Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘Every door we went through – It was a real house of horrors’
Speaks with the senior detective who led the inquiry into Reed Wischhusen, a seemingly normal Lidl warehouse worker with a chilling secret
POLICE were confronted by a “real house of horrors” in a rural village near Weston-superMare, where Reed Wischhusen had suddenly snapped and ran at police with a gun.
As they investigated the scene, they realised just what a nightmare scenario they had potentially prevented.
Because, had the police not knocked on his door that Monday morning in late November, the 32-year-old’s distinctive name could well be now spoken alongside the likes of Michael Ryan, Thomas Hamilton and Raoul Moat.
Wischhusen was certainly fascinated by those twisted murderers, who had gone on their own armed rampages of killing and slaughter.
And, as police discovered, Wischhusen had recorded his own plan to do something disturbingly similar – although he claimed in court that it had all just been a “fantasy”. His plot, which was explained in detail to a jury at Bristol Crown Court this month, thankfully had a different ending.
When DCI Simon Dewfall first set foot in Wischhusen’s home in the little village of Wick St Lawrence, he had no idea what he was going to uncover. What happened that morning was already shocking enough – police officers had attended the address to check out why a man, who worked at the nearby Lidl distribution warehouse and was the primary carer for his father, who was suffering from dementia, was buying
blank ammunition online. Within just a few minutes, Wischhusen went upstairs saying he needed to use the bathroom, tried to shoot himself in the head, then ran back downstairs pointing that gun at police, before he was shot three times by those police officers.
As DCI Dewfall walked into the property, Wischhusen was already in the hospital – where he would remain for four months. His father was being cared for, the shocked neighbours were beginning weeks of disruption and the senior police chief and his team had to piece together what on earth was going on.
“The scene that we were faced with was one of the most difficult that I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said.
“It took us weeks to go through that address. Every door we went through, every item we turned over – it was a house of horrors, basically.
“We found stuff that was really concerning – chemicals, what appeared to be explosives, firearms, ammunition – so we needed the military to come and help us make some of those items safe. We needed to get a range of experts, explosives and ballistics experts, to come to the scene to make it safe for the local community,” he added.
There were two strands to the investigation. Firstly amassing, collecting and collating everything Wischhusen actually had there, in terms of firearms and explosives. The second was trying to work out why he had it in the first place – just what was he intending to do with all this dangerous firepower? The answer, as it often does, came from his computer. And it chilled the detectives to the core.
”Then we uncovered his digital devices,” explained DCI Dewfall.
“On there we found a document and a diary that were frankly chilling. On there, he spelled out the grievances he had with a number of people, both school friends, teachers, members of Avon and Somerset police who he felt had wronged him in life, and he spelled out a plan to attack and kill using firearms and explosives that he built and manufactured himself,” he added.
An early fear was that Wischhusen had been radicalised online to follow some sort of extremist ideology, and that he was, in effect, a terrorist waiting to become active. That was investigated thoroughly but ruled out.
“We obviously, in the initial phase of the investigation, sought to understand whether there was a wider threat from anybody else. Whether this was a terrorism issue. Was this a domestic extremist? But all that was bottomed out quite thoroughly,” said DCI Dewfall.
“This was someone who was acting on their own.”
Wischhusen had a troubled early life, and it was one he couldn’t escape from. He held grudges and kept them so they took over his life. He had applied – twice – for a shotgun licence but, with the police’s systems working as they should, he was turned down. So those officers, and the police in general, went onto his hit list.
This is something that has caused some alarm, clearly – the photograph of him in the police uniform holding the firearm. Again, it is one of the challenges we face with the items you can buy freely online
DCI DEWFALL
“The only time he came to our attention was when he applied for a shotgun certificate, which he was refused on a couple of occasions,” DCI Dewfall explained.
“That was the centre of his grievance that he felt that was unjust, and he felt wronged by the licensing staff who had declined him a shotgun licence. I think it shows the system works. It was (refused) for a whole range of reasons going back to some of the behaviours he’d displayed at school, and some of the concerns the licensing officers had – obviously they do quite a robust set of inquiries before making a decision and it appears they got the decision right,” he added.
So those licensing officers, and Avon and Somerset police in general, joined a list of other people who, throughout his life, he felt had wronged him. Some of those dated back to primary school, some 25 years or so earlier. Perhaps the saddest part is that when the people on that list were told about it, some couldn’t even remember him from that long ago.
DCI Dewfall and his team had the job of informing the people on Wischhusen’s hit list, and asking them about it.
“It was obviously difficult,” he said. “A lot of these people hadn’t seen Mr Wischhusen for years and some of them couldn’t really remember him or really understand why he wanted to cause them some harm.
“Others were less surprised, they remembered issues at school between them and him, so they were still shocked and horrified about
what he was planning to do to them, but not surprised that he felt there was some old school grievance between them. So it was a range of reactions really,” he explained.
Wischhusen’s plan of intent, written out clearly, went much further than just a list of targets. He had planned out in quite some detail who he was going to target, in what order, and how.
Had police not knocked on his door that morning, in a relatively short amount of time, Wischhusen would have had a list, a plan and a pistol, a machine gun, a large amount of ammunition and explosives. He also had a police uniform, complete with the kind of protective vest worn by armed officers. He would have started by visiting a few old classmates, before going to his old primary school in Weston-super-Mare, where he had written he intended to open fire and set off explosives. And then, his intention would have been to go to the Avon and Somerset police headquarters at Portishead, presumably for some kind of final showdown.
DCI Dewfall and Avon and Somerset police are today at pains to point out that it is highly unlikely Wischhusen would have got very far into his plan – armed response units and their procedures for that kind of situation would have kicked in and, hopefully, a massive loss of life would have been averted.
According to the DCI, Wischhusen told police as he recovered from his injuries and was interviewed – and again in court – that he had been taking the pistol he’d converted to work with him for five months, hidden in a coat pocket.
The machine gun he’d been working on was, according to the 32-year-old, “a weekend away from completion”. He had perfected the art of converting blank ammunition into live ammunition, and had the capability, equipment and expertise to make hundreds or thousands of rounds.
“No, there’s no indication of when,” DCI Dewfall paused, as he answered the question he’s contemplated a lot in the 11 months since that day in November 2022.
“He was carrying the firearm with him in his jacket pocket, we know that. That firearm was loaded, he was taking it with him to work for five months. His machine gun, to quote him, was a weekend away from completion, so yes...who knows?
“That is the unanswered question in this case. If we follow what Mr Wischhusen said he was going to do, he was going to kill those people he’d identified as having a grievance with. He was going to attend a school in Weston-super-Mare, discharge his firearm there and set off some explosives and then he was going to the police headquarters in Portishead, and do the same thing there.”
Perhaps the most chilling part of the investigation for DCI Dewfall is just how comparatively easy it was for Wischhusen to get as far as he did. The police systems did work, in that one of his purchases of blank ammunition was flagged to officers who did then go and knock on his door. But by then, he’d already done a lot of work.
“These are the challenges that we face in the modern police investigation,” he said.
“The internet creates opportunities to view, download, purchase a lot of stuff. It takes a lot of determination, it takes a lot of money, knowledge and skill to do what he was doing. In this case, the system has worked, thankfully, and the intelligence led us to knock on his door on November 28 and we prevented him from doing what he was doing,” he added.
Everything Wischhusen bought – the manuals, the hardware, the ammunition – was all from a well-known online retailer. Even the replica police uniform and body armour.
“This is something that has caused some alarm, clearly – the photograph of him in the police uniform holding the firearm,” said DCI Dewfall.
“Again, it is one of the challenges we face with the items you can buy freely online. We have reflected on what we do internally, and I’m reassured by our internal processes that when officers leave or retire, we’ve got an audit process for the uniforms to be counted back in.
“These are replica items that you can buy online, and it’s one of the challenges we face. What we need to make sure is that our staff and our buildings are safe and constantly review our own security processes, to prevent someone who has bought some uniform on eBay running into one of our buildings,” he added.
Overall, it’s a case unlike any this senior police officer has ever faced.
“Most people will have some angst – it’s human isn’t it, that we don’t get on with everybody and we’ve got some grievances throughout our lives?” DCI Dewfall contemplated.
“But with this individual, this is not only someone who has got those issues, he’s gone on to document those, with a revenge document detailing a plan of how he’s going to exact his revenge, he’s downloaded documents and manuals, he’s followed them, he’s collected the material to build and manufacture firearms, ammunitions, explosives, he’s actually built himself a machine gun, converted a pistol to a viable firearm, manufactured ammunition and had the capability to manufacture thousands of rounds, so he has these weapons and he’s someone who is very dangerous.”