Double murder in Leeds is subject of new book set to be launched this weekend

The Farsley Murders tells the tragic story of how nightwatchman Ian Riley and father-of-two Inspector Barry Taylor were shot dead while investigating a burglary at Sunny Bank Mills in Farsley near Pudsey on February 15 1970.

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Burglar Neil George Adamson, 31, turned a sawn-off shotgun on them before going on the run, sparking a two-day man hunt involving dozens of police officers.

A court heard Adamson later told police: "I figured that I should get no more for murder than attempted murder and, you know, a dead witness cannot talk."

Adamson was later jailed for life after admitting the murders.

Author Richard Jones spent 10 years doing research for the book, his fourteenth, and wrote it during lockdown in 2020.

The Farsley Murders is set to be launched at an event from 2pm to 3pm on Saturday August 7 at The Constitutional, 51, Town Street, Farsley.

Richard said: "It was a difficult book to write. It was hard to get the information together and weed out all the rumours to get to the truth.

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"I'm really pleased with it. It is better than I thought it would be and I have already had some good feedback for it from a couple of the officers who were at the scene."

Richard, 40, who works as a weapons engineer in the Royal Navy, has turned a childhood fascination with little-known disasters and tragedies into a publishing career.

His passion for ensuring these events are not forgotten has led him to run a blog on the topic, successfully campaign for memorial plaques and write books.

Although Richard was born in Farsley and lived there until his early teens, he had never heard about the fatal shootings until around 10 years ago.

Richard started to carry out his own research and discovered that double murderer Adamson died in prison about 20 years ago.

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Newspaper front pages in library archives showed how significant the case had been at the time, yet he had never heard it discussed as he was growing up in Farsley in the 1980s.

He set up a Facebook group that led him to connect with two relatives of the victims.

Group members also arranged a memorial event to mark the 50th anniversary of the murders in February 2020.

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