Sonic Youth: The Murders Behind One of the Coolest Album Covers of All Time

This is the story of one of the coolest album covers of all time, Sonic Youth’s Goo, and how the band was unaware of the shocking murders behind their own album art. A true crime involving a pair of serial killers and an unlikely hero obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/29bc673e-85fa-11ed-9d9c-cffe44583488/www.disgracelandpod.com. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

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• 2:25Jake Brennan?

  Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:39Jake Brennan?

  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.

• 3:22Jake Brennan?

  That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Guided by the Fright MK1. 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 26, 1990. And that was the day Sonic Youth released their major label debut album, Goo. The one with the drawing of two teenage rock and rollers caught up in one of England's most violent and disturbing true crimes.

• 4:04Jake Brennan?

  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 Disgrace Land.

• 4:44Jake Brennan?

  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 Newbury Comics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, holding this album. I couldn't have been older than 16, 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 band? Sonic Youth.

• 5:28Jake Brennan?

  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 patch 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 at one of the hardcore matinees that I'd 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. Within a week, we killed my parents and hit the road."

• 6:08Jake Brennan?

  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 her 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?

• 6:37Jake Brennan?

  By the year 1990, Sonic Youth was poised to break out of the underground music scene and into the mainstream. Their 1990 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 fanbase of punks, hardcore kids, art school and college students, music fans, mostly youth who identified with the band Sonic Assault on convention, both musically and socially. Sonic Youth. When Sonic Youth began back in 1981, 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.

• 7:22Jake Brennan?

  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 cutesy ornament, not some sultry frontwoman. 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 Rinaldo. And by the year 1985, when drummer Steve Shelley joined the band, Kim Gordon had helped create what was at once one of the most driving and danceable rhythm sections in popular

• 8:07Jake Brennan?

  music. And she was married to Thurston Moore. Sonic Youth was not fronted by a groupie hustling alpha douche as were other rock bands, Sonic Youth contemporaries on MTV and countless groups from music history. No, Sonic Youth guitarist and co-singer on most of their tracks, their creative instigator, the six foot eight inch guitar player who sometimes played a stringed instrument with a screwdriver in order to elicit the appropriate type of drone to complement his compositions, this dude was not Nicky Six from Motley Crue. 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.

• 8:49Jake Brennan?

  In 1990, this was damn near revolutionary. Still kinda is, actually. Go ahead and try to think of another culture-defining rock band with a married couple in it. I'll wait.

• 9:02Jake Brennan?

  See, the closest you're gonna 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 shitshow. It was completely cliché. 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 cliché as a rock star dying at the age of 27. Sonic Youth didn't do convention. Sonic Youth didn't do cliché, not on record, not on stage, not offstage, not in Kim and Thurston's relationship. The band was as anti-cliché as could be, and cool in an entirely new kind of way.

• 9:47Jake Brennan?

  The way they sounded was cool. The power of Sonic Youth shows, their East Coast no-wave avant-garde aesthetic, and their West Coast hardcore energy. The way they looked was cool. Oxford shirts and velvet underground wrapped around shades with Kim's single striped maud 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 Ginn's shack back in the 80s. 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

• 10:30Jake Brennan?

  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?

• 10:59Jake Brennan?

  David Smith was 15 years old when Pauline Reed disappeared from the Gorton District of Manchester, a city 150 miles north of London. Pauline Reed was only 16. It was 1963. 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 Open Shaw Boys who'd invaded David's gang's turf in Gorton's housing estates. Low-income terrorist living. No money, no jobs, no future. Just violence and rock and roll. David could still hear the Dwayne Eddie riff echoing in his head when the first punch hit.

• 11:44Jake Brennan?

  The bit of blood in his mouth fueled him. He swung back wildly, connecting with the jaw of one of the Open Shaw Boys. The brass knuckles David wore ensured that the Open Shaw Boy wouldn't be coming back for more. 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 Café. 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, drainpipe skinny black jeans

• 12:24Jake Brennan?

  cuffed high to reveal a shocking dash of his pink socks, a studded belt, a button-down black shirt, crucifix for protection hanging over his chest, perfectly styled greased pompadour, slick, wet with sweat, slightly bloodied, 16, and dangerous. David Smith pushed open the door of the café, into the sounds of Elvis Presley's "It's Now or Never" blasting from the jukebox, and made immediate eye contact with the girl with the dusty Springfield makeup, lacquered beehive hairdo, and poodle skirt. Seventeen-year-old Maureen Hindley. David beelined it to Maureen, grabbed her by the hips, pulled her toward him, and confidently swayed to the sounds of the King.

• 13:09Jake Brennan?

  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.

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• 14:21Speaker 06

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party

• 15:02Speaker 06

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• 15:54Jake Brennan?

  The illustration on the cover of Sonic Youth's "Goo" is a depiction of David Smith and Maureen Hindley, the boy with the rock and 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. They weren't mods. They were rockers.

• 16:16Jake Brennan?

  The artist who depicted the couple on the now-famous album is Raymond Pettibone, brother of Black Flag guitarist at SST Records founder Greg Ginn. Prior to 1990, Sonic Youth had released two full-length albums on SST: "Evil" and "Sister." They then jumped ship to the Enigma label to release "Daydream Nation" in 1989. At some point, they became not just fans of, but friends with Raymond Pettibone. Pettibone, 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 and imagery that recontextualized images sourced from books, magazines, cartoons, often accompanied by dark and quippy

• 16:59Jake Brennan?

  text that recontextualized the imagery into something unique. In a word, Pettibone's work is punk. Here are some other words: subversive, dangerous, larcenous, and again, unique. Like real punk, no matter the context—70s, 80s, East Coast, West Coast, US, UK—you know it when you hear it. With Pettibone's art, you know it when you see it. Contextualization is at the heart of Raymond Pettibone'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.

• 17:44Jake Brennan?

  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 Youth's Thurston Moore felt when he saw that piece of Pettibone art. Arrested. Pettibone 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 Pettibone 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 Thurston Moore draft those words in collaboration with the artist? He did not.

• 18:25Jake Brennan?

  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 1985 on the Homestead label, Sonic Youth began recontextualizing classic rock and American true crime, and appropriating these elements from the mainstream into underground culture.

• 19:07Jake Brennan?

  "Bad Moon Rising" was the title of a Creedence Clearwater revival tune. A song by a band from the Bay Area that presented themselves as swamp creatures from the bayou. And they wrote big, hooky radio hits designed to sell gazillions of albums to stoned hippies for their corporate record label, 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 droney, sometimes driving, sonic opuses that were designed to blow out your radio's speakers.

• 19:47Jake Brennan?

  Bad Moon Rising may have nodded to CCR's swamps, but it sounded like the New York City Thurston Moore moved to from the Connecticut suburbs in the 70s. 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 lunatic killers on the loose, prowling the streets in 69 Mustangs

• 20:31Jake Brennan?

  for unsuspecting teenage hitchhikers to sacrifice in some hippie-dippy occult blood ritual. That's what the song "Death Valley 69" from Bad Moon 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 Lunch'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. Its 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."

• 21:16Jake Brennan?

  Those lyrics portrayed the fear Kim grew up in in Southern California in the shadow of Charles Manson's nihilistic true crimes.

• 21:29Jake Brennan?

  Back in England in 1966, nihilism was suddenly a concern of David Smith's. David Smith, the rock and roll street tough from Manchester, ended up marrying Maureen Hindley, the girl with the dusty Springfield makeup. He was just 16, and she was 18. The two became fast friends with Maureen's sister Myra and Myra's husband Ian Brady. Myra was 22, Ian was 26. It was August 1964. In the Gorton community of Manchester, another child had gone missing. Keith Bennett's parents joined Pauline Reed's in despair.

• 22:11Jake Brennan?

  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 taste, preferring the sounds of Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of his hero Adolf Hitler. Ian had offensive taste, 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 than he was now family. The two couples drank heavily together, and the drunker they got, the weirder Ian got. Ian was a nihilist.

• 22:53Jake Brennan?

  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 Sade and Friedrich 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 Sade. The book depicted extreme sexual violence and was widely viewed as an instrument of moral subversion. Ian made David read Justine. 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.

• 23:37Jake Brennan?

  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 foursome picnicked out on the moors. The moors, a bleak highland, a vast and isolated landscape, just a few miles outside Gorton, 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.

• 24:25Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

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• 24:59Speaker 06

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.

• 25:46Speaker 06

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• 26:06Jake Brennan?

  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 for. He just wanted to get into the booth and cut it. He trusted Thurston Moore, and he trusted Kim Gordon. The couple and their band by 1990 were synonymous with downtown core. 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.

• 26:33Jake Brennan?

  And what Kim Gordon sang on what was to become the lead single off 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 wanna know, what are you gonna do for me? I mean, are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?" Chuck D responded with, "Tell it like it is."

• 27:13Jake Brennan?

  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, that Public Enemy was going to call their new album "Fear of a Black Planet." So, when Chuck D sat 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."

• 27:58Jake Brennan?

  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 90s. 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 City in 1976 from his suburban hometown of Bethel, Connecticut, the dude was at almost every seminal rock and roll moment the city had hosted.

• 28:43Jake Brennan?

  All of that cool sprouting up from the cracks of the Lower East Side and throughout the five boroughs. 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 Thurston Moore's record collection reflected that cool. Because Thurston Moore was there.

• 29:21Jake Brennan?

  Yeah Thurston was there.

• 29:26Jake Brennan?

  Thurston Moore.

• 29:30Jake Brennan?

  The tall kid.

• 29:33Jake Brennan?

  Who came up from behind.

• 29:38Jake Brennan?

  From Connecticut.

• 29:42Jake Brennan?

  From the Coachman.

• 29:46Jake Brennan?

  With the kids. From Rizzi in south of Houston.

• 29:54Jake Brennan?

  But Thurston was there.

• 29:57Jake Brennan?

  He was there in 1978.

• 30:02Jake Brennan?

  He was there at the first Sid Show at Max's.

• 30:10Jake Brennan?

  But Thurston was there.

• 30:19Jake Brennan?

  He was there, because he was there.

• 30:27Jake Brennan?

  But Thurston was there. He was there in 1976 when the mumps opened for Blondie at CBGB's.

• 30:37Jake Brennan?

  He was vibing on the keyboard sounds, without irony. He was the first guy playing Madonna to the punk kids. He heard it at Dance Etiria. Everybody thought he was crazy. They don't know. But Thurston was there.

• 30:57Jake Brennan?

  With the better-looking people, with better ideas, and more talent. And who were actually really, really, really nice.

• 31:09Jake Brennan?

  I heard Thurston pressed a seven inch of every live song ever done by Venom. At City Gardens, but with no music, just the onstage rants, none of the black metal tracks. I heard Thurston was on the guest list for the Richard Hell Show at the St. Mark's Poetry Project when Elvis Costello sang it. He wants to make a noise record. I hear that Thurston and his band have sold their guitar picks and bought screwdrivers. I hear that Thurston and his band have sold their screwdrivers and bought guitar picks.

• 31:49Jake Brennan?

  I hear everybody that Thurston knows is more relevant than everybody I know. But have you seen Thurston's records? John Zorn, Mayhem, I'm Blue Tom! Love of the Terror Cult, Swans, Kingsmen, The Black Flag, Glen Branca, The Germs, Gray Recording, Henry and Nina, Double Nickel is on the fly! Nels Cline, Mayhem, Pussy Galore's seven inch before they wrote it, Puska Do, Agnostic Front, The Weirdos, Red Cross, Sonny Shahak, X, Nirvana, Ornette Coleman, The Birthday Party, Costello's most close with Lex, Sikes and the Screamers, Eric B. and Rakim, Kleenex, Chacony Youth, The Young Aborigines, Sacrament Trust, Alice Coltrane, The X-Ray Specs, Faith,

• 32:32Jake Brennan?

  Boyd, Slid, The Slids, Bags, Philip Glass, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Dills, The Obsessed, The Boredoms.

• 32:46Jake Brennan?

  The Boredoms.

• 32:50Jake Brennan?

  The Boredoms.

• 32:54Jake Brennan?

  The Boredoms.

• 33:30Jake Brennan?

  Thurston Moore was very much there. In his apartment in 1990 rifling through some handmade Raymond Pettibone 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 Pettibone illustration of Joan Crawford with her 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&R man at DGC. Thurston played it cool. There was plenty more subversiveness to mine. Instead, he landed upon a Pettibone image of a teenage-looking couple in wraparound

• 34:15Jake Brennan?

  shades, one smoking a cigarette and the other looking down. The caption read, "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and 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 1965 was a mystery. A mystery that David Smith was about to unintentionally solve.

• 34:57Jake Brennan?

  By the fall of 1965, a total of four children had been reported missing in Manchester going back as far as July 1963. They included, in order of their disappearance, Pauline Reed, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, and Leslie Ann Downey, aged 10. On the night of October 7, 1965, David Smith left his wife Maureen at home and went by his brother and sister-in-law's place. Ian Brady and Myra Hinley 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.

• 35:42Jake Brennan?

  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 axe, running across the living room's hardwood floor, covering it in black.

• 36:26Jake Brennan?

  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 room'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.

• 37:02Jake Brennan?

  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.

• 37:46Jake Brennan?

  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 Myra 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 trussed 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 soaked 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.

• 38:31Jake Brennan?

  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 in 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.

• 39:37Jake Brennan?

  In 1986, Thurston Moore sang the words, "We're gonna 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 sang, "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", 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.

• 40:21Jake Brennan?

  "We're gonna 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 cliché. 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 Beatles song, "Helter Skelter".

• 41:04Jake Brennan?

  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 and Myra's home the night Edward Evans was murdered. The feeling David Smith now, once again, had sitting in the backseat 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.

• 41:39Jake Brennan?

  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.

• 41:56Jake Brennan?

  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 Railway Station. Ian's luggage at the station was located and searched. In it, an audio tape. On it, the horrifying sounds of 10-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

• 42:41Jake Brennan?

  out to picnic on top of the buried bodies. In the weeks to come, the bodies of Leslie Ann Downey and John Kilbride were disinterred. Pauline Reed's remains were not found until 20 years later. To this day, the remains of Keith Bennett 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.

• 43:24Jake Brennan?

  The moors murders were instantly international news. A global press corps ensnared Manchester, and the need for storylines surrounding the murder was set. Over 150 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 pompadour, 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 17 years old and clearly part of all that was wrong with this generation. Lock him up.

• 44:05Jake Brennan?

  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 Hindley, and the unofficial public opinion trial of the rock and roll juvenile delinquent David Smith and his wife Maureen.

• 44:47Jake Brennan?

  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 anticipated, and the guilt of David and Maureen hotly debated. On the way to the courthouse, the two sat in the backseat of a police car as they were being escorted to the proceedings through a massive crowd on the street. Not just journalists and photographers and news program cameramen, but ordinary onlookers,

• 45:29Jake Brennan?

  all trying to sneak a peek at the now infamous juvenile delinquents, whom many believe to be guilty of murder. The crowd screamed. For David, it reminded him of the Beatlemanian newsreels he'd seen. The crowd swarmed the police car, which was moving at a snail's pace. David and Maureen were terrified. The crowd beat their fists on the car, screaming bloody murder at the petrified couple. Maureen fingered her pack of cigarettes. David adjusted his sunglasses. The cop behind the wheel managed to quicken the pace a bit, and the Panda Car slowly parted the sea of people. And they continued moving slowly, careful not to run anyone over. David spotted a journalist jogging alongside the car.

• 46:14Jake Brennan?

  Photographers were snapping pics mid-chase. He pushed his bangs from his forehead. He was sweating profusely, so much so that no amount of hair grease was gonna hold that pompadour in place. Maureen lit her cigarette to calm her nerves. Their car stopped at a red light. The courthouse was almost in sight, just around the corner. The cop in the passenger seat turned to the couple in the back. They were almost relieved, for a second, and then the cop said, "Prepare yourself, for a bumpy ride." Just then, the car turned onto the street with the courthouse, and an ocean of people rushed toward them. The car was engulfed, they were moving once again at a snail's pace.

• 46:58Jake Brennan?

  The screams outside got louder, and the pounding on the windows got more intense. The flashbulbs brighter, the fear inside the car, white-hot. David and Maureen were dripping in sweat, but chill, and to the unfocused eye, keeping their cool. Outside, David spied a photographer breaking through the crowd beyond Maureen's window to her right. He looked ahead, careful not to give the vulture anything. Maureen ignored the photographer too. She dragged from her smoke, played it cool herself, stared ahead, and...

• 47:34Jake Brennan?

  The picture was taken. The picture that would later bring even more cool to what was already one of the coolest bands of all time. The couple was immortalized in one shot. They weren't captured for all time looking scared. They weren't captured for all time looking like victims. And they weren't captured for all time looking like villains either. Instead, David and Maureen were captured, looking cool. Like Dwayne Eddie in Dusty Springfield. Not like two kids being scared to death by a hornet's nest of public judgment.

• 48:15Jake Brennan?

  David and Maureen made it through the trial. Ian Brady was convicted of murdering Edward Evans, Leslie Ann Downey, and John Kilbride. Myra was convicted of murdering Leslie Ann, Edward, and as an accessory after the fact in the John Kilbride murder. The two later confessed to the murders of Pauline Reed and Keith Bennett. Ian was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences. He died in prison at age 79 in 2017. Myra was sentenced to life, and she also died in prison at the age of 60 in 2002. David and Maureen barely survived the public scrutiny after the trial. They divorced in 1973.

• 48:57Jake Brennan?

  David Smith lived under constant suspicion and threat. Part of the public always blamed him for not stopping Ian Brady from murdering Edward Evans. But the reality was that David survived Ian Brady's murder of Edward Evans and lived to help bring Ian and Myra to justice. Most importantly, he prevented the killing of Moore children and brought an end to the Moore's murders. David Smith was a hero. He just looked like a juvenile delinquent. That type of superficial judgment David Smith fell under, it's a cliche: the dangerous-looking rock and roll youth. It was one of many classic rock and roll cliches that Sonic Youth subverted.

• 49:41Jake Brennan?

  There was no glossy imagery on the cover of their major label debut album, "Goo." There was a black and white illustration of two mysterious teenagers who unknowingly got caught up with some serial killers. And there were no typed liner notes espousing the virtues of the musicians who played on "Goo." There were Sharpie texts that said, "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week, we killed my parents and hit the road." Sonic Youth didn't sing songs about cliched, unrequited rock and roll love. They sang about Death Valley in 1969, killing the California girls on an expressway to your skull, and spree killers on the Pacific Coast Highway. They didn't affect your typical rock and roll image either.

• 50:26Jake Brennan?

  They took the stage in collared Oxford shirts and with a quote-unquote "girl" in the band.

• 50:35Jake Brennan?

  But for all their subversiveness, Sonic Youth did become the victim of one rock and roll cliche: the 27 Club. In October 2011, 27 years after they were married, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon announced they were separating. Thurston Moore, after avoiding the cliche trappings of the chick-shagging rock and roll frontman, had been discovered having an affair with another woman. His marriage was dead at just 27 years old, and his band was dead too.

• 51:10Jake Brennan?

  Sonic Youth played their last show on November 24, 2011. But like that image of David Smith and his wife Maureen on the cover of "Goo," Sonic Youth, the band, remains eternally cool, despite any connection to Disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 51:56Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Thanks for checking out this episode on Sonic Youth. Hope you dug it. Listen, question of the week this week: coolest album cover of all time. What is it? Let me know. 617-906-6638. Is it "Goo" by Sonic Youth? Is it something else? I want to hear from you all. At DisgraceLandPod on the socials, [email protected] on email. Make sure you guys have auto downloads turned on on Apple Podcasts so you don't miss any of our episodes. Here comes some credits.

• 52:24Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @DisgraceLandPod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/DisgraceLandPod.

• 53:03Jake Brennan?

  Rock-a-roller.

• 53:07Jake Brennan?

  He's a bad, bad man.

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