Free Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators by Carol Anne Davis Page B

the bomb-making equipment from his bedsit and took it to a hotel.
    The pub blast
    On Friday 30 April, he travelled to Soho and left his bag containing a bomb in a pub favoured by gay men, the Admiral Duncan. The bomb exploded, tearing the skin and flesh from 69
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    nearby revellers. Over a hundred men and women were burnt by the intense blast and lacerated by the flying nails.
    Andrea Dykes and her unborn child were killed instantly and her husband remained unconscious for three weeks. One of their friends, who had just agreed to be their child’s godfather, died of his injuries the following day. Three men lost a leg and a fourth man had to have both his legs amputated. The scene resembled the horror of a wartime battlefield.
    Meanwhile David Copeland travelled back to his bedsit, well pleased with his handiwork. He loaded a crossbow and put it beside his bed so that he could shoot one of the arresting officers he knew would call.
    But when the constabulary arrived, he gave himself up without a fight. Asked why he’d planted the bombs, he said
    ‘to terrorise people’. Questioned about his choice of targets, he said that Brixton was a black area, Brick Lane an Asian area and Soho frequented by gays.
    During interviews, the police asked him 16 times why he had planted the bombs and he gave incoherent replies but finally said that he was ‘totally shot away, a loner’. When they asked why, he added, ‘My family fucked me up.’
    They asked the 23-year-old if he realised the implications of what he’d done, including years of imprisonment. He nodded and said, ‘I had no life anyway.’
    He talked at length about his philosophy, completely failing to see the irony in his own words. He told police that ‘white people were the best mentally’; this from a boy who wrote about being a ‘profit’ when what he meant was ‘prophet’. He added that he hated homosexuals because ‘the whole point is to breed’. But he’d never bred, only briefly having a girlfriend.
    Belated voices
    At first Copeland was on remand in Belmarsh prison but he became increasingly tearful and suffered from insomnia, 70
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    Sadistic Diversity
    plus there were fears that he was schizophrenic, so he was transferred to Broadmoor, a prison hospital for the mentally ill. There he went on hunger strike, protesting at the drugs he had to take. An insightful psychiatrist noted that Copeland had
    ‘significant sadistic elements to his thoughts and behaviour’. It was a sadism which had previously been ignored, the bombings being labelled as racist and homophobic crimes.
    At the Old Bailey, he pleaded guilty to causing the three explosions and guilty to manslaughter rather than to the murder of the dead victims. The defence said that he was schizophrenic but a psychiatric nurse who had examined him when he was first taken into custody noted that he was sane.
    Copeland himself told doctors that he’d originally faked symptoms of mental illness in order to get ‘nutted off ’ to Broadmoor, but now he found the mental hospital much worse than a regular prison.
    The prosecution noted that, though he had a personality disorder, it was not strong enough to impair his judgement.
    He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d planted all three bombs. On 30 June 2000, he was given six life sentences and returned to Broadmoor indefinitely.
    Copeland remains in the maximum security hospital, doubtless disturbed that the notoriety he so desired is already fading. In 2003 he was attacked by another patient whilst in his room.
    JOHN TAYLOR
    John Taylor was cruel towards animals from an early age, but as he matured into manhood he extended this cruelty towards his female lovers. In time, he became predatory towards young girls then committed at least two particularly savage rapes. In 71
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