Parish council chief and a pantry full of 500 guns
Rocket launcher and anti-tank missile in UK’s biggest haul
TO the outside world, he was a respectable parish council chairman who had never been in trouble with the police.
But in a secret room behind his pantry wall at home, James Arnold was quietly amassing the biggest arsenal of illegal weapons found in Britain.
It included 177 rifles, 136 handguns, 88 shotguns, 38 machine guns and 24 other weapons such as flare guns and even a rocket launcher – enough to arm nine coach-loads of terrorists. He also had 200,000 rounds of ammunition, an antitank missile and bomb detonators.
Police said the 49-year-old father of one ‘saw himself as a public-spirited individual keeping the guns safe so they did not fall into the hands of criminals’.
The 463 guns were found in April 2014 but Arnold, a crane operator and chairman of Wyverstone Parish Council in Suffolk, died from pancreatic cancer in Bel- marsh prison in London three months later, awaiting trial on firearms charges.
Full details of the haul were disclosed by police yesterday after firearms dealer Anthony Buckland, 65, of Norfolk, was jailed for six years for fraud and supplying prohibited guns including a Colt revolver found in Arnold’s possession.
Arnold belonged to several gun clubs but police saw no sign of illegal weapons when they carried out routine inspections over 20 years to ensure his 17 licensed guns were kept safely.
Police found no evidence to suggest Arnold, who was parish council chairman for seven years, had sold guns to criminals or terrorists or that he had any plans to carry out a ‘lone wolf’ attack.
‘The best explanation is that he was a hoarder who collected these weapons in the way some people collect stamps,’ said Chief Supt David Skevington.
Arnold’s arsenal came to light after his wife Lyn, 47, and a girl who cannot be named for legal reasons told police he had assaulted them. Officers found around 60 guns strewn around his home and Arnold, who had been obsessed with guns since he was 11, was arrested.
A team of 49 police officers then spent more than a month uncovering his full hoard, kept both in the secret room in an extension he had built and under his bedroom floorboards.
Mrs Arnold, who still lives in the house, said: ‘It has been a horrible process. I want to put it all behind me.’