Peter Moore owned a small chain of cinemas in North Wales and was known for dressing in black. Between September and December 1995 he killed four men in Anglesey, Denbighshire and on the coast near Abergele. In the early hours of Christmas Eve that year he confessed to all four killings, including one that police had not known about, and the next morning he took the confession back. A jury convicted him of four counts of murder in November 1996, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation from the trial judge that he never be released.
The case did not end with the verdict. Moore's sentence became a whole life tariff in 2002 and a whole life order in 2008, and he joined two other prisoners, Douglas Vinter and Jeremy Bamber, in a challenge at the European Court of Human Rights. In July 2013 the Grand Chamber ruled that the British system of whole life orders, as it then stood, breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because it offered no clear prospect of review. The ruling changed nothing for Moore's release. It did start a legal argument between the British courts and Strasbourg that ran until 2017.
Moore was born in 1946, according to the European Court of Human Rights, and came from Kinmel Bay on the North Wales coast. Local reports describe him as a softly spoken film enthusiast who always wore black. He owned and ran a chain of cinemas in Bagillt in Flintshire, Denbigh, Holyhead on Anglesey and Blaenau Ffestiniog. Bangor University, describing the case in 2024, said his habit of wearing a black shirt and tie earned him the nickname "the man in black."
Dylan Rhys Jones, the Abergele solicitor who would represent him after his arrest, had known him before the killings. Jones acted for Moore on his late mother's will about two years before the murders, Deeside.com reported in 2020.
The same reports describe him as obsessed with Nazi imagery. Moore later claimed to have attacked "many men" in the Conwy Valley over about 20 years, often while dressed as a police officer or in a Nazi-style uniform, according to Jones's account published in 2020. Those claims were not the subject of any charge.
Henry Roberts was 56 and a retired railway worker. He lived near Caergeiliog, close to Holyhead on Anglesey.
Edward Carthy was 28. Moore met him in a bar in Liverpool in October 1995.
Keith Randles was 49. Reports published in 2020 describe him as a traffic manager from Chester.
Anthony Davies was 40. He died at Pensarn, near Abergele, in December 1995.
The European Court of Human Rights, summarizing the facts as the British courts had found them, recorded that the four victims were gay men, that Moore was also gay, and that the prosecution alleged he had killed them for his own sexual gratification.
The first killing took place on September 23, 1995, when Henry Roberts was attacked near Caergeiliog. On the weekend of October 7, Edward Carthy, of Liverpool, was killed near Ruthin, in Denbighshire. On November 30, according to the European court's summary, Keith Randles was killed on Anglesey; North Wales reports place the killing in November. Shortly before Christmas, Anthony Davies was killed at Pensarn. Local reports give the date of that killing as December 18, 1995.
Each man was stabbed to death. Jones has said that Moore spoke of the killings as easy, and that he told detectives he had killed Keith Randles "for fun."
The killings, spread over about three months, affected the gay community across North Wales and Merseyside, Deeside.com wrote in 2020.
Police arrested Moore two days after the death of Anthony Davies, according to a 2020 account of the case. On December 21, 1995, he telephoned Jones, who was then 30 and from Abergele, and asked him to act for him.
Officers searched his property. The European Court of Human Rights recorded that forensic evidence linked him to the first and third victims, and that property belonging to the first, second and fourth victims was found in his possession.
In the early hours of December 24, 1995, at Llandudno police station, Moore confessed to two North Wales Police detectives in an interview that lasted about 45 minutes. Jones sat beside him. Moore admitted the two killings on Anglesey, the killing at Pensarn and a fourth killing that police knew nothing about: the death of Edward Carthy. The European court recorded that police learned of the second victim only when Moore told them.
The next morning Moore withdrew the confession. He said he had made it to protect a friend he called "Jason," a name Jones linked to the killer in the Friday the 13th films that Moore had screened in his cinemas. Jones has said that he has often asked himself whether the confession was true or a performance, and that Moore "changed his tune repeatedly" over the years.
Moore pleaded not guilty. His defense was that someone else had committed the murders, although he admitted being present at all of them except the second, the court summary records. He told the jury that a gay lover he called "Jason" was the killer, PinkNews and Metro Weekly reported when the case returned to the news in 2012 and 2013.
The prosecution was led by Alex Carlile. Jones has said that Carlile acknowledged how much work the case had demanded.
On November 29, 1996, after a trial in the Crown Court, Moore was convicted of four counts of murder. The European Court of Human Rights gives the court as the Crown Court at Chester; North Wales reports from 2020 say he was sentenced at Mold Crown Court. The jury found him guilty on all counts.
Under the law of the time, the trial judge passed the mandatory life sentence and sent a recommendation on the minimum term to the Home Secretary. The judge recommended that Moore should never be released. The Lord Chief Justice, reviewing the case, recommended a minimum of 30 years. On September 27, 2002, the Secretary of State set a whole life tariff, the European court recorded.
Section 276 of and Schedule 22 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 allowed prisoners whose tariffs had been set by a minister to apply to the High Court for a review. Moore applied in 2008. On June 12, 2008, the High Court declined to adopt the Lord Chief Justice's 30-year recommendation. It held that the recommendation deserved weight, but that the Lord Chief Justice had not applied the principles of Schedule 21 to the 2003 Act, which the High Court was bound to apply.
Under Schedule 21, the court found, the case called for a whole life starting point, because it involved two or more murders, sexual or sadistic conduct and a substantial degree of premeditation. It found no mitigating features. It noted that the Lord Chief Justice, while recommending 30 years, had agreed with the trial judge that it might never be safe to release Moore, and it added that even a 30-year starting point would have been outweighed by the aggravating features. It made a whole life order.
The High Court also rejected his human rights arguments. It held that the review procedure under the 2003 Act gave him the independent hearing that Article 6 of the Convention requires, that a whole life order was compatible with Articles 3 and 5, and that the Schedule 21 framework was not arbitrary.
On February 26, 2009, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal, holding that the High Court had been not only entitled but plainly right to make a whole life order. Moore then asked the Court of Appeal to certify a point of law of general public importance so that he could take the case to the House of Lords. On August 14, 2009, the Criminal Appeal Office told him that this was not possible: the court had refused permission to appeal against sentence, rather than granting permission and dismissing the appeal, so there was nothing to certify.
Moore then took his case to the European Court of Human Rights. It was joined with the applications of Douglas Vinter and Jeremy Bamber, both also serving whole life orders, under the name Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom. The three men argued that a sentence offering no hope of release was inhuman and degrading, contrary to Article 3, and that such sentences should be open to regular review.
On January 17, 2012, a Chamber of seven judges ruled against them. By four votes to three it found no violation of Article 3 in Moore's case, holding that his continued detention still served the legitimate purposes of punishment and deterrence. It rejected his complaint under Article 5, paragraph 4, as manifestly ill-founded, holding that the review of lawfulness was built into the whole life order itself. Judges Garlicki, David Thor Bjorgvinsson and Nicolaou dissented in part. In their view the absence of any mechanism to review a whole life sentence was itself a breach of Article 3, because it left the prisoner without hope.
The government welcomed the ruling. The Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, said it had fought the case "vigorously," PinkNews reported, and a Ministry of Justice spokesman said the government strongly welcomed the decision.
The applicants asked for the case to be referred to the Grand Chamber, and a panel of five judges agreed on July 9, 2012. In October 2012 PinkNews reported that Moore was also preparing a fresh appeal against his sentence in the Court of Appeal in London; the outcome of that appeal has not been reported. The Grand Chamber heard the case in Strasbourg on November 28, 2012.
On July 9, 2013, the Grand Chamber of 17 judges ruled, by 16 votes to one, that the whole life sentences of all three men breached Article 3. The court held that a life sentence must be reducible: there must be both a prospect of release and a possibility of review, allowing the authorities to consider whether a prisoner had changed so much that continued detention could no longer be justified. It noted clear support in comparative and international law for a first review no later than 25 years into the sentence.
The court found that English law on the release of whole life prisoners was unclear. The Secretary of State had a statutory power under section 30 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 to release any life prisoner, but the published prison policy limited release to highly restrictive compassionate grounds, chiefly terminal illness or serious incapacity. The court said that did not amount to a real prospect of release. The judges stressed, ITV News reported, that the ruling did not give the three men any prospect of imminent release.
Political reaction was hostile. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said he "profoundly disagrees" with the ruling and was a strong supporter of whole life tariffs. The Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, said the British people would find the decision "intensely frustrating and hard to understand" and that the authors of the Convention would be "turning in their graves." The Home Secretary, Theresa May, told MPs that the public would be "dismayed." At the time 49 people in England and Wales were serving whole life tariffs.
The British courts answered in 2014. On February 18, 2014, in R v McLoughlin and R v Newell, a five-judge Court of Appeal led by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, held that the law of England and Wales was in fact clear. Section 30 of the 1997 Act, read with the Human Rights Act, required the Secretary of State to consider release in exceptional circumstances, where the original punishment could no longer be justified, and to exercise the power compatibly with Article 3. Whole life orders therefore remained lawful, the court said, though they should be imposed only in rare and exceptional cases.
Strasbourg accepted that reasoning. In Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom, brought by another whole life prisoner, a Chamber found no violation on February 3, 2015, by six votes to one. On January 17, 2017, the Grand Chamber agreed, by 14 votes to three, holding that the McLoughlin judgment had "dispelled the lack of clarity identified in Vinter" and that a whole life sentence in England and Wales could now be regarded as reducible.
When the Grand Chamber ruled in 2013, Moore was 66 and held at HMP Wakefield. Deeside.com reported in September 2020 that he was still at Wakefield as a Category A prisoner.
In 2020 Jones published a book about the case, The Man in Black: Peter Moore, Wales' Worst Serial Killer, with the Welsh publisher Y Lolfa, timed for the 25th anniversary of the murders. Moore wrote to Jones and to the publisher from Wakefield. He told Jones that he was "not happy about several aspects" of what he had read about the book and warned of "possible legal action," and he told Y Lolfa the matter would "end up in court" if the book appeared. The publisher, Lefi Gruffudd, said Y Lolfa stood by every word. The book was published on September 25, 2020.
Jones said that Moore had asked him to include an apology to North Wales in the book's preface, which Jones refused, and that Moore agreed to a prison visit but withdrew a week before it was due. Jones described him as "an extremely manipulative control freak" and said he expected Moore to die in prison.
The case left a mark on Jones himself. He told Deeside.com in 2020 that he had studied hundreds of photographs and boxes of paperwork in preparing the defense, and that he later suffered post-traumatic stress, flashbacks and depression and was treated in hospital. He left legal practice, began teaching law and criminology, and by 2022 had sold the television rights to his book to a production company developing a drama series. In January 2024 he spoke about the case to criminology students at Bangor University.
Proven at trial, and final: four counts of murder, November 29, 1996.
Admitted and withdrawn: the Christmas Eve 1995 confession to the same four killings. Moore retracted it the next day and at trial blamed a man he called "Jason." The jury rejected that defense.
Claimed, never charged: attacks on other men over about 20 years, which Moore described to his solicitor according to the solicitor's own published account.
Where accounts differ: the court where he was tried (the Crown Court at Chester in the European Court of Human Rights' summary; Mold Crown Court in North Wales reports from 2020); the date of the third killing (November 30 in the court summary; November in local reports) and the date of the fourth (shortly before Christmas in the court summary; December 18 in local reports); and the date of his arrest, given in one 2020 report as two days after the last killing.
1946: Peter Howard Moore is born.
About 1993: Dylan Rhys Jones acts for him on his late mother's will.
September 23, 1995: Henry Roberts, 56, is killed near Caergeiliog, Anglesey.
Weekend of October 7, 1995: Moore meets Edward Carthy, 28, in Liverpool and kills him near Ruthin.
November 30, 1995: Keith Randles, 49, is killed on Anglesey.
December 1995 (December 18 in local reports): Anthony Davies, 40, is killed at Pensarn, near Abergele.
December 21, 1995: after his arrest, Moore calls Jones to represent him.
December 24, 1995: confesses to four killings at Llandudno police station, including Carthy's; withdraws the confession the next day.
November 29, 1996: convicted of four counts of murder; life sentence, with the judge's recommendation that he never be released.
September 27, 2002: the Secretary of State sets a whole life tariff.
June 12, 2008: the High Court makes a whole life order.
February 26, 2009: the Court of Appeal dismisses his appeal.
August 14, 2009: told no point of law can be certified for the House of Lords.
January 17, 2012: Chamber finds no violation, by four votes to three.
July 9, 2012: case referred to the Grand Chamber.
November 28, 2012: Grand Chamber hearing.
July 9, 2013: Grand Chamber finds a violation of Article 3, by 16 votes to one, with no prospect of imminent release.
February 18, 2014: Court of Appeal rules in McLoughlin that whole life orders remain lawful.
February 3, 2015: Hutchinson Chamber judgment finds no violation.
January 17, 2017: Hutchinson Grand Chamber judgment finds no violation.
September 2020: held at Wakefield as a Category A prisoner; Jones's book is published on September 25.
January 2024: Jones speaks about the case at Bangor University.