The mother of one of the Nottingham attack victims has told Sky News it “felt like validation” to hear police themselves had believed the killings were murder rather than a lesser charge.
Valdo Calocane admitted manslaughter and attempted murder, but said he wasn’t guilty of murder due to diminished responsibility – a plea prosecutors accepted.
But Emma Webber said the senior investigating officer ended up “in a corner” at Wednesday’s inquiry and admitted police had felt it was murder – “that there was planning, that there was insight, there was culpability”.
Speaking to The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee, Ms Webber said the case ended up going “down a very different path as soon as the expert doctors, psychiatrists, got involved – and the CPS”.
Calocane murdered Ms Webber’s son Barnaby, his classmate Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and caretaker Ian Coates in the early hours of 13 June 2023.
Calocane also tried to kill three others and was indefinitely detained at a psychiatric unit.
A public inquiry is looking at failings in the case, such as why Calocane was still free despite being a schizophrenic with a history of violence who was also subject to an outstanding arrest warrant.
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Wednesday was the first day of the inquiry to look at the police investigation itself.
Detective Superintendent Leigh Sanders, who has now retired, said he believed Calocane acted “in cold blood” and that he had used the word “murder” in documents in the aftermath of the rampage.
“For me there were elements of planning in relation the killings. My view at that time was he didn’t seem to be under duress,” Mr Sanders told the inquiry.
“He appeared to be making rational choices. My impression was that he was acting of his own free will… My view at that time was that I believed he had murdered in cold blood three people.”
Asked if others on his team had been upset that Calocane avoided a jury trial, he replied: “There were officers who believed that he had committed murder.”
The former officer also apologised to families for not taking a hair sample to test Calocane for possible drug use when he was arrested.
Lawyers suggested it was down to a lack of consent from the killer and quoted an email that said it wasn’t done “as the defendant had no history” of drug abuse.
Mr Sanders told the inquiry he “perhaps” should have taken one because it could have provided rebuttal to Calocane’s eventual plea of diminished responsibility.
However, he said a sample wouldn’t have been able to show “drugs or alcohol in the system at a specific time or date”.
‘Shocked and horrified’
Emma Webber told Sky News it was a “bit difficult to stomach because it’s what we’ve been sort of pleading for and begging for all along”.
“Toxicology has been, a very hot point for us, toxicology strategy – or the lack thereof,” she said.
“Bear in mind, this is somebody they took nail scrapings and they took body mapping of him. But they failed to take any intimate samples, which would be blood or urine, and they even failed to do non-intimate of a hair sample.”
The inquiry is in its fourth week and is scheduled to last until June – with a report due next year.
It’s already heard how police failed to execute a warrant to arrest Calocane, issued more than nine months before the killings, after he missed a court hearing.
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He went on to assault two colleagues at a factory in Leicestershire a month before the attacks, but was not arrested by Leicestershire Police at that time.
Ms Webber said she continued to be stunned by evidence at the inquiry.
“Every single day, without exception, there’s been more information revealed even to us that we’ve been shocked and horrified at.
“Sometimes not just the evidence, but also the manner of the witnesses. And I would say the arrogance and just refusal to to admit clear failings.”
