Page 28 Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020bloodbath in the snow
Day Three, Friday
January 14, 1977:
The final hours
G
ILL MORAN’S fragile
grip on reality was at
breaking point. She
had been sexually
assaulted. She had
watched helplessly as her
husband and mother were
bound and gagged.
She had not seen her ten-year-
old daughter Sarah and pensioner
father for days and feared for
their safety.
And all the while she had felt the
need to go along with the wishes of
the thuggish Billy Hughes, the
escaped prisoner holding her
family hostage, in the hope that he
would not harm them further.
That’s why for days she had not
dared raise the alarm, though she
had had opportunities to do so.
But now everything was unravel-
ling at Pottery Cottage.
She had seen her mortally
wounded mother Amy staggering
towards her before falling to the
ground in a pool of blood. Hughes
then hauled her mother’s body
away, leaving shallow trenches in
the snow where her heels dragged.
G i l l s h o o k u n c o n t r o l l a b l y,
murmuring: ‘Is it true? Am I going
mad?’ She answered herself: ‘Yes,
this is madness. It’s me. I’ve gone
mad, I am insane.’
She turned and ran in despera-
tion to get away... only to career
right into Hughes. He’d piled snow
over the body and now was
desperate to flee the scene, but the
car he was expecting to escape in
had stalled and would not restart.
What’s more, he knew a neigh-
b o u r h a d t w i g g e d w h a t w a s
happening at Pottery Cottage and
had sent for the police.
A panicked Hughes grabbed
Gill’s hand and forced her to run,
from the house, up to the top of
the drive, then along the road.
‘Every time a car came along, he
pulled me into the ditch,’ she said.
‘When I held my head up hoping
someone would see me, he pushed
me down again.’
They crawled along the ditch in
the darkness until Hughes saw two
cottages. One was the home of
Ron Frost, a mechanic. They
knocked on the door.
Ron Frost knew Gillian Moran by
sight but was surprised to see her
on his doorstep, along with a
strange man, both of them soaked
to the skin and filthy. ‘We’ve broken
down,’ Gill explained, and he
agreed to help them out.
The three of them climbed into
the front seat of his pick-up truck
to drive to Pottery Cottage. Gill
sat in the middle, clinging to Ron.
‘He was safety to me.’
Ron was alarmed by her oddbehaviour: ‘All the way down the
road she was digging me in the
ribs with her hand. I thought this
was very strange.’ He wondered
who the young man with her was.
The news was full of the escaped
prisoner and the police manhunt
for him over the snow-
b o u n d m o o r s. I t
crossed his mind it
might be Hughes.
At Pottery Cottage,
he tied the tow rope
from the car to the
truck but the snow was
so deep it took three
attempts to get the car
out of the driveway.
They finally made it
and, with Ron towing
them down the road,
Hughes switched the
ignition on and the
engine fired.
Ron unfastened the
tow rope and the car
accelerated away. Ron
headed back home, until
he saw figures in the
road, flagging him down.
The police had arrived at
Pottery Cottage.
They had been alerted
by the couple living next
door, to whom Gill had
finally managed to whis-
per out the truth. They’d
p h o n e d C h e s t e r f i e l d
Police, who logged the call
at 8.09pm.
Officers were immedi-
a t e l y d i s p a t c h e d a n d
found the house ablaze
with light and music from
a radio blaring inside.
DS Bill Miller banged on the front
door. ‘Police! Is there anyone
in here?’
No reply. He broke a window and
forced his way in with DC Bob
Hassell. The two of them went
upstairs, treading carefully around
patches of blood on the carpet.
They stopped on the landing,
appalled at the sight before them.
Richard Moran, Gill’s husband,lay face down, head against a chest
of drawers.
Blood saturated his shirt, much
of it still wet. White flex was pulled
tight in a crude knot about his
ankles and orange flex secured his
arms behind his back.
He had almost managed to work
them free before being stabbed
to death. Blood pooled on thecarpet from a knife wound
to his throat.
It was clear he had died
only very recently, as had
his mother-in-law, Amy. Her
body was outside, covered
with snow, face down. She
had been stabbed multiple times
and her throat cut.
Back inside the house, officers
f o u n d a n o t h e r b o d y. A r t h u r
Minton, Gill’s father, lay on his
back, his arms tied behind him.
A suede coat and an anorak had
been thrown over him and a large
teddy bear dressed in blue and
white pyjamas had been thrust on
his face in a cruelly stupid gesture.
F r o m t h e a p p e a r a n c e a n dtemperature of his body, it was
clear he had been murdered at
least two days before.
In the Pottery Cottage annexe
they discovered little Sarah, lying
in a foetal position on the thick
carpet of her grandparents’ bed-
room, curled between the bed and
an armchair. Her wrists and ankles
had been tied with softer material
than the flex. She was gagged.
The injuries to her chest and the
deep wound at her throat had bled
profusely. Nearby, tucked up in an
old pillowcase for a bed, a favour-
ite doll slept soundly. This must
have been little Sarah’s last act
before Hughes murdered her.
Why he chose to do so has neverChilling cruelty: Billy Hughes
He was an escaped maniac who’d
held a family hostage in a lonely
cottage for three days. And as
our final heartstopping extract
reveals, only when the police
closed in was the full horror
of what lay within discovered
and former chief
inspector peter howseby Carol
Ann Lee
evil
at the
cottage
IN JaNuary 1977, Billy Hughes, a vicious, escaped
convict, held a family of five at knifepoint at Pottery
Cottage in the remote Derbyshire countryside,
terrorising and torturing them. yesterday, in the
second extract from a blood-chilling new book on
a horrendous crime that shocked the nation, we
recounted how Gill Moran tried desperately to
appease Hughes in the hopes that he would free her
family — including her ten-year-old daughter. In the
final part of our gripping serialisation, Hughes has
made his getaway, taking Gill as his hostage...the KiLLer and his captiVes
BIlly HuGHes escaped prisoner, 28
GIll MoraN, 38, at home in her cottage
rICHarD MoraN her husband, 41
saraH their adopted daughter, 10
aMy MINtoN gill’s mother, 67
artHur MINtoN gill’s father, 74