The Trial and the Heroic Truth

This is exactly right . Double Evis . Booking a verbal vacation Rental means you get Verbo Care and twenty four seven life support, verified reviews from real guests and top rated homes with the love by guest filter. I just booked my Verbo because there was a sweet wine fridge. We all have our reasons, if you know, you verbo ly cervo. com slash trust for details. We all do it. You have a night for yourself but don't like the sound of the silence, so you turn on the TV just for the ambiance. It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone. And other insurers , well, they may make you feel alone. But when you switch to GICO, you've got claims reps available around the clock . So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine , just for good measure . Well , isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support . It feels good to Geico. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project . One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales , and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odu comes in , an all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odu . com slash iHartradio. That's od o . com slash i heart radio. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners , please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis This is the story of one of the coolest album covers of all time . An album by one of the coolest bands of all time . A band that was unaware of the true crime story behind that album art a true crime involving a pair of serial killers and an unlikely hero A hero obsessed with rock and roll, music that taught this hero how to keep his cool , and playing it cool allowed him to escape from and ultimately bring down two of England's most notorious murderers , in part because of great music . Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show , that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melatron called Guided by the Fright MK . I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to, it must have been love by Roxette . And why would I play you that specific slice of Swiss cheese pop could, I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on june twenty sixth, nineteen ninety , and that was the day Sonic Youth released their major label debut album Goo theg onele with the draw ing of two teenage rock and rollers caught up in one of England's most violent and disturbing true crimes . On this episode , the wild true crime story behind Sonic Youth's Goo the Moore's murders and an unlikely rock and roll hero . I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland I have to read these words straight off of this album cover to make sure that I get them right . I stole my sister's boyfriend . It was all whirlwind, heat and flash . Within a week, we killed my parents and hit the road . I still remember where I was when I read those words standing in the Harvard Square Newberry Comics in Cambridge, Massachusetts holding this album. I couldn't have been older than sixteen , and I was mesmerized. What did these words mean? And what was this album that they were written on, seemingly in sharpie by some crazed punk kid? What was this album all about Goo and who was this fan? Sonic Youth ? I'd heard of Sonic Youth by that point. I'd probably seen their earlier albums on EPs, perhaps from the SST label, listed in fanzine adverts, or maybe I spied their logo on a p atch on the back of one of the cooler punk rock kids that used to hang outside the rat in Boston's Kemmore Square or maybe on a sticker on the bathroom wall of one of the hardcore matinees that had recently begun frequenting. But I'd never heard Sonic Youth . I didn't yet know that what was in the grooves of that record was as cool as the caption on its cover . I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind heat and flash . Winith a week we killed my parents and hit the road. But what the hell was this? Were these lyrics from one of Sonic Youth's songs? And who was this couple illustrated on the cover of this album? Next to this caption . I knew that Sonic Youth had a girl in the band. Was this her? Was the dude next to her in the illustration or boyfriend or something? One of the others from the band? And what did this caption mean? These two killed the girl 's parents? Was this what Sonic Youth's songs were about? Murder ? By the year nineteen ninety, Sonic Youth was poised to break out of the underground music scene and into the mainstream. Their nineteen ninety album Goo was to be their major label debut for DGC, the David Geffen Company. Up to this point, Sonic Youth had built a loyal fan base of punks, hardcore kids, art school and college students, music fans, mostly youth who identified with the band's Sonic Assault on Convention, both musically and socially . Sonic youth When Sonic Youth began back in nineteen eighty one, they weren't punk. Punk was dead . And they weren't new wave . They were no wave . And they weren't just loud they were noise , and they weren't your typical rock and roll band setup . There was a girl in the band and her name was Kim Kim Gordon and she was badass , not some cut esy ornament, not some sultry front woman. She was gorgeous, sure, but beyond stereotyping. Her beauty seemed to spring from strength , not polish . And she played her bass with power and in a conventional tuning which anchored the noisy chaos created by the squalling feedback of guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ronaldo . And by the year nineteen eighty five, when drummer Steve Shelley joined the band, Kim Gordon had helped create what was at once one of the most driving and danciable rhythm sections in popular music . And she was married to Thurston Moore. Sonic Youth was not fronted by a groupy hustling alpha doo, as were other rock bands, Sonic Youth contemporaries on MTV and countless groups for music history. No S,onic Youth guitarist and co singer on most of their tracks, their creative instigator, the six foot eight inch guitar player who sometimes played the stringed instrument with a screwdriver in order to elicit the appropriate type of drone to complement his compositions , this dude was not Nikki Six from Motley Cruz. He was an artist in love with a fellow artist who happened to play bass in the same band with him and his other artist friends. In nineteen ninety, this was damn near revolutionary . It still kind of is actually. Go ahead and try to think of another culture defining rock band with a married couple in it. I'll wait . See, the closest you're going to come is the white stripes, but they're an anomaly. And there's also Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, but they weren't married and that relationship was a romantic shit show. It was completely cliche. One band member cheating on his female band member partner while she was exploring the wonders of cocaine enemas with the group's roadies. It was all convention , as cliche as a rock star dying at the age of twenty seven. Sonic Youth didn't do convention. Sonic Youth didn't do cliche, not on record, not on stage , not off stage , not in Kim and Thurston's relationship . The band was as anti cliche as could be and cool in an entirely new kind of way . The way they sounded was cool , the power of Sonic Youth shows, their East Coast No Wave Avant Garde aesthetic, and their westast hard Cocore energy. The way they looked was cool, Oxford shirts and velvet underground wrapped around shades with Kim's single striped mud dresses. And like I said, in the way they seemed to live as a band, with a married couple at the core of the group's artist collective vibe . All of it signaled cool in a way you hadn't thought about before , not unless you were living on New York's Lower East side or in Greg Gins' shack back in the eighties. And even if you were, what's up, Henry Rollins? Oh, hey Glen Branca, you weren't thinking about all of these different layers of coolness and executing them at the same time, alchemizing some sort of new cool thing that was about to turn on a new generation, otherwise you would have been in Sonic Youth , and you weren't. They were, and they were cooler than we were. But was Sonic Youth cooler than the couple on the cover of their album Goo Cool enough to escape the glare of the international paparazzi , cool enough to escape murder . David Smith was fifteen years old when Pauline Reed disappeared from the Gordon District of Manchester , a city one hundred and fifty miles north of London. Pauline Reed was only sixteen. It was nineteen sixty three. David Smith wasn't concerned with his community's missing girl. As a member of the Taylor Street Boys gang, he was busy fighting off the Openshaw boys who had invaded David's gang's turf and Gordon's housing estates, low income terrorist living , no money, no jobs , no future , just violence and rock and roll. David could still hear the Duane Eddie Riff echoing in his head when the first punch hit. The bit of blood in his mouth fueled him. He swung back wildly, connecting with the jaw of one of the open chaw boys. The brass knuckles David wore ensured that the open chaw boy wouldn't be coming back from war . David fought his way through the melee on the street. His boys, the Taylor Street gang, had the situation under control , David could keep the knife in his pocket . He pushed through the street fight and up onto the sidewalk . David knew she was watching him from inside Savori's cafe, and he knew what type of image he cut as he emerged from the brawling bodies on the street. A street walking cheetah perched on Cuban heel cowboy boots, drained pipe skinny black jeans cuffed high to reveal the shocking dash of his pink socks, a stubborn belt but,toned down black shirt, crucifix for protection hanging over his chest. Perfectly styled greased pompadore, slick, wet with sweat, slightly bloodied , sixteen , and dangerous . David Smith pushed open the door of the cafe into the sounds of Elvis Presley's it's now or never blasting from the jukebox. It made immediate eye contact with the girl with the dusty Springfield makeup , lacquered beehive hairdo and poodled skirt . Seventeen year old Maureen Hinley David Belinda to Maureen, grabbed her by the hips, pulled her toward him, and confidently swayed to the sounds of the king. Their union was as inevitable as rock and roll . And little did either know, the murders they would get swept up in would soon make them infamous. Their images blasted across the covers of newspapers all over the world sensationalized in true crime scandal rags and eventually on the cover on one of the coolest albums of all time. Okay , not so fun fact . Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise . Cases are climbing nearly twenty percent every year . I know terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry, and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis superativa, and most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it and I felt kind of alone like am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are well, a disappointment. We talk about the flare up s and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert , we did not always get it right . Listen to season three of Our Skin, a Personal Discovery Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've all been there. You pop into the shop for five minutes and all of a sudden you forgot where you parked. Car ? Car unfortunately, that lost feeling is what it's like trying to manage your policy with other insurers . Here car , come out, come out wherever you are please . With GaiCo, you can use the app to easily manage all your policies in one place. Did this parking lot have a waterfall? I think you've wondered too far, mate. It feels good to find what you're looking for. It feels good to Gaika. Hey, what up y'all? Summer moves like a great jam session. You start with one idea, one direction, and then it shifts, somebody calls. Energy changes. You take a detour . That's the beauty of it. For me, summer has always been about discovering new sounds, new places, new people, new ideas. You start one place, end up somewhere completely different. And somehow, that's exactly where you're supposed to be. I've always had my spots along the way. Starbucks has been one of those constants before a session, on the way to a gig, and between conversations that turn into something bigger than you expected. It's part of that movement, part of that rhythm. As summer's got its own soundtrack too, you can almost hear it without trying. Life's happening all around you, that feeling of staying open to whatever's next. Sometimes it's the smallest things that lock you into that moment. What you're holding, what you're sipping, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks. Guava and Passion fruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls. Cold, colorful, alive. Feels like something made for the day that's still unfolding. And that's the thing. Sometimes one small stop changes the whole mood of your day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbuck . The illustration on the cover of Sonic Youth Goo is a depiction of David Smith and Maureen Henley, the boy with the rock 'n' roll street gang look, and the girl with the dusty Springfield makeup . If they appear to be more mod looking on the cover of Goo, that's purely accidental. There weren't mods , there were rockers . The artist who depicted the couple on the now famous album is Raymond Peterbone, brother of Black Flag guitarist at SST Records founder, Greg Gin . Prior to nineteen ninety, Sonic Youth had released two full length albums on SST, Evil and Sister . They then jumped shipped to the enigma label to releaseed DayDream Nation in nineteen eighty nine . At some point, they became not just fans of, but friends with Raymond Petabone. Petabone at the time, was known for the album art he created for Black Flag and other West Coast Hardcore groups. Stark , violent, anti authoritative illustrations in imagery that recontextualized images sourced from books, magazines, cartoons , often accompanied by dark and quippy text that recontextualized the imag ery into something unique . In a word, Pedabone's work is punk. Here are some other words subversive, dangerous, larcenous , and again, unique . Like real pun k, no matter the context, seventies, eighties, east coast, west coast, US UK, you know it when you hear it. With pedabones art, you know it when you see it . Contextualization is at the heart of Raymond Petapon's work, or rather recontextualization, and the cover of goo is no different. That illustration of David Smith and Maureen Hinley, it's accompanied by those chilling words , I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road. Without those words, it's just a cool image . And with those words, the image is arresting . And that's how Sonic Geese Thirst and Moore felt when he saw that piece of Petabone are arrested. Petabone took the image from an old true crime magazine called True Detective . There's still, by my research, anyway, no telling where those words came from. Did Petabone write them? Did those words relate to the couple in the illustration? To David and Maureen? To the crime they were caught up in? No. Did Thursday Moore draft those words in collaboration with the artist? He did not. Those words likely came from another true crime magazine or true crime article, some other bit of sensationalized history that the artist felt better fit this image . That recontextualization is in part what makes the image so cool . Recontextualization was also at the heart of Sonic Youth's art, their music. Ever since their second studio album, Bad Moon Rising, released back in nineteen eighty five on the Homestead label, Sonic Youth began recontextualizing classic rock and American true crime and appropriating these elements from the mainstream into underground culture . Bad Moon Rising was the title of a C re Cedle'arswater Revival T un, a song by a band from the Bay Area that presented themselves as swamp creatures from the Bayou . They wrote big hooky radio hits designed to sell gazillions of albums to stone hippies for their corporate record able overlords. Sonic Youth was an experimental noise outfit from the East Coast who presented themselves as the antithesis of everything CCR stood for. And they wrote long, sometimes drones, sometimes driving, sonic opuses that were designed to blow out your radio's speakers. Bad moon rising may have nodded to C arra's swamps , but it sounded like the New York City Thurston Moore moved to from the Connecticut suburbs in the seventies . Dissonant and extreme. New York City at the time was a true crime . It was not entirely dissimilar from the creepy crawly true crime cloud Kim Gordon grew up under in California a decade earlier. That was an American facade of normal, ripped apart by Charles Manson's death cult, a community living on the razor's edge of paranoia, rock stars and celebrities fearing that the next home invasion making headlines might be their own . Young kids tormented by thoughts of lunicat killers on the loose, prowling the streets in sixty nine mustangs for unsuspecting teenage hitchhikers to sacrifice in some hippie dippy occult blood ritual . That's what the song Death Valley sixty nine from Bad Mo on Rising was about , a dark, true crime exploration of the American underbelly. It was more about Thurston Moore's and co writer, No Wave collaborator Lydia Lynch's fascination with the Manson saga than it was about their own subjective fear Fear, real fear, real true crime paranoia. That was reserved for the song Pacific Coast Highway, written by Kim Gordon for Sonic Youth's sister album . It's lyrics . Come on, get in the car. Let's go for a ride somewhere. I won't hurt you as much as you hurt me . Those lyrics portrayed the fear Kim grew up in southern California in the shadow Charles Manson's nihilistic true crimes. Back in England in nineteen sixty six , Nihilism was suddenly a concern of David Smith's . David Smith, the rock and roll street tough from Manchester, ended up marrying Maureen Hinley, the girl with a dusty Springfield makeup. He was just sixteen and she was eighteen The two became fast friends with Maureen's sister, Myra and Myra's husband, Ian Brady. Myra was twenty two, Ian was twenty six. It was august, nineteen sixty four. In the Gordon community of Manchester , another child had gone missing. Keith Bennett's parents joined Pauline Reeds in despair. David Smith's precious rock and roll wasn't on the turntable or the radio in Ian and Myra's home where the two couples hung out Ian was decidedly not rock and roll. He had what he considered to be refined tastes, preferring the sounds of Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of his hero, Adolf Hitler. Ian had offensive tastes, and David hated him for it , but sixteen year old David tolerated his brother in law for the sake of his new wife. Ian was older and he was now family. The two couples drank heavily together, and the drunker they got, the weirder Ian got . Ian was a nihilist. Ian believed life was meaningless and that the universe had no intrinsic purpose . Ian vibed on historical atrocities In his suit and tie, he affected the look of an intellectual who espoused the views of fellow nihilists like the Marquis de Sad and Frederick Nietzsche, and that morality was just a construct invented to protect the weak . Ian owned a copy of the banned book Justine by the Marquis de Sa. The book depicted extreme sexual violence and was widely viewed as an instrument of moral subversion. Ian made David read a scene. He made David provide notes on the banned book. Ian wouldn't shut up about it, and David complied just to get Ian off his back. Ian and his wife Myra brought David and Myra's sister Maureen closer into their twisted philosophy. David did his best to ignore Ian's eccentricities , and so did Maureen . But family is family, and the force and picnic out on the Moors The Moors , a bleak highland , a vast and isolated landscape just a few miles outside Gordon, Manchester . It was a scene of one of Ian and Myra's sickest jokes, the older couple, inviting the younger couple for a day out of wine and food, out on the moors , picnicking on the precise patch of land, where Ian and Myra had buried the body. We'll be right back after this word, wor word Okay , not so fun fact . Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise . Cases are climbing nearly twenty percent every year . I know terrible opener for a p odcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry, and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis suprativ a, and most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it and I felt kind of alone like Am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors, we talk appointments that are well a disappointment. We talk about the flare ups and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild , occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right. Listen to season three of Hours Skin, a Personal Discovery Podcast on the IHAT Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what up y'all? Summer moves like a great jam session. You start with one idea, one direction, and then it shifts, somebody calls. Energy changes. You take a detour. That's the beauty of it. For me, summer's always been about discovering new sounds, new places, new people, new ideas. You start one place, end up somewhere completely different. And somehow, that's exactly where you're supposed to be. I've always had my spots along the way. Starbucks has been one of those constants before a session, on the way to a gig, and between conversations that turn into something bigger than you expected. It's part of that movement, part of that rhythm. The summer's got its own soundtrack too. You can almost hear it without trying. Life's happening all around you, that feeling of staying open to whatever's next. Sometimes it's the smallest things that lock you into that moment. What you're holding, what you're sipping, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks . Guava and Passion Fruit Flavors with Mango Pineapple flavored pear ls. Cold, colorful, alive, feels like something made for the day that's still unfolding. And that's the thing. Sometimes one small stop changes the whole mood of your day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks . This is Miles Gray from Ain't It Footy. There's so much fanfare surrounding the FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six . Good thing the active cash visa credit card from Wells Fargo scores unlimited two percent cash rewards on all types of fanfare purchases, tickets to a game, thundersticks to make some noise, commemorative scarves to wave around, two percent cash rewards on all of that is a big win in my book. Terms apply, visit wellsfargo dot com slash active cash, Visa, worldwide partner of the FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six . Chuck D from Public Enemy, didn't want to hear the new song from Sonic Youth, which he was about to lay down a vocal four. He just wanted to get into the booth and cut it. He trusted Thurson Moore, and he trusted Kim Gordon. The couple and their band by nineteen ninety, were synonymous with Downtown Cool. Chuck didn't even want to read Kim's lyrics. He just wanted to jump into the vocal booth and respond to whatever she sang . And what Kim Gordon's saying on what was to become the lead single of Sonic Youth's forthcoming major label debut, Goo was an empowerment manifesto cut from the cloth of a new kind of feminism. Her words were steeped in irony, intelligence, and sex. It was a new decade and Kim Gordon had some questions. I just want to know what are you going to do for me? I mean, are you going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression , Chuck D responded with Tell it like it is . Prior to this impromptu collab, Chuck had been recording down the hall from Sonic Youth with his group public enemy. Thurston Moore was a massive hip hop fan and had been since the new genre exploded across the streets of New York and beyond over the past decade . Chuck didn't know that Sonic Youth knew somehow, before anyone else, the public enemy was going to call their new album Fear of a Black Planet . So, when Chuck D seeat in the vocal booth recording his guest spot on Sonic Youth's new tune, a song he'd never heard before, he was mildly shocked when he heard Kim Gordon's vocal crackle in through his headphones with the lyrics Don't be shy , fear of a female planet . Chuck played it cool, grinning slightly while improvising his next lines. Fear, baby, let everybody know . That song was called Cool Thing, and it's one of the coolest vocal duet performances you'll ever hear. Leave it to Thurston Moore to help orchestrate one of the coolest recordings to come out of the nineties . Because for a decade and a half up to that point , Thurston Moore had been burnishing his underground credentials and organically creating the undeniably cool aesthetic that his band would project. And this is because, since the moment Thurston Moore arrived in New York C ity in nineteen seventy six from his suburban hometown of Bethel, Connecticut, the dude was at almost every seminal rock and roll moment the city had hosted. All of that cool sprouting up from the cracks of the lower east side , and throughout the five barrows , all the early punk, the new wave explosion, the No Wave Response, the early days of hip hop, the art pop exhibitions, the hardcore matinees, grunge, Metal, College Rock, Avant Garde, you name it. If it was cool, and if it had to do with music and was happening in New York , then Thurson Moore's record collection reflected that cool , because Thursday Moore was there . Yeah, Thurston was there Thurston Moore The Tall Kid who came up from behind From Connecticut , from the coachman with the kids for Risney and South of Houston , the Thursdon was there . He was there in nineteen seventy eight . He was there at the first Sit show at Maxis . But Thurson was there He was there he was there . But Thurston was there . He was there in nineteen seventy six when the mumps opened for blonde at CVG . He was vibing on the keyboard sounds without irony. He was the first guy playing Madonna to the punk kids . He heard it at Danety . Everybody thought he was crazy . They don't know but Thurston was there there with the better looking people , with better ideas and more talent . It were actually really, really nice I have first impressed a seven inch of every live song ever done by Venom at city gardens but with no music , just see on stage rants, members of black metal tracks I heard Thursday was on the guest list for the Richard Hell Show at the St. Mark's Poetry Project when Elvis Costello sang . He wants to make a noise record . I hear that Thurston and his band has sold their guitar picks and bought screwdrivers . I hear that Thurston and his band have sold their screwdrivers and bought guitar picks . I hear everybody the Thurston knows is more relevant than everybody I know . But have you seen Thursday's record? John'son, Ma'am, I'm Blue . Love in the Terracult, Swans, Kingsman, the Black, Flag, Grand Francis, the Germs, Grey Recording, Hatterry and Nina. Double Nickels on the Day . Nells Klein, may have pussy galore seven inch before they wrote it. Puscadu, Agnostic Front, the Weirdos, Red Cross, Sunny Shock, X, Nirvana, or Natcorn party on the Raincoat Scream Heringbspian, Rakim, Kleenex, Chicone Youth, the young Aborig ines. Sacrament, Alice Culture in the X rays specs. Faith, void, slid the slid bags fill up glass here at Jesus to the church , the dills, the obsessed , the boredoms . The boredoms . The boredom the bottom strap the man motors morning Thurston Moore was very much there. In his apartment in nineteen ninety, rifling through some handmade Raymond pedabone magazines, Zines, hunting for an image to use for his band's next album 's cover art . He and the rest of the band wanted to use a pedabone illustration of Joan Crawford with their lips puckered out. And to call their major label debut album Blowjob, there's a question mark at the end of Blowjob. The subversiveness of such a move is so thick that I'm not going to ruin it here with an explanation, but I will say that this idea did not go over well with Gary Gersh, their A and R man at DGC . Thurston played it cool. There was plenty more subversiveness to mine. Instead, he landed upon a pedabone image of a teenage looking couple in wrap around shades, one smoking a cigarette and the other looking down . The caption read, I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, he in flash . Within a week, we killed my parents and hit the road. What it all meant, Thurston didn't know or care . All he knew was that it was, in a word, cool . The crime at the core of that image was a mystery just as the crime of the missing children in Manchester back in nineteen sixty five was a mystery , a mystery that David Smith was about to unintentionally solve. By the fall of nineteen sixty five, a total of four children have been reported missing in Manchester going back as far as july nineteen sixty three. They included, in order of their disappearance, Pauline Reed, sixteen, John Kilbride, twelve , Keith Bennett, twelve, and Leslie Anne Downey, aged ten . On the night of october seventh, nineteen sixty five, David Smith left his wife Maureen at home and went by his brother and sister in law's place . Ian Brady and Myra Henley had summoned David. They had some wine they wanted to give him. When David arrived, Myra quickly ushered him inside and closed the door . Things were very wrong . In the living room, before he could even react, David saw Ian standing over a young man lying on a piece of furniture . In a split second, David saw an axe in Ian's hands rise up above his head , and in another instant, before David could say or do anything, Ian's axe came down hard into the young man. The young man fell off the furniture, screaming bloody murder as he made a feeble attempt to crawl away. David stood in shock . Ian brought the axe down again. That stopped the young man from moving. All of a sudden, there was blood everywhere , on the walls, on Ian's face, all over the ax , running across the living room's hard wood floor, covering it in black. Again, Ian brought down the axe. More blood, a final scream, and then the axe again . More blood . Ian threw the axe and then straddled the young man and began strangling him . The white snow from the television was the ro om's only light, and the sound of the TV speaker's white noise overtook the fading gurgle of the strangled young man and then the gurgling stopped completely. Ian let go of his neck, and Myra shut off the television . There was just silence . David was frozen in fear . Myra broke the tension, saying, That's it. That's the messiest one yet . David snapped too . He knew. He knew in that moment who he was with. The murderers behind Manchester's missing children . Fear overtook him. He was next. He was certain Ian and Myra were going to kill him, but Ian had other plans . He wanted David in on his murderous nihilistic action. He wanted another serial killer, a third partner in crime. This murder that Ian and Myra had staged in front of David was designed to entrap David, to make him complicit, to pull him into their crime, along with his wife . But that wasn't all. Now the scene needed cleaning up. Disposing of dead bodies was hard work. Three sets of hands were better than two . David played it cool. He did what Ian and Mira said. He was afraid that that axe would be brought down on his skull next . He swallowed whatever fear he had in him, tamped down the revolting feeling in his stomach, and went to work with Ian and Myra. They trust the body, a victim whose name was Edward Evans . And they carried Edward's body into an upstairs bedroom . And then they got on their knees and socked up the spilled blood with rags, removed the bits of brains from the walls, and when it was all done, the three of them sat in the rising morning sunlight and drank tea . David played along. It was the only thing he could do. It was the only way of escaping, of getting out of this house alive , go along, do what they said , get it all over with and get out with your life . Like Elvis and King Creole, play it cool . And that's exactly what he did. Ian and Myra were confident in David's complicity. They made plans to see each other later in the day to dispose of the body. David walked out of their apartment, away from the murder scene, went straight home, told his wife , Myra's sister, Maureen, exactly what happened . And then they called the cops . Aboard upward up ward upon In nineteen eighty six, Thurston Moore sang the words We're going to kill the California girls in the song Expressway to your Skull , also known as Madonna Sean and Me, from the band's third studio album, Evil . A year later, Kim Gordon saying C,ome on, get in the car. Let's go for a drive somewhere. I won't hurt you as much as you'll hurt me in the song Pacific Coast Highway from Sonic Youth's next album, Sister . In one lyric, Thurston Moore personifies the deepest fear Kim Gordon had as a teenager growing up in California , being abducted and murdered by a west coast sociopath , being a victim of the Manson family. We're going to kill the California girls. In the other, Kim puts herself on the side of the road with that killer as he manipulates her into his grip. Come on, get in the car. Let's go for a drive somewhere. I won't hurt you as much as you'll hurt me . Both songs, Expressway to Your Skull and Pacific Coast Highway, continued the sonic youth tradition of subverting classic rock cliche. The We're gonna kill the California Girls lyric takes direct aim at the heart of the Beach Boys American Dream , while Pacific Coast Highway indirectly crawls its way into the American Prime of the Century, the one that was supposedly inspired by a beatle's song, Helter Skelter Both songs ooze paranoid weirdness . That feeling you get when the moment you're in turns surreal. When you see yourself in the movie you never wanted to be in. It was the same feeling David Smith had when he arrived at Ian Myras home the night Edward Evans was murdered . The feeling David Smith now once again had sitting in the back seat of a police car with his wife Maureen , both feeling the harsh glare of the public spotlight for David's part in what had come to be known as the Moore's Murders. After he escaped from the murder scene, David Smith, along with Maureen Henley, his wife, armed themselves with a knife and a screwdriver, and went to the nearest phone booth, called the police and turned Ian Brady and Myra Henley in . David accompanied the police to Ian and Myra's home where the body of Edward Evans was quickly discovered. So were two luggage tickets from the Manchester Central Rail way Station . Ian's luggage at the station was located and searched . In it, an audio tape. On it, the horrifying sounds of ten year old Leslie Ann Downey being murdered and pleading for her life . Also in the luggage photographs of Ian and Myra posing out on the moors in different locations . The investigators realized that Ian and Myra's photos were markers . It was their sick way of remembering where they'd buried the bodies . Remembering so they could bring David and Maureen out to picnic on top of the buried bodies . In the weeks to come, the bodies of Leslie Anne Downey and John Kilbride were disinterred. Pauline Reed's remains were not found until twenty years later . To this day, the remains of Keith Bennet t have never been found . With Ian and eventually Myra under arrest, a trial was set . Both pleaded not guilty . Incredibly , both strategically lied on the stand to implicate David Smith as the driving force behind the murder of Edward Evans . Their lies were widely believed to be true. From the minute the news broke, the public suspected David Smith of being a child murderer. The Moore's murders were instantly international news . A global press corps ensnarled Manchester, and the need for storylines surrounding the murder was set. Over one hundred and fifty journalists secured press credentials for the trial . They all needed an angle . Some approached David Smith with intellectual laziness . He looked like a punk with that greasy rock and roll pompador, clad in all black. He must be guilty. He had a juvenile delinquent past. He was part of a street gang. Of course he's a murderer. He was seventeen years old, and clearly part of all that was wrong with this generation. Lock him up . And David did himself no favors when he accepted payments from news of the world to tell his side of the story. David was broke and yes , he was seventeen, and now he was internationally known as a rock and roll sociopath . His job prospects were less than zero . The money for his story was the only way to survive as he saw it , but the public didn't see it that way . The newspapers and the news programs covered two trials the official trial of Ian Brady and Myra Henley and the unofficial public opinion trial of the rock and roll juvenile delinquent David Smith and his wife Maureen . David and Maureen were vilified, slurred, dragged in the press, their lives threatened. David was under attack everywhere he went, verbally and physically. Many in Manchester and across the globe wanted him dead. The story was front page news in the New York Times. The trial was widely anticip ated, and the guilt of David and Maureen hotly debated. On the way to the courthouse, the two sat in the back seat of a police car as they were being escorted to the proceedings through a massive crowd on the street