The guy on the left, Ian Brady, was really into Nietzsche. He was also into Dostoyevesky's
Crime and Punishment but was apparently too daft to understand that it is a critique of nihilism.
They are commonly confused with these next two, Maureen and David Smith, who were merely their friends and who are pictured here on their way to testify at the courthouse. And of course, as anyone here knows the cover of
Goo is based Pettibon's illustration from this photo. In fact, they were the ones who reported Ian and Myra to the police after Ian had asked David to help him dispose of a body. It was in this way that police finally caught the "Moors murderers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Brady
He developed a fascination with
Nazi Germany, Nazi pageantry and
Nazi symbolism. By the time he was a teenager, he had been brought before the juvenile courts for incidents of burglary and housebreaking. On the first two occasions he was given probation, but on the third the court ordered him to leave Glasgow and live with his mother. She had since moved to
Manchester and had married an Irish labourer. In November 1954, two months before his 17th birthday, Ian left the Sloane household and travelled down to join his mother and her new husband. Although he did not get along with Mr Brady, Ian took his stepfather's surname.
There he developed an interest in the writings of the
Marquis de Sade and
Friedrich Nietzsche, giving particular attention to Nietzsche's theories of
Übermensch and
The Will to Power. He became increasingly interested in a philosophy that championed
cruelty and
torture, and the idea that superior creatures had the right to control (and destroy, if necessary) weaker ones.