I’ve slept one hour per night for weeks now. It feels like I’m watching a film, not real at all.
– from Raoul Moat’s letters
Friday night in Newcastle has traditionally been for many people a big night out. The town’s reputation as a place where girls and boys party hard is no exaggeration – indeed having a ‘cracking’ night out is almost an entitlement in that part of the world.
Not that it differs too greatly from other northern towns, but generally speaking Newcastle is thought to have the highest estimated level of binge drinking in England. Friday nights see thousands out on the city’s streets; the Bigg Market and The Gate entertainment complex attract the greatest numbers of revellers. But the atmosphere is positive; everyone is chasing a good time, not aggravation.
Where there is alcohol, however, trouble is never far away and the city council has gone to great lengths to try and improve safety at night. In partnership with the bars, the areas now have taxi marshals on patrol as well as street pastors to try and smooth over and pre-empt any flash points of disagreement and potential violence. The night-time economy is now worth millions to the city, and as the economic decline of the 1970s and 1980s flattened out, it seemed that young professionals started to move back to the town centre and that leisure became one of the few economic sectors that had the potential to keep growing.
Raoul had been part of all that. In his role ‘on the doors’, he used to watch and supervise the crowds as they went into clubs and back out onto the streets. Raoul had loved ‘the doors’.
This Friday, early in July, was no different than any other. The number of people out isn’t really affected by the weather, which in turn is another part of Newcastle’s reputation as a party town. Lasses will step out in skimpy outfits on a wet weekend in November just as they do on a warm evening in July. The Daily Mail was even prompted to run a feature highlighting research that suggested that northern women really don’t feel the cold as they have ‘thicker skin’; the suggestion was that further north, women eat 46 grams of saturated fat each day compared to the 33 grams consumed by women from the South East.
The north/south divide is alive and well, although researchers at Newcastle’s International Centre for Life conceded that going out without a coat on a cold night is just as likely to be a cultural norm as it is a factor of being ‘hardy’. That northern women like their finery, enjoy display, and aren’t inclined to spend half the night worrying about finding a cloakroom, are perhaps factors that really dictate what women wear on a night out. Moat had his views. He was conscious of what women wore and particular about how his girlfriends presented themselves. He had been very particular about Sam: he liked her to look a certain way, as he had been very proud of her.
Now he knew in his heart of hearts that there would be no more Friday nights out; no more buzzes of anticipation, or the awareness of knowing that you’d be seen out and about with your glamorous girlfriend on your arm, a real man with a lot going for him. That was gone. It was all narrowing down to one place and one time. And that time would be tonight: a ‘straightener’.
He’d spoken with Sam and he’d hated listening to her. She was firm about it being over between them and it was as if the Sam he knew, the Sam he needed, had gone. To Moat, this girlfriend had been all he had ever wanted and her decision to end their relationship and to drive him out of her and his daughter’s life rendered every other option before him futile. A ‘straightener’ meant tackling this new man. Sam said it wasn’t going to happen.
Moat had carried out his own research concerning his girlfriend’s latest man. It was true that he was a karate instructor and a body builder and, evidently, he wasn’t the kind of man Raoul could easily intimidate. Then there was all this talk about him being a policeman. Moat looked into that too. Sam saying that the guy was a police officer pushed every button. The aggrieved ex-lover felt that she should know instinctively that this knowledge made him feel bullied and hemmed in. He was sure that she knew how he felt himself to be persecuted by the police and that by saying that her boyfriend was a police officer, it was not an attempt to keep him away but was a remark designed to taunt and provoke him. How could she have known him so well and now expect him to just give up? He wrote: Your mam and boyfriend don’t really know me, but you do.
He called Sam a few times that night, trying to talk to her, trying to see if she’d make it all stop. But she was out, in Gateshead, at a pub with her new boyfriend, and although she spoke to him on the phone, it made matters worse, not better. He could hear that noise and laughter of the crowd in the pub in the background and it was tipping him closer to the point of no return. The weight of his grief was too much to bear. He could no longer carry it, someone else had to. As he wrote to Sam: You see, you can kill a person without ever physically harming them, you just make them harm themselves.
If Sam didn’t know that, now he’d have to show her.
The drive didn’t take long, Sam’s parents’ home was only eight miles or so from Fenham. He knew that she would be heading back there after a night out with this new man, Chris Brown.
Sam had arranged for a babysitter to look after her daughter Chanel until morning and the plan had been that she would stay over at Chris’s place, but after the calls from Moat, that now changed. Chris could see that Moat had upset Sam and so he suggested that he take her back to her parents’ home instead. She agreed: she’d prefer to be near them and Chanel but she suggested that she should go back there alone. Although Raoul had been making threats against Chris, Sam sensed that he didn’t know what her new boyfriend looked like and so if he stayed away from her family’s home, he would be safe. Chris wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t be happy unless he knew that he’d got her home safely and, besides, he wasn’t the kind of man to hide just because an ex was being unreasonable. He’d take care of her, no matter what.
Chris wasn’t from the North East, he’d arrived fairly recently from his home in Slough to take up a new job, and although he’d not lived in the locality long, he’d quickly made good friends at the gym and was popular. He was easy-going and always made an effort with people, he had a ready smile, was quick-witted and good company. For Chris, meeting Sam had been a bonus. She had come to the gym a few times and they’d always have a laugh. They’d been out on a few dates and it was still early days but he thought they got on very well. He liked Sam and didn’t like to see her upset about her ex.
In fact, it wasn’t to her parents’ house that they arrived just after midnight; they returned to Jackie’s house, a friend of Sam’s who lived in the house next door-but-one. Chanel was upstairs asleep and Sam’s mum Lesley was up chatting with Jackie. They asked Chris in and all sat together in the front room to talk about the night. Chris wanted to make sure that Sam wasn’t too worried about Moat. He stayed and chatted and made Sam laugh – it was the best way to distract her and make her feel that everything would be okay. Chris reasoned that of course Moat was upset, after all he’d only just got out of prison and, as the jealous type, he was likely to be feeling hard done by. It would all calm down over time.
Jackie’s house was well kept, Raoul could see that. There was a porch built around the front door and to the right of that, flowerpots under the front-room window. It was easy for Moat to slip through the black wrought-iron gate and squat down under this window nursing the sawn-off shotgun. He heard their voices; he heard Sam laughing.
Raoul’s ex-partner had decided to leave Chanel to sleep upstairs. She did think about carrying her next-door-but-one to her mum’s house but thought it best not to disturb the little girl now since it was so late: it had gone 2.30am. This is how Sam described the next few minutes. It was time for Chris to leave; he had a busy day ahead of him and so made ready to depart. He could tell that Sam was happy again, that her mind was free of the worries that she’d had about Moat.
The couple walked to the door. Chris was on Sam’s left and he kissed her goodbye just before they both stepped out into the night. As they walked towards the green at the front of the house, it took nothing, a matter of seconds, for Moat to jump up, aim, and then shoot Chris. Sam screamed out – the noise had been deafening and she felt the force of the gunshot. She knew Moat was the gunman even though her ex had not said a word.
Chris staggered forward and Raoul shot again, this time hitting him in the back. He fell, but did not yell out. Sam was screaming at Moat, unable to comprehend what was happening in front of her eyes. She ran to Chris and Moat slowly followed. The three were alone on the green. Sam turned to look at Moat and she saw something that made her blood run cold – there was no expression at all on Moat’s face. Nothing. She had seen his rage before, his anger, the way his features would contort as he lashed out. But now he was a blank, nothing registered on his face. Instinct told her that Moat would kill again. She cared not for herself but knew she had to protect her daughter Chanel – she was aware that Moat wanted to destroy everything in his wake.
Sam ran back towards the house and Moat again began to track her slowly. He stopped. The gun had another shell he could fire before he would need to reload it. He walked back to Chris and stood over him. He put more ammunition into the firearm, raised the barrel and shot him in the back of the head. Without a pause, he began busying himself with the gun once more. There was one more shell. This wasn’t over.
His steps took him back to the house. He stood watching. The house was ablaze with light and commotion, in stark contrast to his motionless frame. Sam’s mum had run upstairs, desperate to save her granddaughter. She picked the three-year-old up and ran to the attic entrance, pleading with her to hide and remain quiet.
The younger woman was trying to keep Moat out. She knew that none of them would survive if he got into the house but the keys were not in the lock: she could not lock the door. Jackie was in shock and struggled to marshal her thoughts. Where were the keys, she wondered? Before she could tell Sam, she saw her friend walk over to the window. The young woman was looking at Chris, she could see that he was not moving. And as she stood framed in the bay window, it was all Moat needed. He raised the gun once more, took aim and fired.
The glass shattered. Sam had not even turned her head Moat’s way; she had been looking beyond him and towards Chris. She had seen sparks from the shot from the corner of her eye but the pain at first did not register. Part of her understood that she had been shot and she called out to Jackie. And yet it was not pain that concentrated her mind but the fight for air. She could not breathe.
Jackie was in tears and desperately dragged her friend across the floor and into the kitchen, in the hope that she would then be beyond Moat’s range. All he had to do was walk in, then they’d all be finished. Jackie bundled a white tablecloth onto her friend’s stomach: the blood loss was immediate and horrifying. It was pumping out of Sam’s shattered abdomen and arm. Jackie pleaded with Sam to be quiet, it was their only hope.
The door opened. But it wasn’t Moat walking in, it was Sam’s mother Lesley running out to confront Moat. She screamed: ‘You shot my baby! Shoot me you bastard!’ Lesley’s husband Paul by now knew that something was terribly amiss. He came out of their home, two doors away, and he saw his wife outside with Moat. He chased after her and saw Moat with the gun aimed at her head. Like Sam, he too was struck by the absence of emotion in Moat’s expression. He called out and it was as if Moat saw him for the first time. In this moment of doubt, Moat hesitated, then turned and ran. Paul gave chase but his wife’s cries made him stop and run back to her and the house.
Sam was fighting for her life. Jackie was cradling her and sobbing. The kitchen was a scene of carnage. Blood was pooling around Sam, the white tablecloth was now red, and as Sam struggled for air, it did not seem possible that she would survive.
It was a neighbour that raised the alarm. He had heard the shots and then saw a man lying face down on the green. The police and paramedics were on the scene in minutes and the frantic effort to keep Sam alive began in earnest. She was rushed to Gateshead’s Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital and police began their work, cordoning off the scene. Chris Brown was pronounced dead and forensic work began as officers started to piece together an account of the night’s events.
Raoul Moat was nowhere to be seen. Paul had called the killer on his mobile but it went to answer message. The words he left were stark: ‘If you think that is being a man it’s not.’
There was no question as to who the gunman was. Sam was in the operating theatre and would be there for some hours to come but the police had been told that Raoul Moat was the man who had shot Sam and her boyfriend.
Detective Superintendent Steve Howes of Northumbria Police would head the enquiry. He gave a brief statement to the press saying: ‘I would like to stress that this is not a random attack and that the people involved are all known to each other. We believe the offender targeted his victims because of a grudge he held against them.’ The police would not confirm what had caused the man’s death, that would only come after a postmortem later that day, but they added that they ‘believed death to be consistent with a gunshot wound.’
Initially, what had happened in Birtley appeared to be following an all-too-common outcome of domestic abuse. Moat had been violent towards his ex-partner Samantha Stobbart and she had chosen to end the relationship some time ago, possibly as long as a year earlier. But they had been in contact. The suspect, Moat, had called her repeatedly since his release from prison only two days before. It appeared that he had not accepted that she had ended the partnership and he was incensed to learn that she had begun a relationship with another man.
On average, two women are killed by a partner or ex-partner every week in the UK. The figures are stark. Forty-six of all female homicide victims compared to five per cent of male homicide victims are killed by current or former partners. And it is when they try to leave a violent relationship that they are at greatest risk.
Police forces across the UK have made determined efforts to reassess how victims of domestic abuse have been dealt with over the last 30 years. The notion that what happened behind closed doors was a ‘domestic’ issue and should remain largely unchallenged has been debunked. The damage that domestic abuse brings to the lives of victims and children in a relationship is now recognised as severe and debilitating and yet amongst the wider public not all are sympathetic to the victim. Ideas that ‘some women ask for it’, that it ‘was just a slap’ or that some women ‘choose’ violent partners, remain entrenched in the public psyche.
Despite the insistence that women subject men to domestic abuse, the fact remains that abusers are almost overwhelmingly male and the victims are female. Research into the issue revealed that 81 per cent of reported domestic violence cases were of female victims attacked by male perpetrators; eight per cent were male victims attacked by female perpetrators; four per cent were female victims attacked by female perpetrators, and seven per cent were male victims attacked by male perpetrators.
Highlighting the fact that men are more often than not abusers and not the abused does not suggest that men are inherently ‘violent’. In fact, what it should do is force a broader examination of what we accept as a society. Women’s Aid, the national domestic violence charity, states simply: ‘Male privilege operates on an individual and societal level to maintain a situation of male dominance, where men have power over women and children.’
The statement continues: ‘Perpetrators of domestic violence choose to behave abusively to get what they want and gain control.’
No matter the changes that society has been through since the war and the strides towards equality that women have taken, men are still expected to take charge and be in control. There continues to be a sense of male entitlement, men earn more than their female counterparts and even nowadays dominate boardrooms and government. But this isn’t an argument about why women haven’t broken through the ‘glass ceiling’; it is an acknowledgement that if men are ‘expected’ to take charge, there can be a very high and negative price to pay for those who ‘fail’.
There are men who, if they feel undermined and consider that their position is under threat, counteract with violence. This is not about losing control. On the contrary, the men who abuse partners, and often do the same to their children behind closed doors, are selective about who and when they abuse. Domestic violence, then, is about gaining control, not motivated by a lack of control. Abusers may snap and lash out in a moment of temper and later feel genuine remorse but what underpins their behaviour is a feeling of inadequacy. They are not ‘real men’; what they see as ‘transgressions’ by either a wife or girlfriend, threaten their sense of control, and in order to impose their will they have to employ force.
As the enquiry team gathered witness statements concerning the Moat shootings, what had happened in the early hours of the morning appeared to be the action of an abuser who had set out to annihilate the woman he could no longer control. And it seemed as if her new partner had suffered the misfortune of being caught up in his retribution.
Later that day, the name Raoul Moat had been released by police. They warned the public not to approach him as he could be dangerous, but stressed that everyone involved in the incident had been linked to him. This had the effect of reassuring the community and Detective Superintendent Howes added: ‘I would like to stress that this is not a random attack and that the people involved are all known to each other.’
In truth, it is rare for anyone outside the family setup to become a victim of a domestic abuser. The hope must have been that intelligence would quickly lead the police to Moat or that he would give himself up. He was known to them, he had had contact with the police on several occasions over the last few years, and so a list of the addresses he frequented and his associates could be compiled relatively quickly.
Yet it is interesting to note that when local journalists ran his name through their systems, fully expecting Moat to feature in previous stories that had run over the years, there was no trace of him. He was not a man with a string of high profile links to crime, nor had he received a number of convictions. In fact, the recent gaol term had been his first. He was a fairly ordinary man – certainly he was muscle-bound, but then if you walk around the nightclubs of the city on a Saturday night, muscular men are a common enough sight.
But Moat was nowhere to be found, at least not in those first few hours of the enquiry. Patience and diligence in police work are key, and a careful compilation and assessment of verifiable facts is what yields results. And if you talk off-record to detectives, with a little bit of luck, that moment of breakthrough might come that allows the team to close in on the suspect and know that they have all they need to build a case that is watertight.
If a little luck is what it takes, this case would become significant for its absence.
This was not the start of a single enquiry. This case was about to bring havoc to Northumbria and spark the largest British manhunt in recent memory. It had only just begun and it was far from over. Away from Birtley, Moat was brooding about the horror he had brought in the early hours of that morning. He had killed. In his mind, he was right to do so. He believed Sam had taunted him, and, in his mind, Brown had challenged him; in Moat’s agitated state, he needed to ‘fight back’. Of course, this wasn’t a fight. This was an execution. He had eliminated the man who had taken his place in Sam’s life.
And despite witnessing the result of his rage and the terrible fear and bloodshed that he had brought into the life of a woman he claimed to love, he wasn’t ready to stop. He wanted more.