Raoul Moat - an interesting case study documented in a unique new book
This fascinating article includes an excerpt from this new book (2016) about the murderous thug who went on a rampage during 2010 who has variously been labelled 'dangerous, deranged narcissist' and 'vicious psychopath'. I personally tend to favour the latter definition, especially as psychopathy is a scale rather than a simple binary 'yes he is' or 'no he is not', although psychotherapists have yet to incorporate this spectrum approach, preferring clustered behaviours that suit the existing terminology distinguishing anti-social individuals. |
I can strongly recommend reading this article and also the book if you want a true insight into the mind of a killer. Interestingly, my fictional character Peter Leech (Remorseless) has marked similarities with this criminal even though I created him years before Moat became a household name in the UK.
Here are the final paragraphs from the lengthy book extract that appeared in this article in the UK Guardian newspaper in Feb 2016 - the book is written in the second person so Moat is addressed as 'you' throughout this unique text:
You haven’t slept for weeks. You couldn’t sleep more than an hour a night in prison. It was harder than you expected, harder than the public thinks, surrounded by junkies and scum, locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day with people dropping like flies around you. In a single week one slit his throat, one cut his wrists and another hanged himself, because they couldn’t hack the consequences of one mistake [the Ministry of Justice recorded one apparent self-inflicted death and 46 incidents of self-harm at Durham prison while you were there]. You kept busy, weight training, helping other kids train, and you got a job, cleaning, because nobody can say you’re not a grafter, but you couldn’t cope with being away from Sam, so you phoned her and wrote her every day, but an hour is like a week without her, and you started to sink, which is why you popped on the wing a few times, and they gave you medication [20mg of a fluoxetine antidepressant]. That’s probably not helping with the sleeplessness. You’re still gnashing your teeth from it now, like you’re on pills [that’s your diagnosis, but the gnashing could be caused by stress].
You do know there’s nothing wrong with you. You know that for a fact, because when you were seeing the psychiatrist at the Collingwood a few years ago you asked them to check you were on the same page as everyone else, just in case something down the line wasn’t right, and they thought you might be paranoid and delusional [a mental health worker referred you to a psychiatrist and suggested you be assessed for psychosis and paranoia], but when they looked into it they discovered you were right, the police do harass you, and it’s gone on for years [the psychiatrist said it appeared you were experiencing significant trouble with the police], but there was nothing they could do [you were referred for psychotherapy, but didn’t show up]. You are a bit emotionally unstable, you do get over-the-top happy. You have your bad times as well. Like, when someone mocks you or accuses you of something you haven’t done you do over-react, which is why this charge and conviction was hard to take. It was all part of the conspiracy, a set-up. It was a ridiculous charge. You were being done for something you didn’t do, because if you’d really hit a little kid it would have killed them, which is why you started recording everything, so you could go to the Chronicle or on TV, and hit them with everything you had, like you did last time [in 2003 you told the council your daughter fell from your second-floor window and you asked them to put locks on the windows, but you thought it took them too long so you visited their offices], which is when the council accused you of being aggressive and threatening, and you had to tell the reporter it was just anger, but not out of control anger, and all that went in the media, but you didn’t go to the media this time. Even so, your whole body language should have told them you never hit a little kid. You were tried, convicted and crucified before you even got to court.
Your solicitor said to get your head around the fact that people get booked for things they didn’t do, but how can an innocent man accept being hanged? That’s why you wanted to do a lie detector test, but your solicitor said no judge would look at it, and the police wouldn’t look at it, so you wrote to Jeremy Kyle and asked to go on there and do a lie detector test on TV, because how would they have all felt then? How would they have felt if you’d gone on Jeremy Kyle to do a lie detector, and when he asked if you hit that little kid you turned around and said, NO, I DIDN’T HIT THAT LITTLE KID, and the lie detector showed you were telling the truth? How would they have felt then? Because you didn’t do any of this. You’re the most innocent bloke around, but your best wasn’t good enough for them or Sam or the children or yourself. You spent your whole life wanting a family after all these years being alone, and now you’ve had to watch them slide further and further into the devil’s belly, and you’ve got nobody to cuddle into, and you miss them so much.
Extracted from: You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] by Andrew Hankinson
Here are the final paragraphs from the lengthy book extract that appeared in this article in the UK Guardian newspaper in Feb 2016 - the book is written in the second person so Moat is addressed as 'you' throughout this unique text:
You haven’t slept for weeks. You couldn’t sleep more than an hour a night in prison. It was harder than you expected, harder than the public thinks, surrounded by junkies and scum, locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day with people dropping like flies around you. In a single week one slit his throat, one cut his wrists and another hanged himself, because they couldn’t hack the consequences of one mistake [the Ministry of Justice recorded one apparent self-inflicted death and 46 incidents of self-harm at Durham prison while you were there]. You kept busy, weight training, helping other kids train, and you got a job, cleaning, because nobody can say you’re not a grafter, but you couldn’t cope with being away from Sam, so you phoned her and wrote her every day, but an hour is like a week without her, and you started to sink, which is why you popped on the wing a few times, and they gave you medication [20mg of a fluoxetine antidepressant]. That’s probably not helping with the sleeplessness. You’re still gnashing your teeth from it now, like you’re on pills [that’s your diagnosis, but the gnashing could be caused by stress].
You do know there’s nothing wrong with you. You know that for a fact, because when you were seeing the psychiatrist at the Collingwood a few years ago you asked them to check you were on the same page as everyone else, just in case something down the line wasn’t right, and they thought you might be paranoid and delusional [a mental health worker referred you to a psychiatrist and suggested you be assessed for psychosis and paranoia], but when they looked into it they discovered you were right, the police do harass you, and it’s gone on for years [the psychiatrist said it appeared you were experiencing significant trouble with the police], but there was nothing they could do [you were referred for psychotherapy, but didn’t show up]. You are a bit emotionally unstable, you do get over-the-top happy. You have your bad times as well. Like, when someone mocks you or accuses you of something you haven’t done you do over-react, which is why this charge and conviction was hard to take. It was all part of the conspiracy, a set-up. It was a ridiculous charge. You were being done for something you didn’t do, because if you’d really hit a little kid it would have killed them, which is why you started recording everything, so you could go to the Chronicle or on TV, and hit them with everything you had, like you did last time [in 2003 you told the council your daughter fell from your second-floor window and you asked them to put locks on the windows, but you thought it took them too long so you visited their offices], which is when the council accused you of being aggressive and threatening, and you had to tell the reporter it was just anger, but not out of control anger, and all that went in the media, but you didn’t go to the media this time. Even so, your whole body language should have told them you never hit a little kid. You were tried, convicted and crucified before you even got to court.
Your solicitor said to get your head around the fact that people get booked for things they didn’t do, but how can an innocent man accept being hanged? That’s why you wanted to do a lie detector test, but your solicitor said no judge would look at it, and the police wouldn’t look at it, so you wrote to Jeremy Kyle and asked to go on there and do a lie detector test on TV, because how would they have all felt then? How would they have felt if you’d gone on Jeremy Kyle to do a lie detector, and when he asked if you hit that little kid you turned around and said, NO, I DIDN’T HIT THAT LITTLE KID, and the lie detector showed you were telling the truth? How would they have felt then? Because you didn’t do any of this. You’re the most innocent bloke around, but your best wasn’t good enough for them or Sam or the children or yourself. You spent your whole life wanting a family after all these years being alone, and now you’ve had to watch them slide further and further into the devil’s belly, and you’ve got nobody to cuddle into, and you miss them so much.
Extracted from: You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] by Andrew Hankinson