‘A control freak with a terrible temper’: James Desborough convicted of triple murder

James Desborough. Police found notes suggesting he may kill again and planned to change his appearance before fleeing the UK. Photograph: Facebook View image in fullscreen James Desborough. Police found notes suggesting he may kill again and planned to change his appearance before fleeing the UK. Photograph: Facebook ‘A control freak with a terrible temper’: murderer James Desborough convicted of two further killings Man already serving life for killing his cellmate while awaiting trial also murdered and dismembered his friends Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman On a spring day last year, James Desborough marched up to Cornwall’s county hall in Truro and began bombarding the offices with dozens of eggs stolen from a supermarket. It was a drug and drink-addled protest at his plight – homeless, jobless and generally angry at the world. He expected to be arrested and messaged a friend: “If I’m going to get nicked, might as well round the charges up.” He certainly did that. In the weeks and months after the egg incident, Desborough committed three murders. He killed two vulnerable friends, Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman, whose dismembered and burnt bodies were found in woodland close to a shack where he sometimes lived off-grid in south Cornwall. View image in fullscreen Claudio Aquilino, who was vulnerable and subjected to ‘cuckooing’ in the months before his death. Photograph: Devon and Cornwall police/PA Then while awaiting trial, he murdered Steven Kempster, his cellmate in Exeter prison , strangling him to death because he was annoyed with some of his habits. Desborough, 40, is already serving a life sentence for the prison killing. After a jury at Winchester crown court convicted him of murdering his two friends, he may never be released, putting him on a par with serial killers such as Rose West who are expected to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Acquaintances have said Desborough was a control freak with a terrible temper – he has an old conviction for GBH – and was furious at what he saw as his bad luck in life. A civil engineer by profession and a father, he had fallen on hard times. Quite what tipped him over into an explosion of violence is unclear. He used Aquilino’s and Coleman’s bank cards after he killed them, but police do not believe it was a simple matter of theft. View image in fullscreen Daniel Coleman, who struggled with alcohol abuse and PTSD before Desborough murdered him. Photograph: Devon & Cornwall police/PA The prosecutor in his trial, Ahmed Hossain KC, put it to Desborough that he might have killed them because he considered them worthless, deserving to die because of their troubled lifestyle and because they were “dinlos” – a local slang term for fools. Had he simply got annoyed with them and snapped? “I thought they were OK,” he replied in court. “They were good friends.” The trial has certainly put the focus on a different Cornwall to the one most holidaymakers to the county love. It highlighted not su