A cowardly teen gunman who slaughtered his family and aspired to be Britain’s deadliest school shooter has refused to leave his prison cell to face justice today.
Warped Nicholas Prosper faces the prospect of being caged behind bars for life for murdering his mother his mother and two siblings last year.
The 19-year-old serial killer 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.
School dropout Prosper 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 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.
He was due to appear in Luton Crown Court this morning shortly after 10.30am.
But the cowardly killer has refused to attend the second and final day of his sentencing hearing in Court 5, delaying it until 11.30am.
It’s the second time in a week that a high-profile murderer has refused to face justice and attend their sentencing.
Teenage serial killer Nicholas Prosper menacingly poses with the plank of wood as though it is a firearm shortly before he went to use a shotgun to murder his family and try to kill 30 children
Prosper wanted to become a notorious school shooter, gunning down children at a nearby primary after slaughtering his family
Left to right: Giselle Prosper, 13, Juliana Prosper, 48 and 16-year-old Kyle Prosper were all killed in their own home. Each suffered shotgun wounds to the face, while Kyle was also stabbed more than 100 times across his body before being shot
Last week, crossbow killer Kyle Clifford stayed locked in his jail cell as he was sentenced for the horrific triple murders of BBC racing commentator John Hunt’s family.
Former soldier Clifford, raped his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt, 25, then used a crossbow to shoot both her and her sister Hannah, 28, having already fatally stabbed their mother, 61-year-old Carol, at the family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, in July 2024.
At Cambridge Crown Court last week, the judge Mr Justice Bennathan handed the 26-year-old thug three life sentences with three whole life orders, saying the murderer had been ‘soaked in self pity’.
Much like Clifford, Prosper faces the prospect of being jailed for life for murdering his family and plotting to slaughter dozens of primary school children.
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 pictured in Luton Crown Court on Tuesday in an artist’s impression
The smirking wannabe school shooter was caught on camera after purchasing his shotgun
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’.
In a chilling foreshadowing of the horrors that were to come, Prosper, wearing his distinctive yellow bucket hat, filmed himself pretending a piece of wood was a shotgun
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, Propser 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.’
Nicholas Prosper admitted murdering his family members (pictured left to right) Kyle, Juliana and Giselle. He remained emotionless during the hearing in February
Prosper is seen in a court sketch, flanked by a prison guard during his sentencing hearing
Court artist drawing by Elizabeth Cook of Mrs Justice Cheema Grubb while Prosper is in the dock at Luton Crown Court, Bedfordshire, on Tuesday
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 said he was ‘chosen’ to protect a fictional character called Clementine in zombie video game The Walking Dead, 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’.
Police were called to the high-rise block in Luton, following reports that shots had been fired
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.’
Pictured is the scene of Prosper’s home where he gunned down and killed his family
Tributes were left outside the Leabank building after the triple killing in September last year
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. He will be sentenced today.
