Peter Moore: The British cinema owner who became a ruthless serial killer
For decades, people have argued whether or not cinematic brutality, particularly within horror films, can catalyse real-life violence. While being exposed to lots of on-screen violence can certainly desensitise viewers to the severity of these images, most criminals, especially murderers, will already possess such urges before seeing them carried out on screen.
After all, the violence we see in movies is rooted in real life, and real cases usually inspire the ruthless killers we see on the big screen. However, there have been several instances where movies have directly influenced the ways in which killers have chosen to commit their crimes.
One such case is Peter Moore, a Welsh cinephile, who used his horror movie knowledge to commit four heinous murders in 1995, resulting in a lifetime behind bars. Born in 1946, Moore was an only child whose mother had him in her 40s. Believing Moore to be a miracle, the pair were incredibly close. However, she died in 1994, resulting in Moore’s killing spree shortly after, although he asserted that he merely committed his crimes “for fun”.
Moore killed four men between September and December, all of whom he had no connection to. He also mutilated his victims’ bodies, which came after he tortured them to death. Additionally, it was discovered that Moore had been targeting men for 20 years prior, committing acts of sexual abuse.
Before he was sent to jail, Moore owned four cinemas in north Wales, where he honed his movie knowledge. Thus, when he was put on trial, he used this to his advantage, claiming that his mysterious lover named Jason committed the crimes, borrowing the name from the Friday the 13th villain, Jason Vorhees.
In 2020, Dylan Rhys Jones, Moore’s former solicitor, penned The Man in Black: Peter Moore, Wales’ Worst Serial Killer. In the book, he revealed: “Moore certainly knew a lot about the cinema and would have known about the Friday the 13 franchise and one of the films had come out shortly before the murders started. It may well have been an inspiration for Moore – certainly we all thought of it as that.”
Lord Carlile, a prosecutor on the case, explained: “The Jason alter ego was unusual. Jason was an imaginary hotel or restaurant worker and I caused every hotel or restaurant on the North Wales coast to be investigated to see if there was someone who could fit into that category and surprise, surprise, there wasn’t, so we were able to dispose of that enquiry.”
He added: “But Peter Moore was a cinema proprietor and because of something the forensic pathologist told me we started looking at some films and there was a film series which Moore would have seen or shown, an episodic film showing someone who killed people. Each film had six episodes in circumstances which were strikingly like the ways in which Peter Moore carried out these murders.”
“This was in the days of video and the first thing I put to Moore in cross-examination was the box of a particular video which bore a striking similarity to the way Moore had attacked his victims,” he continued.
Evidently, Moore had taken inspiration from the horror movies he enjoyed watching. While some people might find it easy to blame these scary films as responsible, Moore most likely would’ve carried out these chilling crimes regardless.
