- [Narrator] "Real
Stories Tapes: True Crime" is your new true crime podcast fix. In our first season, we'll explore suspicious
deaths at a California hospital and a skydiver landing
dead on a suburban driveway with a bag containing guns,
drugs, and night vision goggles. To join our investigation,
search and subscribe to "Real Stories Tapes: True
Crime" on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you find your podcasts. (light melodic music) (mellow melodic music) - [Narrator] They should
be the most innocent members of society, but
children can be capable of the most sadistic,
premeditated and brutal murders. - They beat him and hit him with a bottle. One of them stabbed Chase
straight through the heart. - [Narrator] What drives these kids to kill men, women, friends, family? - She was determined that
her mother had to die. - [Narrator] Even their teachers. - This was the first occasion upon which a teacher
had been killed in class in the course of conducting a lesson. - [Narrator] Could they be born evil? - He did have a weird,
dark sense of humor. He was a little bit different
to most of the other kids. - But he was aggressive,
threatening and dangerous. - [Narrator] Or are they
victims of their environment? - There was a lot of gangs,
there was a lot of violence, a lot of drug abusers. - [Narrator] With exceptional
access to real police tapes. - The voices were talking to me, "You need to make a sacrifice or we're gonna come and get
you, you need to do it." - [Narrator] And interviews with those closest to the victims
and the perpetrators. - A red mist had simply descended. (girl laughing) - [Narrator] We reveal what
made them such savage killers. (melodic haunting music) In March, 2014, the body of a
man was found stabbed to death in Colchester's Castle Park. - The day Jim died is the day I died. - [Narrator] Three months
later, a university student was brutally murdered in broad daylight. - He came from behind and
launched his knife attack on her. - [Narrator] With a serial
killer on the loose, the town was gripped by fear. - The whole community were
just scared to go out. - [Narrator] After a 14-month manhunt, the killer was finally caught, while he lay in wait for his third victim. - She said that she saw
pure evil in his eyes. - [Narrator] Shockingly,
the person responsible was a 15-year old school
boy, James Fairweather. - He was a deeply disturbed young man. - [Narrator] But what turned a boy once described as well-behaved,
kind and sensitive into a murder-obsessed teen now dubbed Britain's
youngest serial killer? (light haunting music) - We were alerted to a major incident and there was a real sense at this point, that something bad's happened. - [Narrator] In the early hours
of the 29th of March, 2014, Colchester in Essex was
rocked by a shocking murder. - Brutal and tragic murder. - The family have been left devastated. - James was murdered. (light haunting music) - He was attacked frenziedly
by James Fairweather to the point there were
more than 100 stab wounds. - Some of these stab
wounds were really vicious, including stab wounds to the eye and that was one of the
real standout details. (gentle piano music) - [Narrator] The victim
of this deadly attack was James Attfield, a
33-year old father of four known as Jim by his friends and family. - [Jo] Smashing smile, cheeky grin, just all round funny guy really. - [Narrator] Jim had
suffered a brain injury in a traffic accident affecting
his mobility and reasoning. Several years on, he'd made
huge progress in his recovery and was just getting
his life back to normal. - He always had a little joke
on hand and things like that. He loved his karaoke. He used to get on his chopper bike and he used to race
round with me on the back and stick his bum out, so I'd fall off. So yeah, it was a good childhood. (soft piano music) I was due to meet Jim that
night, but he canceled, I don't know why, I remember
actually messaging him and saying how upset I was. I wish I hadn't now, because all see, what happened to him that night, I can never take those words back. - Jim Attfield had been on
a night out in Colchester, as he often did, he went
for a few drinks by himself and he was making his way home. - James decided to walk
through Castle Park that night, which was a shortcut, stopped
halfway to have a cigarette, he must've dozed off at some
point during the evening and then that's when he got attacked. (light haunting music) - This vulnerable, slumbering
person was then set upon for no apparent reason and with no motive and violently killed. (dark dramatic music) (soft piano music) - Jim was actually still
alive when he was found. He must've laid there in pain
and just bleeding to death. It's the sort of thing you
really don't wanna imagine, let alone live. - What was particularly scary was that James Attfield
was such a vulnerable man, who had no beef with anyone. - We had extensively
covered the initial murder. We'd run a lot of appeals,
including with the James family and at the time, the coverage was starting to fall away a little bit. So we got a call to say, there's a lot of police activity
in this particular area, along the Salary Brook Trail, just outside the Greenstead Estate. We had been told that every entrance in the Salary Brook Trail had been blocked off by police cars. - [Narrator] Just three months
after Jim Attfield's death, a second frenzied knife
attack struck Colchester. The victim was 31-year old student, Nahid Almanea from Saudi Arabia. - Nahid Almanea was on her way to the University of Essex campus, where she was studying an English course and she was stabbed on
the Salary Brook Trail. - [Narrator] Nahid had come to the UK to study English as part of her PhD. She'd moved over with her brother and had only been in the
country for six months. (soft melodic music)
(brook babbling) - She always walked to
and from the university with her brother and people were wondering why on that particular day
had she walked by herself. - [Narrator] The morning her
brother hadn't been there to chaperone her to university
was the same morning the killer had been lying in
wait for his next opportunity. - She had done that walk many
times, it's a lovely walk, which is a local nature reserve. - He came from behind and
launched his knife attack on her. - He took off her sunglasses
in order to stab her in the eye and during the course of the
short but brutal assault, he stabbed her more than 30 times. - The family have been left devastated by the terrible murder of Nahid. Nahid was a remarkable and gentle person, who was loved for her
kind and caring nature. (light haunting music) - In the first murder, what we see is the use
of extreme violence, there's 102 knife wounds, and many of them are what
we call knife tip wounds. They're not gonna kill the victim, they're purely done to cause pain. In the second murder, what we see is a reduction in the
number of knife wounds, but he still keeps the knife tip wounds, so it's almost like he's
honing his technique. But the most striking
similarity in these two murders is the stabbing of the eye. In the first murder, we see the victim has
been stabbed in the eye, but we don't know at that
point was it planned? So it's really chilling that
then we see the second murder, where the killer actually planned to stab the victim in the eye and we know this, because
he removed her sunglasses in order to stab her in the eye. What we're starting to
see here is emerging MO, it's almost like the killer wants that to be the feature of his murders. - [Narrator] The police
were careful not to release the stabbing of the eyes
linking the murders, yet with two brutal stabbings, that happened just months apart,
fear gripped the community and people had begun to
make their own connections. - Many people were
looking at the two attacks as looking very similar
and ultimately related, so the talk in the town and of course the talk through the papers was that there could be a
serial killer on the loose. - The whole community were
just scared to go out, because nobody knew who the
person was that done it. I was walking around in
Colchester with my sister one evening and I remember saying to her, we could've walked past the
person that has done this. - I was born and bred in Essex, I've lived here all of my life, so I, myself as well as covering
the murder as a journalist was also part of the
community and felt that fear and concern about walking
around alone late at night. - There would've already
been intense fear, because a man had been murdered in what is usually a quiet town, but something that the public
do in a case like that, it's called just world belief, it's that they think, well,
it won't happen to me, that was night time, he was drunk, he was in a vulnerable position, I'm okay. So then when a second murder occurs, that happens in the
morning, when a young girl is just simply walking to university, that then changes things,
that means it could be me. Everybody is potentially a victim and that would've really heightened fear. - [Narrator] No one expected the killer would turn out to be a
15-year old school boy. (light haunting music) (mellow melodic music) After the murders of Jim
Attfield and Nahid Almanea in early 2014, Colchester
was on high alert. - You could not mistake that there'd been something
bad happening in the town, the police presence was
almost overbearing at times. - [Narrator] And the police
were working tirelessly to catch the killer. - You had more police than
anyone in the town's ever seen on the streets, they were
patrolling day and night and at the time I remember thinking that's actually what people needed, because they were scared. - [Narrator] But
frustratingly for the police, the killer had covered their tracks well. - The community were of
course extremely alarmed that a person who had
killed had not been arrested and the result was that
police from other areas were brought into the area. - I was drafted into Colchester to work on the additional
manpower requirements. The other problem for the police was that we didn't have
an awful lot to go on. We had no sightings, no witnesses,
no phone call had come in to say, oh, you know,
there's a fight going on, there's a row or there's
someone acting strangely. - We've taken over 1300 statements, spoken to over 950 witnesses. There are now four and
a half thousand exhibits in the system and we
continue to work our way through over 150,000 hours of CCTV. - [Narrator] All the police could do was keep appealing to
the public in the hope that someone would come
forward with information. - After Nahid Almanea was killed, we were given handouts of
specific items of clothing, that the police had interest in. - I'm keen to identify and speak to a man, who is described as being
on the Salary Brook Trial. What's distinctive about this man is the jacket he's described as wearing. - At the time, it was described to us as an Italian designer jacket,
so we ran that extensively. - The police had to commit
quite a lot of resources in a bid to catch the killer. The total policing operation cost in the order of 2.6 million pounds. (siren wailing) - [Narrator] Yet despite
the extensive police effort, a year on from the murders, police were no closer
to catching the killer. - [Officer] Essex Police Control Room. - [Woman] Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I'm actually on the Salary Brook, the long ridge end of the trail, where that murder was last year. - [Narrator] But then in May,
2015, the police got lucky. (dog yelping) - [Woman] And there's a very
suspicious guy down there, he's just standing there. He's got a jacket that looks very similar to what was all over the
paper and everything. - [Narrator] A call came
in from a local dog walker, who'd spotted someone acting suspiciously. - He was hiding under a
bridge wearing gloves. One of the things that
really stood out for her was the Italian jacket. She said she'd seen
that all over the media, that really stuck in her mind. - [Narrator] The suspicious individual was James Fairweather. - A police officer, who was
unarmed, came to investigate and the dog walker stayed at the scene to direct the officer to the right place and also warn others
walking along the path not to approach that area
where she had spotted James. - [Ryan] She said that she
saw pure evil in his eyes. - I think for her, she found
it a very troubling experience to realize how close she had
been to a double murderer, who potentially was looking to kill again, she could have been his next victim. - So the police attended and arrested him initially on suspicion of
possession of a bladed article. - [Narrator] In an
unbelievable stroke of luck, the police had finally found the killer, only to be stunned that he
was a 15-year old school boy. - I made the assumption it
was done by a male adult, because of the nature and ferocity and violence of the attacks. - Statistically speaking,
this type of crime would be carried out by an adult, so when we find out that it's
actually been carried out by a 15-year old school boy,
that makes this shocking. (light haunting music) - He was taken to the police
station and interviewed initially about having the knife, but he spontaneously
confessed to the two murders. - And I saw him, it was where
he was laying on the grass, he was like that, he was like this, just fast asleep, where he was drunk. - He described in detail what he had done. - Went up to him, stood over like that, went like that and I
stabbed him first there. - He admitted to both killings. - And I've done it a few times. When I was doing that,
my voices were laughing and laughing and laughing
louder and louder. - And said at that stage, that
voices had told him to kill. - So the voices were talking to me, "You need to make a sacrifice or we're gonna come and get
you, you need to do it." (soft melodic music) - [Narrator] Who was James Fairweather? Why did this boy described
at primary school as a quiet and well-behaved child
sensitive to the needs of others go on to commit such
violent crimes in his teens? - James as a young
teenager was a good boy, he attended school, he
had a good attendance, we have school newsletters
praising him for that. - He had an interest in darts and other hobbies and interests and nothing about him
particularly stood out certainly to his peers
and those that knew him. - James Fairweather
frequented a dart's club in Colchester with his dad. His fellow players, they
all spoke highly of him, I remember one man saying clearly, that he was like a dormouse,
he hardly made a sound and he was a perfectly
reasonable, nice boy and looked like a son
who respected his father. - And what I see here by
looking at this person's early childhood is
there's no telltale signs, there's no evidence of trauma or neglect. He's part of a loving family, he's got a close relationship
with his parents, a close relationship with his grandmother. He is described as a kind, quiet and sensitive to the needs of others boy. However, when I start to
go through his timeline, we start to see those early teens and there's now some indicators
of a more troubling boy. - He was bullied quite
intensively at school due to his ears, he had
nicknames of Dumbo and FA Cup. - It's absolutely certain, that the bullying had an impact on him. The impact of bullying on any young person is really quite devastating and it has long term
damaging effects on them, it has effects on their personality, it has effects on their mental health, that they feel low in mood, it has effect on their confidence, as they develop into an adult. So it's devastating what
can happen to a child. So this definitely would've
been part of the picture, that helps us understand how he changes in those early teens. - [Narrator] Aged 13,
James also had to deal with the sudden loss of his grandmother, who'd been a key influence in his life. - Any one of the factors
that we can see in his life doesn't explain his behavior in any way, because many young people
mourn a close relative, a grandparent and don't
turn into a violent murderer and his grandmother was a huge
protective factor for him, so the loss of her would have been hugely
significant for him. - Certainly after the
death of his grandmother, he seemed to become a bit more violent and engaging negatively
with his peers at school. - [Narrator] The big turning point came, when James had his first violent
confrontation with a knife. - He was on a local
estate and he was targeted and threatened by a group
of youths with a knife and all those feelings of resentment would have potentially built up again. So now we've got this young
man, who's been bullied, feels vulnerable, feels
different to everybody else, has been isolated and he's
probably feeling angry. And then we see him then using a knife that for me is quite big trigger. - I spent a lot of time with James Fairweather's
former classmates. One of the things that came
up was his descent, I suppose, into being for want of a better
phrase of bad boy in school. He had told teachers that when he grew up, he wanted to be a murderer. He had told everyone in the school, that he was going to
bring a knife into school and carry out a massacre. He was fantasizing about
killing in his school, he wanted to kill his head teacher. He wanted people to know that
he was capable of killing. - [Narrator] A year after James
was mugged at knife point, his burgeoning obsession with violence began to escalate further. - James Fairweather had actually committed a knife point robbery
at the parade of shops close to his home. - Stealing cigars and a
number of other small, low value items. This was the start of a
change of his personality. (light haunting music) - He then has a knife in his
hand, that he gains control in that robbery of the local shop and I think that was the first
time that James Fairweather has a sense of feeling empowered,
that it made it feel good and I think that is the
point that he realized the sense of power that
violence would give him. It's only three months after
robbing the shop with a knife, that he commits his first murder, so we see an escalation in violence. (mellow melodic music) - James was not given
a custodial sentence, this is often the case for a youth committing their first offense. - [Narrator] As a result
of robbing his local shop, James Fairweather had been known to police throughout the whole investigation and soon after Nahid's murder, police had even spoken to him
as part of routine questioning of anyone previously
involved in a knife offense. - His mother actually gave him an alibi, having spoken to him on the phone earlier, she believed he'd been
at home the whole time. - I don't think for a moment, having met her and spoken to her, that she was deliberately
lying to cover up for James, I think she genuinely believed that. - [Narrator] Satisfied
with Fairweather's alibi, the police ruled him
out of their inquiries and he remained at large for another year, while Colchester had
stayed overwhelmed by fear. (light haunting music) A year after he committed
two violent murders, James Fairweather was arrested as he hunted for his next victim. He was brought in by police
and spontaneously confessed to the killings of Jim
Attfield and Nahid Almanea. - Then he goes, he goes,
"He's the one, he's the one, he's the one," so I went
up to him, can I stand up? - What was quite remarkable
was how emotionless and flat James was in
describing what he had done - And watching a 15-year
old describe what he did and how he used a knife was chilling. - There's almost a complete detachment from what he's saying and
from what he's describing. - So the voices were talking to me, "You need to make a sacrifice or we're gonna come and get
you, you need to do it." And I saw him, it was where
he was laying on the grass, he was like that, he was like this, just fast asleep, where he was drunk. Then he goes, he goes,
"He's the one, he's the one, he's the one." - It's almost like he's reveling in it, but without the emotion. - Can I stand up? - Yes.
- Went up to him, stood over like that, went like that and I stabbed him first there
and I done it a few times. - And what that says to me is
that he was really dangerous and if he wasn't arrested, he would've absolutely
gone on to kill again. - While I was doing that,
my voices were laughing and laughing and laughing
louder and louder. (light haunting music) - [Narrator] On the same
day Fairweather confessed, police charged him with both murders and news spread that
these horrific killings had been committed by a 15-year old child. - I was angry, I was
confused, 'cause I was like, how could somebody that
age even dream of doing anything like that to another human being? - The atmosphere around the
town at the time of the arrest was still one of disbelief, because we all knew at this point, how brutal and how violent
the murders had been and there was really no understanding, that this could've been the
work of a boy aged 15 or 16. - [Narrator] With Fairweather in custody, the investigation turned its attention to why a teenager had
committed such shocking crimes. - When police searched the
home of James Fairweather, they discovered a lot of
violent pornographic movies and very violent content films as well and also a number of knives
were discovered in his home, that seemed to belong to James. - [Narrator] They quickly
built a picture of a young man obsessed with violence and murder. - He had a dangerous
interest in serial killers, specifically Peter Sutcliffe. He played violent computer games. - He had spent considerable
time researching extreme violence and indeed
pornography on the internet and he had unfettered
access to the internet, when his parents were both at work. (light haunting music) - James spends an awful
amount of time alone, but he also spends a lot of
time unsupervised at home. He's watching material that
no child should be watching, watching violent pornography
or watching violent films or playing violent video games doesn't turn a non-violent individual into becoming a violent murderer. However, what it does is it
desensitizes them to violence, particularly in the case
of James Fairweather, where we know he had an obsession
with violent pornography, an obsession with serial killers, there's a reason why they're
given that certificate of 18, there's a reason why
we don't allow children to watch that kind of
material, because it will have a direct impact on their developing brain. (mellow melodic music) - During my career, I've covered a few different murder
trials unfortunately, it comes with the job, but this murder trial really stood out. The tension in the courtroom was palpable. - [Narrator] 11 months after his arrest, Fairweather would stand trial
at Guilford Crown Court, close to where he was being
held in a psychiatric unit. - I attended court every day. It was difficult, but I
felt I had to do it for Jim. It was like heartbreaking sitting there listening to all the evidence. We walked out every evening with tears rolling down
our faces in disbelief. - [Narrator] In the trial,
that spanned two weeks, Fairweather's defense
hinged on his mental state at the time of the killings. (mellow melodic music) - Because James Fairweather
had admitted to the killings, the prosecution had a relatively easy task of laying out the case
and they had to set out, that James Fairweather was capable and was fully aware of what he was doing, when he committed those two murders. In contrast, the defense
were not there to say that James Fairweather was not responsible for these killings in a
practical, physical sense, but actually his mental state at the time meant that he couldn't be held
accountable for his actions. - I think James always maintained
and maintained at trial, that voices in his head were telling him to sacrifice people,
which is how he phrased it and so we were able to focus the defense on the sole issue of
diminished responsibility. - If a person's
responsibility is diminished, which would reduce a murder charge from murder to manslaughter. - [Narrator] To suggest
James couldn't be held fully responsible for murder,
the defense built their case around the voices he'd claimed to hear and looked to James' autism only diagnosed shortly before the trial to explain his obsessive
nature and detached manner. - I stabbed him first there
and I done it a few times. - He was a very troubled, young man, he was only 15 years of age at the time. He was very suspicious of everybody, that he came into contact with. He was convinced that
the prison authorities, the warders of the prison
were spying on him. He was very difficult to engage with, he found it very difficult to answer straightforward questions. You couldn't make eye
contact with him at all, he'd stare at the table and just look down and then the minute I met James, it struck me that he may
very well be autistic and that only was diagnosed,
once the psychiatrists, who were caring for James
during his time on remand started to carry out their tests on him. - A symptom of autism is a fixation, an obsession on something, but mostly that is on benign things, obsessions with things that don't harm. What we see in this case
is that James Fairweather was fixated on violent
pornography, serial killers, murder and that obsession grew to the
point that on a daily basis, he was fascinating
about committing murder. - The fact that somebody
suffers from autism, of course, is no defense
to any criminal charge, least of all murder. It's a factor which the
psychiatrist took into account in determining whether he was suffering from diminished responsibility or not. - [Narrator] Everyone at the trial accepted Fairweather's
recent diagnosis of autism, but ultimately concluded, that it wasn't a defense for murder. Now the focus was on
Fairweather's alleged psychosis, that manifested itself in the
voices that told him to kill. - Three psychiatrists
said that they believed that James Fairweather did have psychosis. Psychosis is abnormalities in functioning in certain domains, for example, delusions and hallucinations, so hearing voices is the most common form
of a hallucination. - Voices were talking to me,
"You need to make a sacrifice or we're gonna come and get
you, you need to do it." - It's a very separate entity
to their own internal voice, it's them hearing another person's voice that's often commanding
them to do something. - Then he goes, he goes,
"He's the one, he's the one, he's the one, do it, do it." - We called three psychiatrists
on behalf of the defense, all three have diagnosed James
as suffering from psychosis. They accepted the
genuineness of his claim, that he was hearing voices in his head. - [Narrator] However, the
prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph took a very different view. - The psychiatrist for
the prosecution believed that James Fairweather
was lying about the voices and some of the reasons
put forward for that is that the nature in which
he planned the murders, he went along wearing gloves
to cover up his fingerprints, knowing that his fingerprints
were on the DNA database, he threw away the knife. It seemed to be that on the one hand, we've got this description of
a very distressed, young man, who's hearing voices
commanding him to do something, but on the other hand, we have this very lucid,
organized offender, who is able to cover their
tracks after the murder and those two don't sit together. Is he psychotic or is he this manipulative,
controlled individual? - Dr. Joseph's evidence was quite powerful and undermines the account
he was giving of psychosis and the fact that he had
carried out the stabbings, whilst he was in a rage,
then suddenly came to. - [Narrator] Was Fairweather
falsely portraying himself to the jury as a psychotic teenager, so he could get away with murder? (light haunting music) Colchester had been gripped
by fear for 14 months. - The whole community were
just scared to go out. - [Narrator] The killer was
searching for his third victim, when finally the manhunt came to an end. - She saw pure evil in his eyes. - [Narrator] Resulting in
the shocking revelation, that the murderer was 15-year
old James Fairweather. - I stabbed him first there. - [Narrator] Fairweather confessed, claiming voices made him do it, a claim his defense lawyers took to trial. - So the voices were talking to me, "You need to make a sacrifice or we're gonna come and get
you, you need to do it." - [Narrator] The jury had to decide, was it the result of
psychosis driving him to kill, or was this cold blooded murder? Could Fairweather have
faked hearing voices? Was this all part of his plan
to get a lesser sentence? - During the course of the trial, we discovered that he'd
been searching up things on his phone and on the
internet around serial killers, but also defenses they had used in court to try and reduce their sentence
or get off their crimes. - And the prosecution pointed
to this as a suggestion, that James was making up
his mental difficulties in order to avoid a conviction for murder. There was no evidence
that James had researched symptoms of psychosis, for example, all of his research was in
relation to serial killers and what they had done rather
than any medical defenses, that they had advanced at trial
and so it meant essentially, that a 15-year old boy
with no medical experience had successfully deceived three
experienced psychiatrists. (mellow melodic music) - What is really difficult
to determine in this case is whether James Fairweather was trying to get off with manslaughter and therefore faking
his psychotic symptoms, or was he really in a psychotic episode, when he committed those murders? It's interesting for me
that when he was interviewed as part of his pre-sentence report for the robbery on the
shop with the knife, he made no mention at
that point of the voices, even though he later said, that the voices started before then. He also seemed to be very lucid
at the time of the murders and also there's the other
aspects of his personality, that didn't seem to be quite disturbed. - My closing speech to
the jury, I described it as a perfect storm of his
autism, his psychosis, and the lack of supervision
that he was getting at home. - I don't believe that James
Fairweather was hearing voices, no, I believe he was saying that to obviously get off
for manslaughter, yeah. The day Jim died is the day I died. Why has this happened to Jim, you know, what has Jim ever done to
deserve something like that? He was just such a lovely guy and we always called him Gentle Jim, because he was just,
wouldn't hurt anybody. - [Narrator] With the defense claiming Fairweather's mental state meant he couldn't be held
responsible for the killings and the prosecution painting a picture of a cold-hearted murderer
in control of his actions, it came down to whether the jury believed Fairweather's claim of psychosis. - Ultimately the jury did not buy his account of these hallucinations. - [Narrator] And on the
22nd of April, 2016, three months before his 18th birthday, the jury were unanimous in
finding James Fairweather guilty of double murder. - James Fairweather was
sentenced by a high court judge to 27 years in prison. - [Narrator] And Colchester
breathed a sigh of relief. (gavel banging) - An order was made for
him to be transferred to a secure unit and he will remain there, until that treatment comes to an end, until he is considered to be fit. And from there, he will be transferred to spend the rest of the time
of that sentence in custody. - The reaction of the local
community to James' sentence was one of relief and the
general feeling I got from people was that the sentence did fit the crime. - When we got the verdict of guilty, it was just a wave of relief,
that come over our bodies, getting that actually
made us feel as though there was just a little bit
of justice for Jim and Nahid. (melodic haunting music) - [Narrator] The local community
felt justice had been done, safe in the knowledge that this
serial killer obsessed teen was now behind bars. - We now know he collected
our newspaper cuttings on his first killing of Jim Attfield as a, I suppose people would say that's as a trophy to what he was doing, he kept a scrapbook of all the clippings of all the stories that we did. He clearly wanted to
revel in the difficulty he was putting the public through. He was reading every day about the anguish of Jim Attfield's mother
and Jim Attfield's family. He was reading about the fear
that people were experiencing, not only in Greenstead,
but across Colchester. It's pretty clear that he was
enjoying what he was doing. - I think James Fairweather
committed these murders, because he was a deeply
disturbed, young man. However, there was clearly something there in his environment, in the
material he was viewing, that all combined to create someone, that ultimately went on to kill twice and potentially could have killed again. - In the judge's summing up in this case, he talked about how
James Fairweather wanted to carry out his sadistic,
violent fantasies and how he was obsessed
with other serial killers. Peter Sutcliffe, he stabbed
his victims in the eye and it's said that he did this, because the eye remained open and he got some kind of
pleasure from doing that and Fairweather purposely
stabbed his victims in the eye. So it's almost like he wanted to emulate the serial killers that
he was so obsessed with and the notoriety that comes with that would have been something he desired. (light haunting music) - [Narrator] But could the authorities have picked up on Fairweather's
dangerous obsessions, before they went too far? - I was quite angry, when I heard that he had already caused upset by holding up a shop at knife point and to find out that he
only got a slap on the wrist and was then allowed to walk free and just a few months later, then go on to kill, despicable really. I think Jim's death could
have been prevented, yes, because if James
Fairweather had been given a harsher sentence for carrying
a weapon in the first place, then he may not have been out there to have committed the crimes he committed. - It was a unique case, my understanding is that James is the youngest
person in this country to have been convicted
of two separate murders. The ferocity of them makes
them unique in my view, given his young age. The minimum term that the
judge set in James's case was 27 years, that is
for a boy of that age a very long minimum term indeed. - [Narrator] Fairweather
will be in his forties, before he can even be
considered for release by the Parole Board. Given his disputed mental health, does this teenage boy
deserve life in prison? - One of the difficulties
with the jury's finding of murder, rather than manslaughter is that James will be
kept in a normal prison. There isn't the medical
and psychiatric support, that there would be in a psychiatric unit. Had he been convicted of manslaughter, the judge could have made
what's called a hospital order, which has pretty much the same
effect as a life sentence, except the decision as to release is made, when a panel of psychiatrists
felt that he didn't present a danger to the public,
rather than the Parole Board, which is made up of nonspecialists. (soft piano music) - The James Fairweather case is a case, that no one involved
with it will ever forget. - One can't help but wonder whether, if his autism had been diagnosed
at a much earlier stage and a suitable support
system put in place, including input at home from his parents, whether with greater supervision
and with more assistance for his difficulties, which
were undoubtedly there, he may not have carried
out these killings. That's a question that's
impossible to answer, but one can't help speculating on whether actually failure of that diagnosis meant that the system let him down. - James Fairweather was bullied, he had been targeted because
of his physical appearance. He had been vulnerable
because of his autism, because of his potential
developing personality disorder and because of his, the question mark over whether he was in a
psychotic episode or not and he carried knives, that says to me, that there were signs there
and if he had got help younger, maybe we could have prevented these terrible murders occurring. (soft piano music) (dynamic melodic music) (dynamic melodic music)
