Raoul Moat: 5 Things to Know About the UK Manhunt Target

(July 6) -- Raoul Thomas Moat -- former bodybuilder, nightclub bouncer and recently released prisoner -- is public enemy number one right now on the isle of Great Britain. He's accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend on Saturday with a shotgun, killing him and sending her to the hospital.



Moat fled the scene of the crime and has been evading the authorities ever since. On Sunday, he opened fire on a constable, putting him in critical condition. He also taunted police by leaving them voice mails, sending texts, and mailing a 49-page manifesto in which he said he will "keep killing police until I'm dead."

Adding a new wrinkle to what police have already characterized as a "complex, challenging and fast moving hostage situation," the two men previously believed to be Moat's hostages were arrested this morning on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Now Moat is on the run from police, who have pursued him to the small town of Rothbury, population 1,740, which is located in the county of Northumberland, England, some 80 miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland. A two mile "exclusion zone" has been implemented. Residents have been asked to stay inside their homes as police officers from six different departments -- including the Authorised Firearms Office (the British equivalent of the SWAT team) sweep the town for Moat, aided by dogs.

As the net closes in around Moat, the press has begun scrutinizing and speculating about the 37-year-old suspect's past for clues as to what made him snap. Various reports about his troubled and violent background have surfaced. Surge Desk collects the most salient facts and analyses so far:

He vented his troubles on Facebook. The Telegraph analyzes "error-strewn messages" that Moat reportedly posted to his Facebook page, in which he expressed anger and frustration at various overlapping losses in his life: His business to the bad economy; his young daughters to social services; potentially his home to the bank; and his girlfriend, who told him before he he got out of prison that she was seeing a police officer (the woman, Samantha Stobbart, later revealed she had lied about this fact because she was worried about her safety and thought it would dissuade Moat from attempting to harm her). As he put it on Friday "Just got out the slammer to a totally f***ed life." Unsurprisingly, while Moat's own Facebook page has been taken down, various groups and fan pages calling for his arrest and mocking him have already gone live.

He's an alleged steroid user. The BBC runs with the claim that Moat used steroids to fill out his 6 ft. 3 in. frame, seeking to draw a connection between his shooting spree and the troublesome performance enhancers. "Family members said that he used body-building steroids and that he was prone to 'eruptions of anger'," the news outlet reports. However, the BBC notes that while steroid abuse "can cause dramatic mood swings, depression, paranoid jealousy, extreme irritability, delusions and impaired judgment...there is very little hard and fast evidence linking steroid abuse to actual behavior changes." This is especially true since steroid side effects are largely self-reported, and the substances are rarely used alone and may produce different effects when mixed with other drugs.

He has a paranoid streak. Moat reportedly had lined his house with upwards of 26 security cameras to deter intruders.

He has no love for the police. The Guardian interviews several of Moat's former associates and acquaintances, discovering that he was consumed by "long-held anger at his treatment by the police." Moat had been picked up several comparatively minor violations over the past decade, including assaulting a relative, which The Guardian suspects may have been his young daughter. In addition, Moat has been connected to "Newcastle's criminal fraternity," and was said to be enormously "vain," and overconfident, reveling in anti-authoritarianism and ability to inspire fear.

He was also no stranger to the authorities. According to Australian website News.com.au, upon Moat's release from Durham prison on Friday, prison administrators sent an urgent memo to Northumbria Police warning that he "posed a serious threat to his former girlfriend Samantha Stobbart." Yet Moat was still allowed to come within shooting distance of his former flame's home, apparently without any encumbrance from law enforcement. As such, "police said they were 'investigating thoroughly' the warning given by the prison and had referred the matter to the British police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

And finally, a map of Moat's path of destruction, via the Rothbury Journal Live:


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