My Local Serial Killer - Peter Moore

It was a normal Saturday morning in the early 1990's and in the sleepy North Wales Town of Denbigh, my wife Sharon and I were off to do the weekly shop at the local supermarket. We followed the usual Saturday routine of dropping our kids - a boy and a girl - at the Local cinema "The Futura". Here the Owner/Manager, a man called Peter Moore ran a Saturday club for children. The kids would be entertained by a matinee children's film and would be treated to snacks and pop in the cinema's little snack-bar. Many local parents would drop their kids off into the care of Peter Moore, go off to do their shopping, and pick them up again afterwards. It was an Ideal arrangement. Peter Moore appeared to be an affable and trustworthy businessman - An upstanding member of the community

Peter Moore was regarded by the parents as a kindly local businessman who was trying to pump life back into a number of cinemas which he owned in North Wales. These were not modern Multi-Plex theatres, but the old-fashioned "Flea pit" type of Picture house that many of us of a certain age will remember from our youth. Peter Moore was known locally as "the Man in Black" because of his habit of dressing exclusively in black clothing. He said that this is because black outfits are the traditional mode of dress for theatre workers, and this is what he considered himself to be.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and I am working as a Staff Nurse on nights at the (now defunct) North Wales Hospital for Nervous and Mental disorders. It was about six am on a cold dark winters morning, and I was preparing the hand-over for the arrival of the day staff. I was interrupted by a phone call. "This will be one of the day staff ringing in sick" I thought.

I picked up the phone. It was Karen - one of the day staff, and she was absolutely hysterical and terrified. After getting her to calm down slightly, I managed to make sense of what she was trying to say. Karen lived in a little farm cottage way out in the wilds miles outside Denbigh. In order to get to the main road from her cottage, Karen had to travel down a long driveway until it met the main road in a deserted wooded area.

I could hardly believe what she was saying. Apparently, she was on her way to work that morning and as she approached the junction with the main road, her car headlights illuminated a car parked on the grassy verge across the road. She could hardly speak properly as she swore to me that she had seen a naked body trussed up in the open boot of the vehicle. Running up to the vehicle was a man carrying a spade. In a blind panic, Karen had reversed her car all the way down the drive and back to her cottage. She locked herself in the cottage and rang the police. She had then phoned me to say she would be late for work because she was not moving from there until the police had been.

The police came up, took Karen's statement and checked out the scene. Apart from some tyre marks on the grassy verge, there was nothing to go on. Whoever the mystery man was, Karen had obviously disturbed him before he could do anything. As time went on, we forgot about the incident.

Fast-forward once again to 1966. The inhabitants of Denbigh are horrified to hear that Peter Moore,the nice man who used to look after their kids on a Saturday morning had been arrested for murder. Peter Moore was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1996.

But Peter Moore was not just a killer - He was a Serial killer. During the murder trial, it was asserted that Peter Moore had attacked more than fifty other men over two decades in what the judge described as "20 years of terror". Serial Killer Moore claimed that the murders had actually been perpetrated by a fictitious homosexual lover of his called Jason, after the masked murderer famous for the "Friday the 13th" horror movies.

It was proved that the serial killer had murdered four men in 1995 and had buried the bodies at various rural locations in North Wales.

The first victim of Peter Moore was 56 year old Henry Roberts who was stabbed to death at his home in Anglesey in September 1995.

His second victim was 28 year old Edward Carthy who was picked up by Moore in a Gay bar, before being stabbed and buried in a local forest.

His third victim was 49 year old Keith Randles, a traffic safety manager, stabbed to death in November 1995 as he slept in his caravan at a road works on the A5 in Anglesey.

It was said that the victim begged to know why he was being attacked after the serial killer had dragged him from his caravan and started stabbing him. Moore's chilling reply was: "For fun." He later admitted to the police that there was "a certain enjoyment" in the killing.

His final victim was 40 year old Tony Davies, a married father of two who was stabbed by the serial killer at Pensarn beach (a notorious homosexual pick-up point) near Abergele on the north Wales coast in December 1995.

At his trial, Peter Moore, received four life sentences but the home secretary later recommended that the serial killer should never be released from prison. The Futura Cinema Denbigh, never opened again, and is now little more than a ruin.