Nottinghamshire Police withheld information about Valdo Calocane’s research into explosives, leading to fury from the families of his victims.
During closing submissions in the public inquiry into the attacks, it emerged for the first time the force had not disclosed information about Calocane to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), psychiatric experts or to the inquiry team.
Calocane killed first-year students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, before fatally stabbing caretaker Ian Coates, 65, and trying to murder three pedestrians with a van in Nottingham on June 13, 2023.
He was sentenced in January 2024 to an indefinite hospital order after his guilty plea to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility was accepted by the prosecution.
Speaking after the hearing, Mr Webber’s mother Emma told reporters: “I’m heartbroken and just feel just like a shell of myself, because just when you think all of the revelations and all of the horrors have been revealed, more and more comes.
“To see the stuff of that monster’s penmanship, of his bomb recipes, and thoughts and processes, and how none of that has been properly investigated, it’s so shameful and it’s so heartbreaking.”
Mrs Webber said the judge who sentenced Calocane “did not hear all that he should have heard”.
She added: “The investigation, the prosecution, was flawed, they were cover-ups. This is an individual who knew what he was doing.”
The inquiry also heard how Calocane had researched large venues in Nottingham.
Miss O’Malley-Kumar’s father Dr Sanjoy Kumar said: “This man [Calocane] was plotting a Nottingham bombing.
“He had maps of Nottingham venues, where your children could have been, where people in Nottingham could even have been today and would be today.
“He had a recipe for bombs and making pipe bombs. This man could have killed three or 400 people in one day.
“But this was not considered during the hearing. To think that none of this evidence was used and just shimmied away”
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The inquiry, which heard evidence from late February to early June, heard the first closing submissions from core participants yesterday, Tuesday.
Counsel to the inquiry Rachel Langdale KC said Nottinghamshire Police found documents created by Calocane in a bin at his former property in Burford Road in Nottingham, which was not provided to the inquiry team until July of this year.
He wrote bullet points on one page about explosives under the heading “thoughts”, including TNT and nitrate fertiliser.
Ms Langdale said: “This piece of paper listing thoughts about a number of explosives was not identified or taken into account at the time.”
She added that it had not been made available by police to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or to psychiatric experts.
In his closing speech, Tim Moloney KC, who represents the bereaved families, said a note made by Calocane on one of the sheets of paper appears to say “Manchester Arena”.
He also said the killer searched online for large venues in Nottingham, and had bookmarks on his web browser for the Albert Hall Conference Centre in the city and the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall.
Dr Kumar said the police investigation is still incomplete and families want answers about where Calocane got his weapons.
He continued: “If you’re going to be transparent about this investigation, you need to get this investigation right. This investigation has not uncovered everything.
“This is no ending for us. Again, I stress that this cannot happen in our country again and that is our fight.”
Speaking about the remainder of closing submissions to be heard on Wednesday, Mrs Webber said: “We’ve read them, we’re horrified with them, we’re disgusted by them. Let’s see if they still bring to the stand tomorrow their excuses, their evasions and their defensiveness.”
Dr Kumar added: “Since we lost Grace, it has been one shock after another, one failing after another.
“I cannot get my head around how much has been kept from us, even the last day of summation.
“We’ve got people telling us that Valdo Calocane was planning to possibly bomb Nottingham. He was looking at venues and he was looking at pipe bombs.”
The closing submissions continue.
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