In 2015, on the 12th of December, at around 10.50AM, a 67-year-old man – no identification, no personal artifacts – was found dead by cyclist Stewart Crowther. At first, he thought the man was having a rest. "His head was uphill and his legs were straight downhill – perfectly straight. His arms were across his chest," Crowther told the BBC. But the rain was torrential. It was freezing. When the Mountain Rescue team came, they thought he might have had a heart attack. He was "of an age".
In the man's right pocket was £130, all in ten-pound notes. In his left, three train tickets from the morning prior. One was a single from Ealing Broadway to Euston. The other two a return from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly. Also inside his coat pocket was a small blue cardboard medicine box. Inside that was an empty container. It read thyroxine sodium, a drug normally used for the treatment of hypothyroidism. The label was printed in both English and Urdu. And the man wasn’t dressed appropriately for how a man should be dressed on the moors. For one thing, he was wearing loafers.
The tickets allowed police to retrace at least some of the man's last journey. CCTV caught him at Ealing Station on the morning of the 11th of December. Once at Piccadilly he perused the station's shops for almost an hour. He bought a sandwich from M&S. He talked to someone on the Information Desk for four minutes, though it isn’t known what he was enquiring about. Then, minutes after 1PM, he turned to walk to the city centre, out of range of the CCTV, and was never captured on camera again.
The man was seen, around an hour later, when he walked into The Clarence, the closest pub to Dovestone reservoir. He spoke to the landlord, Mel Robinson. He didn't want a drink. He did want to know how to "get to the top of the mountain". The landlord thought that was odd. Nobody referred to anything on the moor as a mountain. But he walked him to the door, explained how he could get to Chew reservoir, then warned the man that he wouldn’t get there and back before dark. The man asked him to repeat the directions and left.
The man was seen one more time, just after sunset at around 4PM, by two staff from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Birds, close to a patch of grass named Rob's Rocks, where his dead body was found the next day. It would become apparent that he’d died from strychnine poisoning. Strychnine is a substance that's been banned in the EU since 2006. It was used to kill moles for a time, but it was deemed cruel. University Of Glasgow forensic toxicologist Dr Hilary Hamnett told the BBC that strychnine poisoning is "very unusual – I've never seen a case of it in my career". It is a terrible, violent way to die. It makes your muscles contract.
There do remain unanswered questions. Like many things we don’t understand, they continue to be keenly dissected on Reddit. Why buy a return if he intended on never coming back? It also transpired he'd booked into a Travelodge for five nights in Ealing, staying just the one.
Saddleworth Moor has been the bearer of so many tragedies of the last century.
- In 1949 a BEA Douglas DC3 plane crashed killing 24 passengers and crew.
- It was the burial site of at least four victims or Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - the Moors Murderers.
- In December 2015, the body of an unknown man was found. Later identified as David Lytton who had died of strychnine poisoning.
- On the 24th June 2018, a wildfire broke out resulting in mass evacuations and damage to a large area.