A spree killer who stabbed six people in Nottingham, leaving three of them dead, had been hearing voices for years and had visited MI5’s London headquarters in 2021 to ask them to stop “controlling him,” a court has heard.
Valdo Calocane, 32, had originally been charged with the murder of Nottingham University students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, in Nottingham in the early hours of June 13, 2023.
But on Tuesday his plea of guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility was accepted by the Crown and the murder charges were dropped, much to the chagrin of at least one of the victims’ families.
Dr. Sanjoy Kumar, whose daughter was stabbed as she walked home from a night out at 4 a.m., accused Calocane of tricking psychiatrists and said he should be, “removed from society altogether and forever.”
In his victim impact statement, Dr. Kumar said his daughter, “represented everything that is positive about a modern society in Britain and Ireland.”
‘Your Sickening Crimes ... Shocked the Nation’
Mr. Justice Turner told Calocane: “You committed a series of atrocities in this city which ended the lives of three people. Your sickening crimes both shocked the nation and wrecked the lives of your surviving victims and the families of them all.”
Calocane is currently being held at Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside, a secure facility which has held a number of infamous killers, including the Moors Murderer Ian Brady.
The court heard that after stabbing his victims, Calocane stole Mr. Coates’s van and drove it into three pedestrians, who survived.
One of them, Wayne Birkett, suffered a fractured skull, a bleed on the brain, and was said to be “extremely fortunate” to survive.
Calocane was finally arrested at about 5:30 a.m. after the van was boxed in by police vehicles and he was then Tasered.
On Wednesday, the court heard psychiatric evidence and mitigation from Calocane’s barrister, Peter Joyce, KC.
Mr. Joyce said his client had suffered from mental illness for a long time and on May 31, 2021 he travelled to London and visited MI5’s headquarters at Thames House.
Mr. Joyce said: “He tried to surrender to MI5 at their headquarters to try and stop them controlling him. That’s not a concoction by him.”
“There is a photograph taken by their systems at Thames House, saying ‘please arrest me,’ effectively ‘stop controlling me.’”
‘Profound Lack of Awareness’
But Dr. Nigel Blackwood, a professor of forensic psychiatry at King’s College London, told the court Calocane had a “profound lack of awareness” of his mental health condition which he will have, “until his dying day.”Dr. Blackwood said Calocane told him he was “deeply sorry” for the killings but claimed he had been a “targeted individual” by “malign forces” since 2019.
Prosecutor Karim Khalil, KC, said Calocane also claimed he had, “suffered torture from technology.”
Dr. Blackwood said, “He has shown a profound lack of insight into the fact that he has an illness.”
Later Mr. Joyce asked Dr. Blackwood: “He is so ill that, in truth, your best estimate or conclusion at the moment is that he will never be well enough to be released?”
Dr. Blackwood replied, “I think it overwhelmingly likely that he will spend very many years of his life in secure psychiatric care.”
Another psychiatrist, Dr. Leo McSweeney, told the hearing: “I think that he is going to remain detained for decades to come. I can’t envisage his release without intensive post-release management.”
After the sentencing, Nottinghamshire’s Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said they “should have done more” to arrest Calocane before the killings. The mother of one of the victims, Emma Webber, told Mr. Griffin he had “blood on [his] hands.”
It emerged that a warrant for Calocane’s arrest for an attack on a police officer dating from Sep. 2022 was “still outstanding” at the time of the killings.
