David Copeland admitted three charges of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility following the three London nail-bombs.

The prosecution refused to accept the pleas and on Friday, June 30, Copeland was found guilty of murder...

On April 29, 1999, a 23 year old engineer fed and watered his pet rat, closed the drawer on the cabinet that housed a bizarre collection of violent images, picked up the cheap sports bag by the door and stepped out of his Hampshire bedsit into drizzly sunshine.

David Copeland was on his way to Soho, central London, with the intention of killing as many gay people as he could with a home-made nail-bomb.

With the sports bags nestled between his feet, he passed the train journey mentally concocting his next ‘hit’. After the relative successes of Brixton and Brick Lane, tomorrow it would be Soho. And after that - Southall. As a heavily Asian-populated area west of London, Southall was the next target, to be swiftly followed by London’s Notting Hill Carnival.

Copeland booked into a shabby hotel in Victoria under a false name and began constructing the nail-bomb that was to claim three lives and permanently maim and injure many more. He set it to go off at 6.30pm BST.

The black and white TV droned in the background. It started to get dark...

Copeland was inherently homophobic and racist. Joining the extreme far-right National Socialist Movement in January of that year, he was quickly appointed unit leader, and instructed to ‘develop’ the group in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Surrey. He believed that Britain should be ‘ethnically cleansed’ of immigrants, that the Aryan race was superior and that ‘perverted’ homosexuals should be “put to death.”



He also had a taste for the macabre, keeping clippings of vivid images of Ku Klux Klan atrocities, lynchings, hangings, stabbings and bomb carnage from Northern Ireland reports. He kept a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ by his bedside along with a dagger inscribed with a swastika.

As a boy he showed no outward signs of any extremist tendencies at the Yately comprehensive school he attended. He was in his second year of schooling when Section 28 of the Local Authority Act came into effect. He gained eight GCSEs before taking an engineering apprenticeship, which led to him earning about £300 a week working on the Jubilee line tube extension.

Copeland had an unremarkable upbringing. His parents separated about four years prior to Copeland`s arrest although his mother continued to work in the Jewish hospital where she had been for many years and his father ran a relatively successful heating engineering business. Copeland grew up with two brothers. His family is reported to have expressed “utter devastation” on hearing of his arrest.

The court could not accept the plea of manslaughter because Copeland admitted to planning the bombing campaign for several months prior to the first explosion in Brixton. He confessed that the idea first struck him four years ago when an explosion ripped through Centennial Park during the Olympic Games in America.

In April 1997, Copeland downloaded a manual from the Internet called ‘The Terrorists` Handbook’ at a cyber cafe in Victoria. He found it difficult to follow the instructions for making the chemical bombs and gave up.

However, one night in 1998 when he was bored, he looked at the manual again and saw instructions for making a "pipe bomb", which was less sophisticated. Referring to another guide on the Internet, ‘How to Make Bombs part 2’, he set about collecting the materials.

Copeland bought £1,500 of fireworks from two stores in Farnborough, Hants, and ignition devices from a firm in Dorset. He used old-fashioned alarm clocks as his timers. He packed up to 1,500 nails in each completed device, which he taped into the sports holdalls.

Before heading to Brixton for the first attack, he experimented with different mixtures of "flash powder" to get the biggest explosion, blowing up small lengths of pipe at a common near the bedsit he rented from a local vicar.

...On the morning of April 30, 1999, Copeland checked out of his hotel and immediately booked into another nearby, using another false name.

Later that afternoon, he took the tube to Soho. The sun was shining and the streets were full of people looking forward to the weekend.

Once in Soho, Copeland surveyed the area for a suitable target. The Admiral Duncan Pub with its colourful façade, loud music and jovial atmosphere was the perfect place.

It was 5.30pm. He tucked in his T-shirt, emblazoned with the `Euro `96` logo, and strode into the pub. Placing the bag inconspicuously by the bar, he ordered a drink. He chatted casually to one of the customers, pretending to be waiting for a gay friend.

The bomb ticked silently in the sports bag.

When, at 6.05pm, Copeland left the pub on the pretence that he was going to find a cash-point, nobody noticed he’d left the bag at the bar.

At 6.27pm three friends arrived at the Admiral Duncan for pre-theatre drinks before heading off to see the show ‘Mama Mia’.

Andrea Dykes refused an alcoholic drink and opted for a fruit juice. Her husband and their best friend, Nik Moore, moved towards the packed bar.

The heavy beat of a Robbie Williams song intro pounded from the jukebox.

At 6.28pm, in another part of London, Paul Mifsud was watching the early evening news. He suddenly snatched up the telephone, demanding to be put through to the police dealing with the nail bomb investigation. He was told to hold.

Mifsud had just seen the CCTV pictures on the news of the Brixton bombing and recognised the suspect as his colleague David Copeland. He was reporting the information to the police.

At 6.30pm, just as Mifsud was connected to the investigating officer…

… and Robbie Williams screamed out ‘Millennium’ in the Admiral Duncan…

…and manager, Mark Taylor mixed a Bloody Mary…

… and Andrea Dykes felt her baby kick…

THE BOMB EXPLODED.

There were at least 70 people in the bar at the time. The effect of an explosion in such a confined space was devastating.



First came the shock waves that rattled the thin metal in the bar. Then came the blast waves, which perforated the eardrums of most of those within 6 feet of the explosion. Finally 1500 nails, up to 6 inches long, tore from the bomb at 450 miles per hour, ripping through skin, muscle and organs. Legs and arms were blown off, eyeballs imploded, scorched skin charred and shrivelled from flesh.

Nik Moore and Andrea Dykes were killed horrifically at the scene. John Light died from appalling injuries the next day. 79 others suffered severe damage. Four people lost one or both of their lower limbs, another lost an arm.

Copeland returned to the hotel room and watched the scenes of carnage on the news.

He felt nothing.

By the time he returned home to Hampshire the next day, the police were on his trail.

Following his arrest, Copeland was remanded into custody at Belmarsh prison, where he was kept in the health care unit. While there he told a prison officer: "I`m not mad. I`ve already worked out how to get out of this cell."

Copeland was sentenced to six life sentences; one for each of the murdered victims and one for each of the bombings.