At 7.50am the school run traffic was already building up as two weary police officers returned to the station after a night shift guarding a horrific triple murder scene.
But something odd caught the driver’s eye.
Wearing a yellow and black tracksuit, reminiscent of Uma Thurman‘s trained assassin in hit movie Kill Bill, a solitary figure stood by the roadside staring at the officers, holding his clenched fist aloft in a kind of salute.
As the patrol car slowed to a stop after the curious officers decided to take a further look, Nicholas Prosper stepped forward, pointing his bloodied palm towards them.
It was a chance encounter that was to save countless lives.
For the routine police stop ended the rampage of a teenage gunman who was on his way to a primary school to shoot a classroom of four and five-year-olds, having already executed three members of his family in cold blood.
After a year of meticulous planning, the 18-year-old was less than a mile away from completing his bloodthirsty mission to become, in his own words, the ‘most notorious’ school shooter in the world.
But on that sunny Friday morning on September 13 last year, the two officers had no idea as they approached Prosper that he was the man responsible for the triple murder scene where they had earlier stood guard.
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Nicholas Prosper, 19, murdered his mother, brother and sister before plotting to target a primary schoolÂ
Nicholas Prosper murdered Kyle, Juliana and Giselle Prosper (pictured left to right)
Around 5am that day, Prosper embarked on his shotgun rampage, blasting his mother Juliana, 48, sister Giselle, 13, and brother Kyle, 16, in the head.
In a sickening joke, by their bodies he left a copy of the best-selling novel How To Kill Your Family.
When he encountered the police officers hours later, Prosper still had in his pocket the bloody knife which he had used to stab his brother 100 times.
In a bush around 200 yards away, Prosper had stashed a shotgun and 33 cartridges as he lay in wait, counting down the hours until St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School opened its gates.
In chilling police body-worn video footage of his arrest, the teenage killer showed no emotion, robotically repeating to officers, ‘It’s not murder’, as he was cuffed at the roadside.
When armed officers arrived, Prosper couldn’t resist boasting: ‘Did you see the fake shotgun certificate I made?’
The shocked officer replied: ‘I think we have got the offender.’
Little did he know that this was no ordinary offender, Prosper had been planning the ‘biggest massacre in the 21st century’.
THE TRIPLE SHOOTING
At 5.30am that day, those living near Prosper’s family home in Leabank Court, Luton, were awoken by screaming and groans followed by gunshots.
In a sickening joke, by their bodies he left a copy of the best-selling novel How To Kill Your Family
As his terrified neighbours dialled 999 reporting that they had heard sounds like someone’s throat had been cut, Prosper was already gathering up his weapon for the next stage of his plan.
Having placed Bella Mackie’s darkly comic novel about a woman who sets out to kill her estranged family by the bodies of his mother and siblings, Prosper stashed his gun and cartridges in a bag meant for fishing rods.
Just three minutes later he was heading out of the door, at 5.33am.
The killer would later complain in prison to a nurse that the murders were carried out earlier than he had intended.
In a chilling glimpse into his planning, Prosper produced a number of sketches showing the killing outfit he had purchased in preparation and the layout of his old primary school which he intended to hit next.
In Bedford Prison, the then 18-year-old confessed that he ‘wanted to cause the biggest massacre in the 21st century’, whispering to the nurse: ‘I wish I had killed more.’
Prosper said he planned to kill his family in their sleep before raping his sister, moaning that his mother had woken up too early.
A note in his cell said: ‘I was right in predicting no one would’ve called the police had I killed them in their sleep. 3 shots under 30 seconds.
Prosper pictured in Luton Crown Court on Tuesday in an artist’s impressionÂ
‘The only known phone call to police that day was made by the b**** (neighbour) 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.
‘But 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.’
LYING IN WAIT
CCTV captured the moment that Prosper made his getaway through the stairwell at the tower block where his family lived, clutching his bag in his bloody hands at 5.33am.
By mistake, the murderer left behind a yellow bucket hat he had intended to be part of the outfit.
But as he strolled across the car park outside in the darkness, Prosper appeared in no hurry. At 5.40am he was seen climbing over a wall into some woodland.
He hid there, crawling into undergrowth to stash the weapon as he whiled away the hours, waiting until the school opened.
SCENE OF HORROR
When police arrived at Prosper’s home at 5.50am, they found a scene of carnage with the killer’s bloody handprints, knives and gun cartridges left everywhere.
In a matter of minutes, Prosper had shot his family six times – after carrying out a test fire on a teddy bear.
At 6.22am Prosper uploaded a video on Facebook, which he had recorded the day before, promising to shoot his sister in the face.
Prosper (pictured), 19, is being sentenced during a two-day hearing at Luton Crown Court
He said: ‘On June 30 my sister decided to make the incorrect choices on episode one of season one of the [zombie apocalypse] Walking Dead games, and for that her face will be mutilated further than necessary.’
At 6.55am, Prosper was seen striding along Bramingham Road with his bloody hands still stinging from the nettles and thorns he had hid amongst.
Prosper ignored passing traffic and pedestrians until he saw the passing police car at 7.50am.
THE SHOTGUN
Within a short time of his arrest, police discovered the hidden gun and cartridges.
However, it would be weeks before they uncovered his murderous mission.
Officers learnt that Prosper had purchased the shotgun less than 24 hours before his deadly attacks from an unsuspecting pensioner, whom he had duped with a fake shotgun certificate. In an extraordinary loophole in gun laws, lethal weapons can be traded privately without any official checks if the buyer is able to produce a paper firearms certificate to the seller.
Prosper had spent months perfecting his faked certificate by painstakingly copying real ones posted online which he found during 200 searches on firearms.
His research started a year earlier when Prosper booked a gun range appointment in September 2023, aged 17.
He signed up to several websites where guns could be bought and sold and attempted to buy a firearm on a site called Gun Trader in August 2024, but the seller backed out after becoming suspicious. Weeks later, Prosper contacted a gun owner on another website called Gun Star, offering the seller £600 – £150 over the £450 asking price – for the shotgun and 100 cartridges.
He claimed that he just wanted to go clay pigeon shooting.
They met in a car park on September 12 where Prosper handed over cash after a brief inspection of the gun in the boot of a car.
Grinning, Prosper was later seen hugging the gun in a lift to his family’s apartment.
PRACTICE SESSION
On Prosper’s mobile phone, police found videos showing him practising the shooting clutching a piece of wood in his family’s kitchen. Dressed in his killing costume, with the gun bag slung over his shoulder, Prosper aimed at the camera.
The teenager pretended to fire off a couple of shots with the wood before motioning as if to reload and opening fire again, whispering: ‘Bang.’
FIXATED ON VIOLENCE
When officers examined his two phones, they found a sickening enthusiasm for violence.
Prosper had researched every school shooting, mass murder, and bloody atrocity. Such
were his warped views that when Axel Rudakubana killed three young children at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport in
July last year, Prosper said that the riots the case sparked
were ‘beneficial’.
The teenager became hooked on a twisted website trading in gore and death, only to be later banned due to his repugnant ideas about necrophilia and child abuse.
In the hours before he killed his family, he pored over school shootings and notorious murders such as the killing of Sarah Everard in March 2021, staying up until 4am scrolling through gruesome images.
During Prosper’s trial Timothy Cray, KC, prosecuting, told Luton Crown Court that the teenager had been fixated on ‘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’.
OBSESSED WITH CHILDREN
Police found more than 200 indecent images of children on Prosper’s phone.
His sexual preoccupation with young children may have been what led Prosper to plan an attack on four and five-year-olds.
Prosper planned to target his old primary school, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, where he was remembered by teachers as a ‘quiet, geeky boy’.
The teenager abandoned senior school in March 2023 after complaining about people being ‘in his personal space’ and trying to talk to him.
His family sought help from a GP about ‘autistic traits’, but Prosper refused to engage.
He was not known to police before carrying out the murders and had never been referred to the Government’s deradicalisation scheme Prevent.
As the prosecutor said in court, Britain’s biggest massacre was ‘prevented by chance and circumstance alone’.
