| Hateland -
Articles |
01/07/00
- Nothing excuses this evil
By ADRIAN SHAW and HARRY ARNOLD
The Mirror
NAZI nail bomber David Copeland started life in jail yesterday
showing as little emotion as he felt for his victims.
The triple killer whose heart was filled with hate betrayed
not a flicker of feeling as a judge told him: "Nothing
excuses this evil." Instead, he glared coldly at
his victims three feet away when they erupted in uproar
as the jury announced its unanimous murder verdict.
There were claps, cheers and screams of "Yes!"
The dad of murdered Nik Moore, killed in Copeland's third
blast at Soho's gay Admiral Duncan pub, yelled out: "Rot
in hell, you Nazi scum." Racist Copeland who dreamed
of becoming a serial killer hoped to spark race war with
his one-man bombing campaign against the Asians, blacks
and gays he hated so much.
He killed three and injured 139 in three London attacks
over 13 days in April last year. The twisted 24-year-old
engineer was yesterday given six life sentences at the
Old Bailey one for each cruel death and one for each bombing.
Passing sentence Judge Michael Hyam, the Recorder of London,
told him: "Anyone who has heard the facts of this
case will be appalled at the atrocity of your crimes.
"You were motivated by virulent hatred and pitiless
contempt for other people.
"On your own admission you set out to kill and maim
and to cause terror in the community. "Nothing can
excuse the evil you have done or the abhorrent views you
have expressed. "You have said you have no feelings
for those whose lives you have afflicted. The public must
be assured that if you are ever released it will not be
for a very long time."
Copeland denied murder but admitted manslaughter through
diminished responsibility. His lawyers claimed he was
suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. But though the
prosecution agreed that he had a personality disorder,
it declared he was "bad not mad". The jury agreed
he was responsible for his actions at the time of the
bombings and convicted him of murder.
Copeland's mental condition has since deteriorated. He
will start his sentence in Broadmoor top security hospital.
His anguished father Stephen, 51, of Yateley, Hants, said:
"My son is seriously mentally disturbed. I would
never want him released while he has this illness. He
may be in Broadmoor for the rest of his life.
"No matter what he has done, I am his father and
I cannot wash my hands of him. Tomorrow, I shall see him
and give him a hug. "I disagree with the verdict
because I believe he was substantially mentally impaired
at the time he did the bombings." After the verdicts,
the court cleared leaving Stephen and his son Jonathan
sitting alone together numb with shock.
Jonathan. 25, said later: "Dave is a very sick boy.
Broadmoor is the best place for him." The jurors
took six and a half hours to reach their verdict at the
end of a 19-day trial. Forty victims had sat in a dignified
silence throughout. But after the hearing ended, their
feelings spilled over.
The Admiral Duncan explosion killed pregnant Andrea Dykes,
27, and friends John Light, 32, and Nik Moore, 31. Andrea's
husband Julian was not in court. But John's brother, Mike,
and sister-in-law Nicky watched from the back of the court
along with Bob Moore, 69, father of victim Nik.
Mr Moore, of Pelixstowe, Suffolk, said later: "For
14 months I have shed so many tears. "I hope Copeland
enjoys his detention. But keep your ears and eyes open,
Dave, someone may be looking for you." Gary Reid,
44, who lost a leg in the blast, said in a statement read
to crowds outside the Old Bailey: "Justice has been
done.
Today's verdict proves that Copeland is a dangerous, pathetic
nobody." Tommy Douglas, 43, of Tottenham, north London
who lost both legs said: "I prayed to God Copeland
would go down for murder. He's not human." His partner
David Hayes, 33, who can no longer work after a nail pierced
his right eye, added: "I'd like Copeland to experience
what he did to me and others.
"I want him to suffer the way everybody else did."
Copeland loathed blacks, Asians and gays with an intensity
that defied comprehension. He dreamed of ethnic cleansing,
of sparking a race war and said he was driven by God to
kill. His heroes were Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and
Stalin and he fantasised of raping and killing women while
dressed as an SS colonel.
Yet at the end of the day the pathetic loner whose only
friend was a pet rat named Whizzer murdered and maimed
simply to become famous. When caught, he was already planning
a fourth explosion in Asian Southall, west London.
Among his bizarre plans was to kill Tony Blair with a
modified air pistol. Extraordinarily, this warped misfit
bereft of normal feeling had an IQ of 126. It put him
in the top 10 per cent of Britain's cleverest people and
he left school with eight GCSEs.
But Copeland was incapable of sustaining a relationship
and by 18 was weighed down with feelings of sexual inadequacy.
By 19, he had experimented with LSD and ecstasy. He later
got his kicks watching strip shows in seedy London pubs
and paying for sex.
An ex-inmate at London's Belmarsh jail, where Copeland
was remanded, said: "He said he wasn't good at anything.
"Then he'd point to his trousers and say 'especially
that'. He was hung up about sex." Leaving home Copeland
moved first to east London where he came into contact
with far right groups.
Then he moved back to Cove, Hants, near his father. Here,
in a bedsit flat that he turned into a shrine to fascism,
he plotted the terror that was to win him the fame he
craved. Downloading instructions at a computer cafe from
terrorist handbooks on the internet, he built three devices
each packed with up to 1,500 nails.
On April 17 last year he blitzed Brixton market, in south
London. Fifty were hurt. On April 24, he targeted Asian
Brick Lane, in east London. Ten were injured. On April
30, his final blast ripped through the packed Admiral
Duncan pub killing three and injuring 79.
A few hours later, he was arrested at his home after being
identified by a workmate who recognised a CCTV shot of
him taken at Brixton. Copeland told police later: "I've
been dreaming about this for ages. Doing what I did, getting
caught, going to court it's my destiny. If no-one remembers
who you were, you never existed."
a.shaw@mirror.co.uk |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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