I helped catch ‘deranged’ serial killer Raoul Moat… but a part of the case still upsets me

At one point former England legend Paul Gascoigne arrived at the scene and offered Moat beer and chicken.

Moat, despite his actions, attracted sympathy from some sections of the public after his death.

At one point the “RIP Raoul Moat You Legend” Facebook page had 30,000 subscribers before it was shut down.

Neil Adamson, the former head of Northumbria CID, has now hit out at the hero worship which surrounds Moat ahead of a three-part ITV drama starting on Sunday.

Speaking to the Radio Times Adamson said: "I flew down to London a couple of times during the investigation to see Christopher’s mother and she was incredibly dignified.

"I’ll never forget visiting David in hospital, his determination to recover and move on. But I always thought it would be dramatised, because it was an exceptional event — the biggest manhunt in policing history, over a full week, that engaged the whole country.”

In 2020, to mark the 10th anniversary of the incident, Moat's fans planned to hold an all night party at the site where he took his own life.

Police said they would used dispersal powers to break-up the gathering, which was planned during lock down.

Adamson said: “The vast majority of the public were on our side and the local community was fantastic.

"The hero worship was absolutely bizarre, because the series shows how controlling and deranged he was, a misogynistic bully.

"Samantha was 16 when 31-year-old Moat met her. He dominated her and had to know everything about her.

"How can anybody be in awe of an individual like that?”

Kevin Sampson, the screenwriter of The Hunt for Raoul Moat, said: “My interest was there from the start in a slightly vicarious way, but I wasn’t really aware of the detail.

"Then, ten years on, we were in lockdown with issues like the malign presence of social media, fake news and toxic masculinity, alongside an escalation in incidents of domestic violence.

"All these things really coalesced with this case.

“Chris Brown’s family felt he had been forgotten and didn’t want him to be simply the guy who Raoul Moat shot.

"They wanted his memory honoured in an appropriate way, which is why we spend the first part of the drama telling a really simple story about two people falling in love, before that hope is taken away from them in the most brutal circumstances imaginable.”

The Hunt for Raoul Moat will be broadcast on ITV on April 16, 17 and 18, followed by a documentary about the case on April 19