“It was all quite surreal,” said Helen Lee, recalling the week in which the quiet market town she called home became ground zero for one of the biggest manhunts in British history. “There were so many reporters … police with machine guns. We were told if we wanted to go home that it was in our own hands.
“Later we had people coming here asking: ‘Do you know where Raoul Moat shot himself?’,” she added. “People came with flowers and all sorts, it was just appalling. One lady came on the bus with her two children to show them where it happened … it was sick.”
The story of Raoul Moat and the eight days that gripped Britain in 2010, is the subject of a new three-part ITV drama that begins on Sunday.
It tells the story of Moat, a bodybuilding gang enforcer who, after being released from prison on 1 July, headed to Birtley, in Gateshead, to shoot the new boyfriend of his former partner, Samantha Stobbart. Moat killed Christopher Brown, a karate instructor, with a sawn-off shotgun and wounded Stobbart.
The next day Moat opened fire on a police officer, PC David Rathband, who was left blinded. He survived but never properly recovered, and killed himself 20 months later.
Moat wrote an extraordinary 49-page letter in which he said he had declared war on the police and stated: “I will keep killing police until I am dead.”
The hunt for Moat involved 160 armed officers from across the UK, armoured police vehicles from Northern Ireland, the military and the survival expert Ray Mears.
On 6 July, the focus turned to Rothbury, 30 miles north of Newcastle and in a rural part of Northumberland Moat knew well, having gone shooting and rabbiting there in the past.
Residents were warned to lock their doors and not leave their homes. The town was locked down with police everywhere.
In a dictaphone message, Moat railed against “lies” about him in the papers and threatened to kill a member of the public for every new lie he saw.
On 9 July, Moat emerged from wherever he had been hiding. A long standoff followed, with Moat holding a gun to his neck. Bizarrely, the former footballer Paul Gascoigne arrived in a dressing gown, carrying lager, bread, chicken and a fishing rod.
Eventually an experimental Taser gun was used to try to disable Moat. Instead he shot himself dead.
Rothbury itself became something resembling a Hollywood movie set, with news broadcasting vans and reporters everywhere. The town was deeply wounded by the events and the scars are still evident today.
The Guardian asked Jeff Sutton, the chair of Rothbury parish council, what people thought about the prospect of the TV drama. “One simple word: hostile. People here were horrified by what happened, it caused so much anguish. People don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
Sutton was not wrong. In the busy Turks Head pub, mentioning Moat was like saying Macbeth in an actor’s dressing room. People winced and shook their head.
One drinker willing to talk said: “It was just awful. Everyone here just wants to forget about it and they definitely don’t want to see a TV drama about it. It’s too soon. It’s too raw.” His friend disagreed, saying 13 years was surely long enough.
Next door, working in the Aria women’s clothing shop, Jackie Phillips recalled being told by police to keep all the doors locked.
“It was terrifying. I mean he walked up and down the streets in Rothbury without the police knowing about it. At the beginning … he was here,” she said.
Phillips lives in the nearby hamlet of Wingates, close to the hills where police at one point thought Moat might be hiding. “I locked myself in my next-door neighbour’s house and we just took to the gin and watched it all play out on Sky News. I said if we’re going to be murdered then let’s be pissed and murdered.”
Phillips and others said they would watch the ITV drama, but an equal number said they would not.
“I think it is best to leave bad events well alone,” said Hilary Atkin, a retired teacher visiting Rothbury from Alnwick. “It is too fresh in people’s memory.”
Barry Butterworth, a retired construction manager on his way to a haircut, said: “It was like Fred Karno’s circus here with the press and media, there were cables and dishes everywhere.”
He gave an adamant “no” when asked if he would be watching the drama. “People here are just sick to death of the whole thing,” he said.
The show’s writer, Kevin Sampson, made numerous research visits to Rothbury and spoke to residents, shopkeepers and visitors.
“There were contrasting points of view,” he said. “Some told me that this was a story that needs to be told, others very explicitly said they’d prefer for their town to be known for its charm and its friendliness, rather than for any association with a fugitive killer.”
ITV’s Hunt for Raoul Moat is the latest in a line of true-crime dramas commissioned by the channel, including Des, which starred David Tennant as the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, and White House Farm, telling the Jeremy Bamber story.
Sampson said they were a way of telling “resonant, hard-hitting stories” while challenging viewers “to think about its deeper themes”.
He said the drama “could scarcely be more relevant” today. “Back in 2010, social media was a new frontier – terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ didn’t exist. Yet we’ve seen this week, with renewed online speculation about the circumstances of Nicola Bulley’s death, that we’re still a world away from any responsible form of online engagement.”
Sampson said regional journalists who covered the Moat story deserved particular praise: “Whereas the tabloids could ride into town, splash the cash, stir the nest and retreat to safety, the local media had a responsibility to its readers and listeners.”
The Moat manhunt story shone a light on many topics, Sampson said, including “crimes against women, domestic abuse in all its manifestations, toxic masculinity, the negative impact of social media, tabloid and saturation news culture” and more.
Moat’s crimes were appalling, yet some people have expressed admiration for him. People have laid flowers.
“To many, this case is about a man with a Mohican who led the cops a merry dance for a week,” said Sampson who hopes, after watching the drama, “those inclined to see anything heroic in Moat’s actions will think again”.
