Talk:Moors murders: Difference between revisions

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Who has which sources

• Fuller cites for "Refideas" entries are here [1]

work	notes	EEng	Kieronoldham	TTTC	X
Already in the article
(bibl) Birch 1993/4, Moving targets		has		has
(bibl) Carmichael, Sin & Forgiveness...		"in transit"		could consult (ILL)
(bibl) Cowley		Newton
(bibl) Gibson 2006, Serial murders & media circuses May have useful material on media/culture, but shows poor discretion in choice of its own sources for facts of case e.g. relies primarily on Williams		has		can consult
(bibl) Keightley [2] ? Brady’s "most intimate confidant", scholar of religion and long term Daily Mail columnist... perhaps best to avoid
(bibl) Lee 2010, One of your own Probably the most up-to-date, reliable source overall		has		getting
(bibl) Ritchie 1988, MH: Inside the Mind...	"well-researched" (Lee)	has		can consult SLV missing
(bibl) Staff 2007, The Lost Boy Lee p11 mentions "a few inaccuracies throughout", says more flagged in (Lee's) endnotes		has		can consult
(bibl) Topping 1989 Essential, but a complicated combination of 1ary and 2ary, plus much of what it reports is what Brady and Hindley told Topping, which is not the same as fact, plus Topping, being police, is not independent		has
(bibl) Williams, Beyond belief Review says fact, interpretation of fact, and surmise [are] interwoven... So the reader may distinguish among them, the author uses – at which point there's a page break, and I won't be able to get the next page for a while! So use with caution for now. TTTC's view: the intro says it does this with present tense for the latter two and past tense for pure fact, but freely admits not consistently doing so.		1967 ed.	has (1968 ed. repr 1992)	can consult
(further) Boar	open access link
(further) Goodman edited transcript of the trial, a lengthy introduction sumamrises the facts of the case as presented to the court, part of an "unhappily short-lived" series of "high standards" [3]		can consult Law HD		can consult
(further) Hansford Johnson, On iniquity		has		could consult (ILL)
(further) Harrison, B & H: genesis of the Moors murders		lost
(further) Hawkins, "Monster body..."	full text link; useful bibl?
(further) Potter 1966, Monsters of the Moors Seems to quote interrogations and court testimony, but unclear if complete and accurate, and w/o citation so best to avoid		has
(further) Robins		got pdf		can consult
(further) Smith & Lee, Witness: Story of David Smith... note possible alt title, might be useful		No
(further) West, Ann 1989 For the love of Lesley		has	has
(further) Wilson (Colin, Damon, Rowan)		N.O.S. try again	has
(talk refideas) Bingham, ‘Gross Interference ...News of the World ... 2016 [4]		has idx & bibl pdf		has full pdf
(talk refideas) Ian Cummins, et al., Serial Killers and the Media... 2019 [5]		has pdf		has pdf
Potential general secondary sources
(talk refideas) Pleasance, Lost Children ... photographic story... 2011 PDF		has pdf
(talk refideas) Makepeace, Child Killers 2017 [6]	Can't find this in Worldcat
(other) Erica Gregory, The Secret Key to the Moors Murders 2013	Complete trash
Psychiatry/psychology
(talk refideas) Cuthbert, A Portfolio of Murders, 1970 [7]		has pdf
(talk refideas) Wilson & Seaman, The Serial Killers:... 1992, 2011 [8][9]		has pdf	has
(talk refideas) Kocsis, The psychological profile of serial... 1998 [10]		can consult (Law HD)		has pdf
Criminology, forensic archaeology
(talk refideas) Pettigrew, Myra Hindley ... whole life prison terms 2016 [11]		has pdf
(talk refideas) King, et al., The strange Case of Ian Stuart Brady..., [12]
(other) Joanna Kozubska, Cries for help: women w/o a voice... 2014 [13]		has
(talk refideas) Heron, et al., Studies in Crime:... 1996, 2013 [14]		has pdf		can consult (1996 ed)
Media studies
(talk refideas) Peelo, Framing homicide narratives... 2006 [15]		No		has pdf
(talk refideas) Wardle, Monsters and angels: Visual press... 2007 PDF		has pdf
Philosophy, sociology, and other soft sciences
(talk refideas) Schone, The Hardest Case of All... 2000 [16]		has pdf
(talk refideas) Schmid, A Philosophy of Serial Killing 2010 [17]	Ch2 of Waller	Wid HD
(talk refideas) Stanley, Documents of Life Revisited.... (Ch. 3) text online?		got pdf		has pdf
News sources (secondary)
(other) Amisha Padnani, The Moors Murders: A Notorious Couple... NYT 2017 [18]
Potential primary sources
(talk refideas) Benfield, The Moors Murders, Police J 1968 [19] Comments for Topping apply here as well, plus this work is very early		has pdf
(talk refideas) Terry West, If Only: Living in the shadows... 2018 [20]	Apparently no lib holds it
(other) Keeling "Best friend of Moors Murder victim..." [21] Use w/care, unfiltered witness recollection is essentially a primary source
Non-RS/other
(other) Wilson, Robert 1988 Return to hell [22]	Sensationalist	has
(other) R. Barri Flowers, Dead at the Saddleworth Moor:... 2013	Trash
(other) Ian Thomas Field, The Moors Murders : the media, cultural representations... 2016 [23]	thesis, check bibliography	some chance of getting
(other) Syme, Anthony, Murder on the Moors 1966	Probably worthless, almost no lib holds
(other) Frasier Murder cases...	pirate bibl	has pdf
Unclassified
Human nature stained : Colin Wilson and the existential study of modern murder		1ER42

August 2019 to-do list

Discussion transferred from FAR [24]

Looks like we're ready to go ahead then, with the July 26 version. So...

• 1.  Done David Eppstein, if you agree the time has come then how about you do the reversion to July 26 (linked by Levivich at the start of this subthread)? You're a respected admin with a clean block record, and not a party to any open Arbcom case request, so you're the perfect person to do this. It's an honor, really!
• 2.  Done I'll reintegrate the post–July 26 changes I diffed earlier in this subthread
• 3.  Done Probably should review the article history (July, August) in case there are any good edits lost in shuffle
• 4.  Done We should comb the discussions so far (FAR and article Talk) for issues noted therein so they don't get lost. Those are:
  • #Glasgow Herald
  • #Gibson
  • BBC (archived)
  • The lead (archived)
  • #Prose concerns
• 5. Then we need to see who has what sources, and divvy up the failed-v list so we're not duplicating effort, and attend to those
• 6. Then, since the failed-v list only covered part of the article, that effort needs to be extended to all sections and all sources
• 7. There are some <! -- --> notes in the source that we should probably review and resolve, or at least surface to this page
• 8. Then (deep breath) we take stock of what to do next, including expansion. Also, we need to review the use of some of the existing sources to determine their appropriate use; for example, the question's been raised as to whether assertions in Topping should taken uncritically at face value in all cases e.g. if one of the killers told Topping that X happened, should we simply report X as fact (as the article often does now) or say, "Brady later said X"?

EEng 18:23, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Agree, especially with the first bullet. – Levivich 16:57, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok, July 26 version restored. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:09, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

• So bullets 1 and 2 above are done. Before we go on, I'd like to propose something: to ease editing I'd like to insert an extra space at the end of each sentence (so two spaces between sentences, like you were taught to do in the old days on a typewriter). Of course this doesn't affect the rendered page the reader sees. I know it sounds minor but it makes it just a scrunch easier to scan through and find a passage you're looking for within the jumble of markup with in a paragraph. Here's a demonstration edit in one section [25]. Actually, I prefer to put a linebreak wherever a sentence end also has a ref, because I find this really makes finding things easy, but some people find this too radical. Anyway, please let me know what you think. EEng 19:55, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Get crackin', Levivich (front row, left)

Incipient infestation of gnomes

-EEng

I don't care about whitespace in source that doesn't affect how it renders, but my guess is that if you put in linebreaks we'll get an infestation of gnomes taking them out again. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:10, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Bring on the gnomes. I'll soon get crackin' on bullet 4. – Levivich 20:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

• I think bullet 4 is as done as it's going to get at this stage. I transferred concerns from near and FAR to the #Prose concerns section, and made some of the suggested changes in the other threads listed under bullet 4. If any of those changes get reverted, those can be new items for discussion to add to the Prose concerns thread. I archived everything that's resolved or otherwise outdated, so only "live" issues remain on this page. The remaining bullet 4 threads, I think, will need to await source selection; no sense in tinkering with prose until we know what the sources will be and exactly what they say. – Levivich 04:47, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
  • 4 is now done, I think. – Levivich 03:27, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
• I've done bullet 3 unless someone else wants to check as well; I didn't see anything that wasn't either already incorporated or part of the failed verif. list. – Levivich 05:05, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
• About #7 and the hidden <!-- --> comments in the text, I looked at them and their meaning and usefulness were not immediately apparent to me. Not sure what there is to save, but I'm probably just not reading them right. Has anyone else gone through them? – Levivich 03:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Verification-failed passages restored

Victoriaearle, I told you a month ago [26] that the "verifications" you were carrying out made no sense because you were ignoring the explanations of the verification failures (and the extensive discussions among editors about how to resolve those problems) here [27]. Nonetheless in your edits today [28] (and these are just some random examples) ...

• You restored The full extent of Brady and Hindley's crimes did not come to light until Brady confessed in 1985 to the killing of Pauline Read and Kenneth Bennett, discussed as Point 1 in the verification failures list (and although you added a new citation the cited passage says nothing about "the full extent of Brady and Hindley's crimes").
• You restored continuing down Froxmer Street, discussed as Point 4.
• You restored a friend of her younger sister, Maureen, discussed as Point 5.
• You restored Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a seven or eight-year-old child. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about 30 minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying., discussed as Point 6. Also, Ruck isn't mentioned elsewhere in the article, so the reader doesn't know who she is. And anyway, she shouldn't be mentioned at all, see [29].
• You restored She noticed that "Pauline's coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray ... She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her.", discussed as Point 8.5.

You seem to have realized that Topping is the (unstated) source for much of the no-citation material in the article version from last June, and made it your business to restore that material, where it was removed, adding cites to Topping. There are two problems with this.

• First, editors have discussed on the talk page the problematic nature of Topping as a source because (a) it's a combination of primary and secondary material, and much of what it reports is simply stuff Hindley told Topping which cannot be offered uncritically as flat fact in Wikipedia's voice; and (b) Topping himself, being an investigator on the case, isn't independent. While there's only been initial discussion of this issue, in the interim it's unwise to increase our reliance on Topping particularly for stuff that only he reports; in at least some cases you replaced high-quality sources like Lee with Topping.
• Second, the article has changed a lot since June for many reasons, most having nothing to do with the verification failures; by blindly pasting back in three-month-old blocks of text, as if the verification failures were the only reason anything was changed, you've simply thrown away those changes.

I've therefore reverted your changes. Please, bring yourself up to speed with the work done on the article in the last months, and if you have something to add to the discussions already ongoing, or can resolve any of the verification or other issues listed on the talk page, please let's hear about it. EEng 04:43, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with avoiding Topping as a source; it's not an independent secondary source, and there are better ones, like Carol Ann Lee. – Levivich 19:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I assume you'll agree when I clarify that we're not saying Topping cannot be used at all, but must be used with caution. EEng 23:43, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, agree 100%. – Levivich 00:54, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd appreciate it if you could go to 120% now and then. EEng 10:29, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Have sources, will scan selected pages

Cross-posting this comment from Wikipedia:Featured article review/Moors murders/archive1 for anyone who has this page on watch but not that one. If anyone wants random, selected pages scanned from Staff, Topping or Ritchie let me know & I'll send them on. Victoria (tk) 14:36, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Topping

The below is a thread from [30], ending on 3 October 2019

[Discussion about scanning sources trimmed.]

[...] Also, I get why you wouldn't want to use Topping, but doesn't everything that's known about the case originate with Hindley and Brady? Victoria (tk) 21:54, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

As Lee (2010) notes, the early efforts of the police were not particularly adept, and Benfield, in pursuit of a promotion, inflated his own role in events in subsequent accounts. And, as EEng has pointed out somewhere in the thousands of bytes of conversation over the last few months, Topping made his name for his single-minded pursuit of the case, including suggesting Brady and Hindley be forcibly hypnotised to assist with locating the later body. It is reasonable to expect his account would be similarly distorted. And yes, I know I’ve used Benfield to “verify” some points, so I’d welcome those being closely examined as well. Triptothecottage (talk) 06:17, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Triptothecottage, can you say what you mean by "similarly distorted"? I'd have thought a single-minded pursuit of that case would be viewed as an honourable thing. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:22, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

The question is not whether Topping's an honorable source, but rather a reliable source. EEng 06:27, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Exactly, I’m not impugning Topping’s honour, whatever that might mean. But even honourable people are subject to biases, and if we don’t recognise, assess and deal with these, then we are not doing our jobs. One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of Topping’s perspective becoming the slant of our supposedly neutral article. For example, the 15 August version said Smith became "reviled by the people of Manchester", despite having been instrumental in bringing Brady and Hindley to justice, cited to Topping. Now I read this and hear alarm bells, and sure enough as I flick through the Topping pages EEng has kindly sent, I find such gems as David Smith, young, naïve and impressionable (22) and Ian Brady’s background was... nowhere near as tough or as cruel as David Smith’s (23). These are the characterisations of a police chief trying to defend his badly behaved star witness, and, as one who rather enjoys the police memoir genre in my leisure reading, I am familiar with this kind of unsubtle “good guy bad guy” storytelling. But our article, by policy, needs to be more neutral than that, and when better sources are available, we ought to use them. In that case, I was fortunate to have Bingham’s scholarly assessment of the public reaction to Brady’s testimony; not every aspect of this case has been subject to the same scrutiny, but many have. Triptothecottage (talk) 09:46, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Triptothecottage, thanks for the reply. Topping is an excellent primary source. Like all primary sources, his book has to be used with care by editors familiar with the secondary sources. What rings alarm bells for you over Smith being "reviled by the people of Manchester", despite being instrumental, etc? Also, Smith was young and impressionable (he was 17 when he witnessed the murder), and he does seem to have had a more deprived childhood than Brady. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:25, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Such evaluations should come from sources not personally involved in the case. At p223 Topping says, "To those politicians and journalists who criticized the Moors search, who talked scathingly about searching for a needle in a haystack and complained about the cost of the search, to them I would like to say: look at Mrs Reade. We could never bring her daughter back [etc etc]. I believe the Moors inquiry team have many things to be proud of [etc etc]". Then he goes on to congratulate his team for their thorough search for Kilbride and so on. You can't blame Topping for being somewhat self-serving in places -- it's inevitable and understandable -- but there's no way we should be using him as a fact source except with "great caution", as they say. EEng 21:25, 3 October 2019 (UTC)