty remote, countryside that, presumably, Moat knew pretty well
and felt that he could steer clear of the police around there and, whatever game he had in mind,
whatever he was doing to taunt the police, at the time, or to evade the police, he felt it was his best bet.
-There was still no sign of Moat, but police had found an abandoned campsite in Rothbury and a Dictaphone
with recordings of Moat complaining how unhappy he was with the media reports about his private life.
He also made threats to the general public, unless the stories stopped. -So, he's listening to what's going on in the media.
He's following the coverage, so all of this is gonna be fueling his aggravation and his sense of annoyance, essentially.
So, this is somebody who's becoming incredibly dangerous the more bruised their ego becomes.
-On Wednesday, the 7th of July 2010, police found yet another letter in a tent. It was addressed to his ex-girlfriend, Samantha.
Moat was somewhere nearby, but detectives still didn't know exactly where. They offered a £10,000 reward for any information
that could lead to the 37-year-old's capture. -I would ask people to keep contacting
either Northumbria Police or Crimestoppers with any information they believe may be relevant.
There is a £10,000 reward for information which leads to the detention of Mr. Moat.
-The media interest in the case was intensifying, with rolling 24-hour news reports.
By Thursday, the 8th of July, Moat had now been on the run for five days, but the police had finally made a breakthrough.
-One of the most curious twists in this whole story, that, at one stage, a few days into the manhunt,
police were telling us they believe that Moat was holding two hostages, but then, strangely, this story twisted round.
The next thing we hear is that the police have arrested two men, Ness and Awan, who, they now tell us, they believe
were friends and aiders and abettors of the runaway man, Raoul Moat. Within 24 hours, it had gone from two hostages
to two men arrested, believed to have some involvement in Moat's escape and, perhaps, even the shootings itself.
-The arrest of Moat's accomplices, 26-year-old Karl Ness and 23-year-old Qhuram Awan,
was a mere sideshow to the manhunt around Rothbury. By now, the media had been issued with a news blackout.
-Not a complete blackout, but a blackout on some of the personal details that, clearly, they felt was stirring up Moat even more,
making him even more potentially dangerous. -The hunt for Raoul Moat had elevated the killer to a bizarre cult status.
-So, for some people, Raoul Moat is an antihero, you know? He represents somebody who stands up to authority,
somebody who doesn't follow the rules and, for some people, that's something to be admired, unfortunately.
-Moat's time was running out. On Friday, the 9th of July, a local resident spotted a man
walking next to the river in Rothbury. -She approached a police patrol, who went down to check it out.
As soon as Moat saw the police vehicle, he sunk to his knees, put the gun to his head,
and that's when the standoff started. -Some of those images will live with me forever.
I can remember them vividly, live, constantly going back to seeing what was happening.
Moat, on his knees. That riverbank is the abiding image of Raoul Moat, in almost everybody's mind.
-On the evening of Friday, the 9th of July, the nation was glued to their television sets
as the drama unfolded. But this wasn't a film. It was real life. The police were dealing with a man who was erratic,
armed, and extremely dangerous. -We had police negotiators who were there on the scene, face-to-face,
who spent the next six hours or so speaking to him and trying to persuade him that the right thing to do
was put the gun down and surrender hisself to custody. -The police were determined to make sure that Moat
came out of the standoff alive. The presence of the media added extra pressure on their performance.
-You're there, focused on doing your job, but you're doing your job in the knowledge that there's lots of people watching you,
scrutinizing you, and some of them judging you. -But Moat wasn't planning on giving himself up so easily
and the case continued to attract media attention. -Extraordinary part of this story
was the involvement of celebrities. Almost as the manhunt came to its dramatic and fatal climax,
we got the almost bizarre scene of Gazza, Paul Gascoigne, famous England footballer,
turning up in his dressing gown claiming to know Raoul Moat and offering Moat chicken and lager,
if he gave himself up. Didn't come to anything. The police just asked Gazza to, politely, leave the town
and had nothing more to do with it. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -As the night of Friday, the 9th of July,
turned into the early hours of Saturday, the situation remained tense. Negotiations with Moat weren't working
and he remained where he was, with a gun pointed at his own head. -It was an incredibly long and tense night.
Darkness fell. We really could see very little of what was going on. We could just see the outlines of the police cordon.
And the night dragged on after midnight into the small hours and it was around 1:00 in the morning
when there was a dramatic series of events, hard to make out. It was confused. It was dark.
It was very difficult to know exactly what the sequence of events were. -In one last attempt to capture Moat,
the police decided to use a Taser on the 37-year-old. They were determined to take him alive.
-On this occasion, the Tasers that were used were long Tasers, like shotgun-style Tasers,
which hadn't yet been approved for use by the police. When you're in a mind-set and a determination to arrest somebody,
to call them to account for the crimes that they've committed in the safest possible way,
then, it was right and proper that it was given a try. It didn't work. ♪♪ -At approximately 1:15 am on Sunday, the 10th of July,
the sound of a shotgun blast... [ Gunshot, shouting ] ...followed by shouting signaled that Raoul Moat had taken his own life.
-I don't think the police had any chance of talking Raoul Moat down. He wanted to be iconic.
He wanted to be infamous. He wanted to go out with a bang and not a whimper. -A seven-day manhunt and a six-hour standoff
had come to a dramatic conclusion. [ Melancholy tune plays ] -He clearly had decided that he didn't want to be taken captive.
He didn't want another sentence in jail again. This was it. This was his final stand.
This was the moment he decided to pack up, give up, not be taken again. [ Sinister music plays ]
-With Moat dead, the police focus their attention on those who had aided him during the seven days.
In March 2011 at Newcastle Crown Court, Moat's two accomplices, 26-year-old Karl Ness and 23-year-old Qhuram Awan,
were convicted of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, and armed robbery. Awan was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years,
while Ness was further convicted of murder and a firearms offense and sentenced to a minimum 40 years.
Awan's defense solicitor told reporters, "This trial is 'Hamlet' without the prince."
♪♪ -They were Moat's assistants. They were, in every sense, the sorcerer's apprentice.
They were. They had to facilitate Moat's plan, which was to become famous. He wanted his 15 minutes of celebrity
and, boy, he was gonna get them. [ Melancholy tune plays ] -In a further tragic turn,
in February 2012, PC David Rathband took his own life. Unable to cope with his blindness since the shooting,
he hanged himself. His colleagues at Northumbria Police believe that 44-year-old David had become Moat's second victim.
♪♪ -David's involvement in this case, you know, he was a police officer doing his job in uniform
to the best of his ability and, without warning, he suffered horrific injuries that changed his life
and, in my view, ultimately led to his death, and I will always hold Raoul Moat responsible
for killing David Rathband. -These people do these things, and they don't think about the consequences
of the people that they leave behind. They said it would get easier, but, no. [sniffle] It gets harder.
-Everybody talks about the Raoul Moat case. This started as the Christopher Brown murder inquiry.
My team investigated it. It continued to be the Christopher Brown murder inquiry.
The only thing he did wrong was he fell for a girl who Moat believed was his possession
and he would use any force to deal with that, and he did, and we should never forget
that Christopher was the first victim here. ♪♪ -Christopher was a very happy-go-lucky,
fun-loving person. He was a good son. He was a good friend to his friends, a good brother to his sister. [sniffle]
He's never out of our thoughts. He's -- I just miss him so much. ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music plays ]
-Raoul Moat was full of rage when he left Durham Prison on July 1, 2010, but no one could've imagined the lengths he would go to
in order to get back at his girlfriend. His murderous rampage left an innocent man dead,
executed in cold blood; his ex-girlfriend wounded and scarred for life; and a police officer blind and suicidal;
all this before turning the gun on himself. His selfish lust for revenge and notoriety
turned him into the most infamous man in Britain and one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪

In 2010, bodybuilder Raoul Moat shot his ex-girlfriend and her partner, and went on the run and declared war on Northumbria police, vowing not to stop killing officers until he was dead.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Raoul Moat's 2010 rampage left one dead, one injured, and a police officer blind before he took his own life after a manhunt.

Key points

Raoul Moat Declares War. In July 2010, Raoul Moat declared war on the Northumbria Police after a violent rampage.
The Dramatic End of a Manhunt. After a six-hour standoff, Raoul Moat shot himself, ending one of the UK's biggest manhunts.
A Mother's Heartbreak. Sally Brown receives the devastating news of her son Christopher's death at the hands of Raoul Moat.
Raoul Moat's Vendetta. Moat escalates his vendetta against the police, leading to a shocking attack.
The Dramatic Standoff. A tense standoff unfolds as Moat refuses to surrender, armed and dangerous.
The Final Moments. Raoul Moat takes his own life, concluding a week of chaos and violence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He wanted to go out with a bang and not a whimper.

Describing Moat's desire for infamy.

1:08WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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