When bodybuilder Raoul Moat shot three people and went on the run, he sparked one of the biggest manhunts in British history. Now, a bold, highly original book by Andrew Hankinson – extracted below – uses Moat’s own words to tell the story of his life. Here, the author talks to Rachel Cooke
In July 2010, Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former bouncer from Newcastle who had recently been released from Durham prison, shot three people: his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, her new partner, Christopher Brown, and a police officer, David Rathband. Stobbart was seriously injured and Brown was killed; PC Rathband was left blind and, having struggled to come to terms with his disability, killed himself at his home in Blyth, Northumberland, in February 2012.
After the shootings, Moat went on the run in the countryside around Rothbury, Northumberland. The manhunt to find him lasted seven days and was one of the biggest in recent history, the police at one point employing the survival expert Ray Mears to help. The story filled every newspaper, the sensationalist coverage dividing public opinion. Even Paul Gascoigne got involved, promising Moat, whom he claimed to know, chicken and lager if he gave himself up. On 9 July, having tracked him to the banks of the river Coquet, the police began to negotiate with Moat. He killed himself with a sawn-off shotgun the next day.
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