Evil teen gunman Nicholas Prosper has been jailed for 49 years for murdering his family and trying to slaughter 30 children in a failed school shooting plot.
Prosper had been on a bloodthirsty mission to commit the ‘biggest massacre in the 21st century’ after exploiting a terrifying loophole in gun laws to buy a shotgun and 100 cartridges.
The calculated school dropout launched his rampage on September 13 last year, blasting his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and siblings Kyle Prosper, 16, and Giselle Prosper, 13, in the head at their Luton home before setting off for the school intending to ‘kill all’.
The gunman, who was 18 at the time, fantasised about shooting a classroom of 30 children aged four and five and their teachers, by bursting into the assembly at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School at 9am.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Prosper he intended to ‘unleash destruction’ on a community and to become known as one of the world’s ‘worst school shooters’.
Sentencing Prosper to a life sentence with a minimum term of 48 years and 177 days, the judge told him: ‘You are indisputably a very dangerous young man.
‘You acted during hours of darkness on people who had been asleep in their own home. A 13-year-old child was shot in the face while hiding under a table, a 16-year-old child was shot in the chest after being stabbed with a knife or knives… before being shot to the head.
‘Each victim suffered the anguish of anticipating or being aware of the deaths of others.’
She continued: ‘There is no suggestion that you didn’t understand the law or that killing people was morally wrong – you just didn’t care.’
Prosper sat with his head in his hands as he was sentenced. Although the judge dismissed issuing a whole life order, she warned the callous killer he ‘may be too dangerous to ever be released’.
Describing ‘the horror’ that unfolded at his family’s flat, Mrs Cheema-Grubb said Prosper’s mother Juliana had woken first, realising something was ‘terribly wrong’ on September 13 last year.
The judge told Prosper: ‘She struggled with you before you shot her in the head at very close range in the hallway, you placed a novel with the title “How To Kill Your Family” on her legs.’
His sister Giselle, 13, then woke up and Prosper shot her from a distance as she hid under the dining room table.
His brother Kyle was trying to hide in the kitchen, grabbing a knife to protect himself.
But Prosper pursued him.
‘It was an unequal contest,’ the judge said. ‘You shot him in the chest from a distance, but then, while he was still alive and moving, stabbed and slashed him more than 100 times to his head, face, neck, torso and limbs, while he pleaded with you not to kill him.’
Kyle then ran to the hallway, where Prosper fatally shot him in the head.
During her sentencing remarks, the judge said Prosper ‘idolised’ the Sandy Hook shooter saying of the triple killer that ‘his only wish was to be famous by killing young children’.
The court heard that Prosper had joined a ‘paedophile Twitter group’ to discuss sexual abuse of children before the murders.
The judge said Prosper’s case were ‘chilling, adding that his aim was to emulate and outdo the US school massacres at Sandy Hook in 2012 and Virginia Tech in 2007.
His case featured many ‘recurrent themes’ seen in school shootings, she said, a young male perpetrator who chose a ‘uniform’ for the killings, had a sexual interest in children, withdrew into an online world and showed a lack of empathy towards victims.
The judge said on his arrest on September 13 last year, Prosper was ‘inappropriately cheerful’ asking officers if the local schools had been ‘placed in lockdown’.
She told Prosper: ‘You did not hate your mother, or your siblings, you had a good life with them.’
She went on: ‘You wanted to cause the biggest massacre in the 21st century, as there had not been one.
‘Your mother waking up had triggered your actions.. you wish you had killed more.’
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told the killer: ‘You are intellectually capable to understanding the impact of your actions on others.’
She said he had ‘made a serious of choices’ to put his own desire to be famous before the lives of others.
The judge said the triple killer was not immature: ‘Your intentions were not immature fantasy.’
The judge said she had been ‘troubled by this serious case’, but had decided that a whole life order should not be imposed.
The judge said she wanted to express the court’s condolences to the family.
Prosper was able to purchase a shotgun with ease simply by copying real certificates he found online.
He discovered that lethal weapons can be traded privately without any official checks if the buyer is able to produce a genuine-looking paper firearms certificate to the seller.
Under the current law, sellers have to notify police within seven days about the sale of a weapon.
But they don’t have to check with police whether the buyer’s firearms certificate is genuine before the purchase, creating a loophole whereby the new owner has a window to carry out an attack before anyone discovers the fake.
Prosper, now 19, downloaded a blank firearms certificate and used a website which allows you to amend pictures so he could create his own fake.
He was so proud of the forgery that when he was arrested, he couldn’t resist bragging to officers: ‘My name is Nicholas Prosper; you saw my fake shotgun certificate in my room in the 82 flat? Did you see the fake shotgun certificate I made?’
On August 30 last year Prosper contacted a gun owner on a trading website called Gun Star, offering him £600 – £150 over the £450 asking price – for the shotgun, claiming it was for clay pigeon shooting. Luton Crown Court was shown CCTV of the handover in a car park outside Prosper’s home on September 12 where he produced the cash after inspecting the gun in a car boot.
Less than 24 hours later he would begin his shooting spree after staying up all night poring over sickening images of mass murder and school shootings.
Yesterday he smirked in the dock as the court heard how he later confessed in prison that he ‘wanted to cause the biggest massacre in the 21st century’, whispering to a horrified nurse: ‘I wish I had killed more.’
Prosecutor Timothy Cray, KC, said on Tuesday: ‘What drove him on most was the desire to be famous or infamous as a mass killer. This was killing for the sake of killing.
‘The killing of his family was to be the first step in an even more shocking mass killing.
‘Specifically, he wanted to imitate and even surpass other mass killers around the world.’
Prosper was bent on killing more children than the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, US, in 2012, when 20 died.
He spent a year researching local schools, carrying out surveillance on St Joseph’s, capturing images of staff and pupils, checking assembly and lesson times and sketching class layouts.
He carefully assembled a ‘killing costume’ and spent months poring over ‘images and audios that showed deep alienation from normal life and interest in the darkest sides of humanity, including people being killed or seriously injured and violent video games’.
Police found a diagram of the early years’ classroom at St Joseph’s in which Prosper had written ‘Kill all’.
He had recorded videos of him practising the shooting with a piece of wood in his family kitchen and he uploaded a clip promising to shoot his sister an hour after the murders.
He claimed he planned to kill his family in their sleep before raping his sister, stating: ‘Why so early? So I’d have time to cannibalise my family, and rape a woman at knife point before the shooting. ‘Why? Because I could.’
But his mother woke up, forcing him to carry out his plan earlier than intended.
In a sign of his warped mentality, a few days after gunning down his family, Prosper told prison nurse Tatenda Muketiwa: ‘I wish I had killed more.’
Yesterday Prosper’s father Raymond said in a victim impact statement that ‘part of my soul died’ on the day of the killings.
‘The pain of our loss will never be healed. This includes my whole family; our lives will never be the same,’ Mr Prosper told the court on Tuesday.
‘For me personally, when I heard the horrific news on that day, part of my soul died too.
‘This is a lose-lose situation for us all and we have lost four family members.’
During their investigation, police uncovered Prosper’s sickening obsession with death, with the evil teen having spent his time trawling the internet for chilling slaughter videos.
His disturbed ramblings online were so depraved that he was kicked off a gore website – where millions of users share and comment on videos of people being killed – because of his warped stance on child abuse.
The wannabe school shooter’s content was uploaded under a pseudonym and featured his distinctive accent.
His videos have been deleted from YouTube in the wake of his appalling crimes, although the Mail has been able to view them.
They include a clip recorded hours before the massacre, believed to be filmed in his family’s flat in Luton, in which Prosper vowed to mutilate the face of his sister ‘further than necessary’ for making an incorrect choice’ in the Walking Dead game.
In the video, the 19-year-old also ranted that he was ‘chosen’ to protect a fictional character called Clementine in the zombie survival game, in a sign he struggled to differentiate between the real world and make-believe.
Prosper peppered online forums with his repulsive ideas, many relating to children and including the sexual abuse of dead bodies.
His rants were so revolting he was banned from a gore website for repeatedly ‘sexualising minors’.
One moderator told the Mail: ‘There were multiple comments by him either in support of or arguing for child-adult sexual interactions that made it clear this was not in jest or a careless attempt to play devil’s advocate.
‘We do not know what sort of person Mr Prosper was, other than someone unwilling or incapable of following our site’s rules and therefore someone we would not allow on our platform.’
In another video, Prosper sarcastically suggested that child sexual abuse was blamed for ‘virtually every mental disorder and issue’.
Apologising for his ‘slurred’ speech, the teenager said: ‘Who knows, maybe in a few years we’ll see Aids, rectal cancer, increased chance of stubbing your toe, every single problem you face in life is because you touched a winky [penis] when you were six.’
While caged in prison, awaiting his first court hearing, Prosper wrote out his murder plan and stashed it in his shoe. The chilling document was later found by a prison officer on November 13 – two months after the teen’s rampage.
Part of the notes read: ‘I was right in predicting no-one would’ve called the police had I killed them in their sleep. 3 shots under 30 seconds.
‘The only known phone call to police that day was made by the b**** at the door as a result of my B**** mother waking them up and it being turned into a long struggle.
‘My plan wasn’t ‘stupid’. I was f****** right. MY MOTHER IS A STUPID F****** COW.’
The notes continued: ‘But why so early? So I’d have time to cannibalise my family, and rape a woman at knife point before the shooting.’
There was also a step-by-step guide to the planned school shooting, including Prosper leaving the flat at 8.40am on his mother’s bike and arriving at the school for 9am.
The guide said he would ‘shout that this is a robbery and for everyone to get down’ before shooting the two teachers and killing the children.
Defending, David Bentley, KC, said Prosper was not a psychopath, but a ‘socially impaired’ teenager with ‘autistic traits’.
He said: ‘He is a young man who has gone down effectively an internet wormhole.’
Grinning, the killer rocked back and forth as his lawyer called his actions ‘incomprehensible’.
Prosper admitted the murders at an earlier hearing, as well as possession of a shotgun with intent to endanger life.
Prosper’s sentencing hearing will be broadcast live.