Weakling obsessed with the Yorkshire Ripper
KILLER James Fairweather once told classmates: ‘I want to be a murderer.’ A loner who played violent video games and watched pornography, the teenager became increasingly reclusive in adolescence and began fantasising about raping girls at his school and killing boys who mocked him.
The youngster started hearing voices in his head at 14 after bullies teased him with names like ‘Dumbo’ and ‘FA Cup’.
But as his grip on reality loosened, the bespectacled teenager began to believe he was being instructed to kill by the devil and went on a murderous rampage.
Jurors heard how Fairweather, who is autistic and dyslexic, was ‘quiet and shy’ as a youngster who preferred to be with his parents because he found it hard to make friends. He told psychiatrists he did not like big groups and wet the bed until he was eight.
Dr Philip Joseph, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, said the teen told him: ‘I was sitting in the classroom being bullied and all of a sudden I heard voices saying, “Why are you taking this from these people?”
‘As time went by they got louder, more aggressive, saying violent things. I felt they were my friends and I distanced myself from other people. People called me a “freak” and a “weirdo” because I was talking to myself.
‘I thought the voices were coming from the devil. I didn’t mention them to anyone because if I did they told me they would come and get me.’ Dr Simon Hill, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who cared for the teenager in recent months, told the court of an assessment in August 2015 in which he described ‘ the most anti- social violent thoughts’ he had ever heard.
He said the Fairweather talked about voices telling him to set fire to babies and cut their necks off.
Dr Hill also told the court how the boy had said he watched pornographic and violent DVDs before he began hearing voices.
HE said: ‘He watched violent and pornographic films on his computer. He said he watched those films before the voices. ‘But after hearing voices the videos excited him.
‘He admitted being turned on by the thought of serial killers but his excitement increased after he started hearing voices.’
The killer is said to have ‘giggled’ with excitement when talking to a psychiatrist about throwing acid in the face of his headteacher.
He even told doctors he had rape fantasies as recent as three months ago. They included handcuffing and raping women, including female staff and patients on the secure hospital ward he is in.
Jurors heard the fantasies had included ‘beating them in the face with his fists and forcing sex on them from behind’.
Fairweather – who was also interested in cannibalism and Nazism
and had expressed a desire to join far-Right group Combat 18 – also told doctors he had thought about killing his parents and his older sister, who went off to live with their grandfather at the age of 16.
That claim is at odds with the finding of one specialist, who said the teen’s home life seemed rela- tively stable with his father describing him as his ‘best friend’.
Dr Peter Misch, a senior consultant in adolescent psychiatry, said: ‘My assessment, as far as I can work out, the two parents are loving, they are caring, and they have a strong attachment (with their son).’ Recalling the moment he was arrested on May 26 last year, Fairweather admitted he had been out hunting his third victim.
He told psychiatrists: ‘I was in the mood to kill someone. The devil wanted me to kill.’ He claimed he wanted to kill ‘ soon’, but decided to keep his ‘ head down’ because police had interviewed him following the discovery of his second victim. Yesterday his uncle Patrick Dunne described his nephew as a ‘gentleman’ who had gone on a downward spiral following cruel taunts at school.
He said: ‘He was a loner at school. He found it hard to make friends.
‘He would not be able to communicate with other people that he did not know. He just does not have those skills.
‘He was bullied badly at school, from the glasses to being a geek. He had it rough. Going through school he was called “four eyes”. Kids are the cruellest.’
At the age of six, Fairweather was described in a school report as ‘quiet and well-behaved’ and ‘kind [and] sensitive to the needs of others’. But just six years later, in secondary school, he had became violent – kicking, punching and head-butting other students.
One teacher wrote in a report when he was aged 11: ‘He is basically a thug.’ His behaviour became more extreme when his grandmother, who he was close to, died of cancer in April 2012.
Mr Dunne said the darts-mad youngster, who had previously won praise from his school for his 100 per cent attendance record, also changed beyond recognition after he was robbed at knifepoint around the same time.
He said: ‘It scared him so much he would not go out of the house without a knife.’ He also started playing violent video games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto at around the age of 13.
Paul Woollard, the former partner of Fairweather’s older sister, 20, claims she told him her brother was abusive. The 39-year-old said: ‘[She] told me he [her brother] once got the PlayStation wire, put it round her throat and pulled it.
‘She said he had a short fuse and used to be very abusive towards their mum all the time.
‘Their mother would say, “[He] is always so angry, shouting and screaming at me.” And she’d be very upset.’