Shotgun killer Raoul Moat poses menacingly with a 12ft-long python wrapped round his neck.
Moat, who had an obsession with reptiles and had a huge dragon tattoo on his chest, kept two of the huge snakes in the tiny one-bedroom flat he shared with the mother of his eldest daughter.
He fed them frozen rats which he’d warm up in a microwave oven. The picture was taken by a pal just before Moat, 37, met girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, 22, who he went on to shoot at the start of his gun rampage three weeks ago. It showed musclebound Moat – at the height of his steroid abuse and weighing a hulking 19stone – proudly gripping the python by its neck.
He kept the snakes in aquariums, but loved to handle them and even let them loose to slither round the living room of the flat he shared with Marissa Reid.
One killed the pet chinchilla of then-girlfriend Marissa, 32. But rather than tell her, Moat put the animal back in its cage for Marissa to discover it dead four days later.
A friend said: “Raoul has always loved snakes. He had two – one normal python and a rare albino one with pink eyes. He also had smaller ones, and lizards as well.
“He would always let his snakes out of their aquariums and they’d have the run of the flat. They’d even climb up the curtains, which was a bit unnerving.
“He had little snakes which he also kept in the same aquarium and they’d just slither around over the big ones.
“Raoul genuinely loved those snakes – but they absolutely stank. When you went round the flat he’d have all the windows open and the place would still stink.
“It got to the point that people didn’t want to go round because the smell was so bad. The fact he fed them rats which he had to warm up in the microwave didn’t help either. When he met Sam he gave the snakes up, but he still had a fascination with them. He even had a walking stick with a serpent’s head as the handle.
“He also used to breed husky dogs –I think he just liked anything that was really powerful, because he felt they were like him.
“And he had an aquarium for fish and terrapins. For a while, he even had a couple of piranhas. He loved them because they were dangerous.
“He was a bit like a big kid. His mum and step-dad didn’t let him keep many pets, other than one miniature dragon lizard, so when he had his own place he pretty much turned it into a zoo.”