The couple at the neat terrace house on a residential road in Enfield, north London, are keen gardeners. Passers-by often admire their well-tended front lawn, with its beds of blooming hydrangeas, purple elderflowers and blush-pink rose bushes behind a wooden picket fence.
The small, well-kept property, one neighbour admits, is by far ‘the nicest in the street’.
Until last summer, none of them paid much attention to the residents: an elderly couple with an ageing dog, whose four children are now grown up. ‘I see them coming out in the morning as I go to work,’ one man, who lives across the road, said. ‘They are very quiet and very slow, but no trouble at all.’
On the morning of July 10 last year, however, locals watched in horror as armed police wearing body armour surrounded the property. Nearby businesses were locked down. Shoppers hid in a church. Pupils at a local school were kept indoors, with teachers telling them a ‘stray dog’ was on the loose.
Around 10am, as police helicopters circled overhead, officers led a woman out of the property.
She was, a witness said, ‘not handcuffed and appeared to be chatting with the officers’.
It would be another six-and-a-half hours before they found who they were looking for: the woman’s son, Kyle Clifford, the callous triple murderer and so-called ‘crossbow killer’, who was this week sentenced to life in prison for the killings of Carol, Louise and Hannah Hunt.
After a 22-hour manhunt, Clifford, 26, was tracked to Lavender Hill Cemetery, a five-minute walk from his family home, where he shot himself with the same crossbow he used to kill his ex-girlfriend Louise, 25, and her sister Hannah, 28 – before being taken into custody.
Presenter John Hunt with his daughters Hannah, left, and Louise, who were both murdered
But this was not the first time police had swarmed on this quiet corner of suburbia.
Nor the first time Kyle Clifford’s mother had been confronted with a heinous act of evil committed by one of her sons. Seven years previously, in August 2017, her eldest son, Bradley, mowed down and then savagely beat to death a teenage moped rider in retaliation for damage to his ‘prized’ Ford Mustang car. Bradley, now 31, was sentenced to life in prison.
One can only imagine the shame his parents – by all accounts ordinary, well-liked members of the community – felt at seeing their offspring convicted of murder.
And now history has repeated itself. One family: two cold-blooded killers. It begs the question: what sort of upbringing produces two murderers?
The Hunt family were deprived of the opportunity to face Kyle Clifford in the aftermath of the atrocities he inflicted on them.
In a despicable act of cowardice, he refused to attend his trial at Cambridge Crown Court last week – where he was also convicted of raping Louise – or his sentencing this week, where he was given three concurrent life terms.
Instead, he remained in his cell at HMP Belmarsh, wheelchair-bound from the self-inflicted crossbow wound and wallowing in self-pity. His family, similarly, were nowhere to be seen.
John and Amy Hunt, the two surviving members of the family torn apart by his horrific actions, sat in the public gallery, tearful yet dignified. In his heartbreaking statement to the court John, a BBC racing commentator, condemned Clifford’s ‘callous, cowardly, vindictive’ behaviour. He also spoke directly to the killer’s absent family. ‘I realised that this was my final opportunity to say what I wanted to say, specifically to you, Kyle, words that will also be directed to your family, who will carry guilt forwards with them for the rest of their lives,’ he said. ‘They knew about the weapons – they knew.’
Such damning words from a grieving father and husband were not uttered lightly.
For it had emerged in court that two of Kyle Clifford’s three siblings – Bradley and his sister Sian – did indeed know he was in possession of the weapons he would go on to use in the killings.
Kyle Clifford refused to attend his trial at Cambridge Crown Court last week where he was given three concurrent life terms
Bradley Clifford, who killed teenage moped rider Sobhan Khan, after his prized Mustang car was slightly damaged
On July 1 and July 8 last year, in recorded phone calls to his brother in prison, Kyle told Bradley he’d ordered a crossbow and that he was in possession of a ‘massive Japanese sword thing’ that was ‘proper f****** deadly’.
This was the 10in butcher’s knife he would later use to savagely stab Carol Hunt, 61, eight times.
In the calls, Bradley asked Kyle if he was ‘planning on going on a rampage or something’, but he denied this was his plan.
On the morning of July 9, the day of the murders, 26-year-old Sian texted her brother to ask: ‘Why are you taking your crossbow out? What are you playing at? It’s illegal.’ But Clifford brushed off her concerns, telling her he was at a friend’s house, shooting in the back garden. ‘Chill,’ he told her, to which Sian replied: ‘Hmm, OK. Well, don’t take it out. Put it in the boot.’
Sian may have had reason to be worried about her brother being in possession of a lethal crossbow for, as the Mail can exclusively reveal, she had witnessed the murderous tendencies that course through her family first-hand.
When Bradley Clifford mowed down Sobhan Khan, 18, and his pillion passenger Jahshua Francis, 19, in the early hours of August 5, 2017, after Sobhan smashed a bottle on the wing mirror of his Mustang, Sian was in the car. Indeed, Bradley invoked her – and the other passenger, his girlfriend at the time – as apparent justification for attacking Sobhan, beating him as he lay fatally injured on the ground.
He was also convicted of the attempted grievous bodily harm of Jahshua, who miraculously escaped with his life. ‘My intention was to keep violence away from the vehicle, away from the two girls,’ he alleged in court – a claim that failed to convince the jury.
There is no suggestion that Bradley or Sian suspected what Kyle intended to do with his weapons. Nor is there any indication that anyone else in his family – his parents or his other elder brother – knew about them.
In a part of his statement published but not read aloud in court, John Hunt alluded to the relationship Kyle had with his family – a stark contrast to the close-knit, loving environment he and Carol nurtured for their daughters. ‘I know you valued them so poorly from all the conversations we had, Kyle, but I suppose even they must be damaged by what you have done,’ he wrote.
Little is known about the Clifford family, despite their son’s recent notoriety, but we are prevented from even naming his parents and brother. Such protection is afforded to the relatives of criminals and not, perversely, to the loved ones of their victims.
What we do know is that Clifford’s mum is Maltese in origin, the daughter of a shoe repairer, and his father is the son of a security guard from north London.
The two married in Enfield Register Office in the early 1990s, when his mother was 25 and his father, a van driver, was 21.
At the time, the couple lived in a semi-detached property near Southbury train station, north London, a 15-minute drive from the current family home. Bradley, their first son, was born a year later, followed by another boy in 1996. Kyle came along in 1998 and Sian, a much longed-for girl, in 1999.
The children attended a local primary school, followed by Chace Community School, a co-ed secondary and sixth form in Enfield.
Residents recall seeing Kyle ‘going to school with his mum and their dogs’ and have described him as a ‘normal kid’. Of all the boys in the family, they recall, he was ‘placid, very reserved’. One neighbour said: ‘He was never one to be loud. Of the three brothers, he was the last one you’d expect to cause any trouble.’
Others recall the Clifford children attending a local church with their parents.
Their Maltese mother would have grown up with a strong Roman Catholic faith – and no doubt wished to pass this on.
At secondary school, however, Kyle’s behaviour deteriorated, with reports of bullying and violence. One former classmate told the Mail he was ‘a wannabe gangster’. Big brother Bradley, known as something of a ‘hothead’, may have had something to do with this; pupils remember his brother being ‘in awe’ of him.
In 2012, Kyle came to the attention of the police in connection with offences relating to possession of cannabis, assault without injury and theft. ‘He was a juvenile at the time and no matters resulted in charges or convictions against him,’ a Met Police spokesperson said.
Kyle would have been 14 at the time and, as a minor, his parents must have been informed about his behaviour.
There were, however, no official sanctions. Nor did his worsening pattern of behaviour ever result in expulsion from school.
In 2017, the year after he left school, Bradley – the older brother he hero-worshipped – was arrested and later imprisoned for murder.
There is no doubt it had a huge impact on Kyle. He and Bradley remained unnervingly close, with twice-monthly visits and phone calls every week. He apparently made light of Bradley’s crimes, calling him ‘a geezer’. Louise Hunt was horrified to find, as she told friends, that ‘he doesn’t think what Bradley did was horrendous’. A former friend, who had been close to the Clifford family for years, said she was so appalled by the brothers that she severed ties with them.
‘I hope those brothers are kept away from the world for life,’ she said. ‘I am traumatised by that family. I want nothing to do with them.’
The year after Bradley was sentenced, Kyle joined the Army, where he was a soldier with the Household Cavalry Regiment and the Queen’s Dragoon Guards – but never saw active service. His superiors say he had difficulty grasping ‘basic military concepts’, describing him as an ‘unexceptional individual’ who was ‘destined for a career of mediocrity’.
He was unpopular with colleagues, who were concerned by his addiction to watching graphic and violent videos, as well as his propensity for misogyny. Though his military career spanned three years, from 2019 to 2022, he spent 286 days – around a third of that time – ‘at home claiming to be ill’.
And what of Clifford’s parents during this time?
Quite what they knew of their son’s spiralling behaviour is unclear; by now, of course, he was an adult, although he was still registered as living at the family address.
After leaving the Army, he worked at Amthal, a fire and security installation company in St Albans, from February 2022 to July 2023. He met Louise through a dating app around January 2023.
At the time of his murder spree he was unemployed, having been sacked from a job at a catering supply firm which he claimed owed him money.
It emerged in court that he had made ‘misogynistic and sexualised comments’ about female colleagues. He was also having relationships with two other women from work, which he hid during the 18 months he was with Louise.
To neighbours who remember the quiet, diffident boy walking to school with his mother, the harrowing details that emerged in court have been both shocking and hard to comprehend.
‘It has left people feeling pretty distressed,’ one local told the Mail this week.
Clifford’s parents are assumed to still live at the family home, on a former council estate where properties sell for £500,000, but neighbours haven’t seen them much these past nine months.
Carol Hunt, pictured with her BBC horse racing commentator husband John, was found dead alongside her two daughters
His father, a retired heating engineer, used to wait at the nearby bus stop, while his mother, a housewife, was often out walking the family dog, a disabled husky. She has also been spotted with a pram, proudly wheeling her young granddaughter – Kyle’s niece – around the neighbourhood. Locals say she is a ‘private person’ who is, no doubt, ‘deeply sad’ about what her son has done.
She is, one tells the Mail, ‘very caring’ with her granddaughter. ‘She always seems more or less the same, quite serious,’ the neighbour says.
Another, a retired teacher, describes them as ‘lovely, genuine people’. ‘Kyle’s father often cuts my grass and checks I’m OK,’ she adds.
Both parents are enthusiastic gardeners. Indeed, on the morning of the murders, Kyle was captured on CCTV at a garden centre, with both his parents and his niece.
In the footage, taken just hours before he drove to the Hunt family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, to commit murder, he is seen pushing the little girl’s red pram.
But this scene of familial bliss – a quiet, suburban existence with family trips to buy plants – doesn’t appear to tell the whole story.
In pieces of evidence submitted in court, Louise Hunt hinted at a darker side to the Cliffords’ domestic set-up.
‘His family is a mess,’ she wrote, in a note on her phone which she had compiled after ending her and Kyle’s relationship on June 26.
As one of the reasons behind their break-up, she wrote that he ‘would tell me all the violent acts his brother and dad would do, and when I went to their house he would find it amusing’. Though there is no evidence of such behaviour, it appears Louise had reason to think it was true.
And her description – of being cruelly mocked by him when she visited the Cliffords – contrasts starkly to the picture John Hunt painted of Kyle’s visits to Louise’s home: laughter, films, Sunday lunches, several days spent together at Christmas.
‘What was it about that blissful existence you couldn’t handle?’ he asked, poignantly, in his statement. Whatever Louise experienced of Clifford’s family life, it sounds very different to her own.
Of course, blame for Kyle Clifford’s monstrous acts can rest only with him.
And, in an apparent attempt to absolve them of responsibility, Kyle wrote a note to his parents and siblings, which was found on his phone after his arrest.
‘I know you will all have so many questions and wish you could have done something different to prevent this,’ he said. ‘However, none of you have failed and there is simply nothing any of you could have done.’
That may be true. Still, one cannot help but wonder how it possibly came to this.
Additional reporting: Stephanie Condron
