00:00:05
-June 2010, Cumbria,
in the northwest of England, the peaceful community
of Whitehaven
00:00:13
was about to be shattered by the murderous rampage
of one man. -This perfectly ordinary
52-year-old taxi driver
00:00:22
had suddenly taken it
into his head to shoot everybody in the area. -Over the course of one day,
00:00:29
Derrick Bird would kill
12 people and injure 11 more. -He picked people off who were
just going about their --
00:00:37
their day-to-day lives, and it seemed to make absolutely
no sense whatsoever. -That was the worst day
of my life.
00:00:45
I wouldn't wish it
on my worst enemy. -The callous killer only stopped
when he'd run out of ammunition,
00:00:52
finally turning the gun
on himself as the police were closing in. -We have a man who had committed
no substantial crime
00:01:01
in his life,
who, in one moment, transformed himself
into a spree serial killer.
00:01:08
-This senseless and horrific
shooting spree of unarmed and innocent victims makes Derrick Bird one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:18
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Whitehaven, northwest England,
on the 2nd of June, 2010, a lone gunman embarked
on a deadly killing spree
00:01:51
that rocked the nation. Shooting many of his victims
at close range, 52-year-old taxi driver
Derrick Bird
00:02:00
even murdered his own brother. -Bird's shooting spree
effectively occupied only about 12 hours.
00:02:09
And the impact
was extraordinary because this was
in the days, of course, of rolling news,
of 24-hour news channels.
00:02:18
As it unfolded and as Bird
became more and more obsessed by killing anybody
he came across,
00:02:25
so it became ever more dramatic. -Most of Bird's victims were
completely random targets.
00:02:31
-People delivering catalogs, people taking
their shopping home, people just going about
their day-to-day business.
00:02:37
And I think it emphasizes to me
how fragile life is, especially when you encounter
somebody like Derrick Bird,
00:02:44
who has nothing to lose. -Derrick Bird killed 12 people,
injured a further 11, and then turned the gun
on himself.
00:02:56
After his death, his family
released a statement to the press
via the local vicar.
00:03:02
-"He was a loving dad and
recently became a grandfather. We would like to say
that we do not know
00:03:09
why our dad committed
these horrific crimes. We are both mortified
by the sad events."
00:03:17
-This killer's story
begins in 1957. Derrick and his twin brother
were born on the 27th of November
in Ennerdale Bridge,
00:03:27
a village a few miles
out of Whitehaven, to a seemingly ordinary family. The twins had an older brother,
00:03:35
and their father worked nearby
for the local council. The twins went to a school
in Whitehaven.
00:03:42
Despite being older
by only five minutes, Derrick seemed to be
in the shadow of his younger
00:03:48
twin brother David. -It's always assumed, isn't it, that twins will
adore each other?
00:03:53
You know, there are many twins
that are like that. But in this particular case,
I don't think they were.
00:03:57
I think they were rather
isolated from one another. David was probably
the more likeable one.
00:04:02
Derrick, the quieter one. He was kind of a bit of a loner. -As the brothers grew up,
00:04:09
the differences between them
became more apparent. -David was his twin brother, but that was where
any resemblance ended, I think.
00:04:18
David was better at sports. He was on the rugby team
at school. Derrick wasn't a particularly
athletic child.
00:04:27
David was cleverer,
he was more handsome, he was more successful,
and many people
00:04:32
have described Derrick
as "living in David's shadow." And this isn't anything unusual.
00:04:38
Many siblings are outshone
by others in their family. But they don't carry the kind of
rage and the kind of resentments
00:04:48
that Derrick Bird did, I think, because that was
what his personality was. He really did catastrophize this
relationship with his brother,
00:04:57
and he blamed him
for so many things. -Despite their differences, the twins shared their father's
passion for hunting game,
00:05:07
and just before
his 17th birthday, Derrick was granted
a shotgun license. -His father was involved
in guns.
00:05:15
In small towns in
the countryside of England, owning weapons is,
especially a shotgun
00:05:21
for hunting, is not unusual. [ Gunshot ] -Bird's passion for guns
continued into adulthood.
00:05:33
After leaving school,
Derrick Bird found work as a carpenter at
Sellafield nuclear power station
00:05:39
near Seascale. Just before he started
his new job, he began dating a woman who was
five years younger than him.
00:05:48
-She was somebody
he met at school, and she was several years
below him, so I think for him,
this was important,
00:05:54
because he was the dominant
figure in the relationship, he was that bit older. They never got married.
They did live together.
00:06:02
-Things seemed to be going well
for the couple. They moved in together in 1978 and had their
first child in 1982.
00:06:12
But in 1990, Bird lost his job
at the nuclear plant after he was caught
stealing wood.
00:06:19
He received a six-month
suspended sentence. In 1994, his partner decided
to leave him.
00:06:28
-It's pretty clear
from early on, she senses something is
slightly off about Derrick Bird.
00:06:36
She never marries him. She leaves him before the birth
of their second child. -So, this was his
first relationship.
00:06:47
This was a relationship
that failed. This was another thing, I think, to add to his collection
of grievances,
00:06:53
of things that other people
have done to him. So this is just adding
to his pity, essentially.
00:07:00
-And if there was a telling
moment in Derrick Bird's emergence into adulthood, it was the failure
of that relationship.
00:07:11
-A few months later,
Bird began dating again. -Derrick Bird formed
a relationship
00:07:17
with another woman. They never lived together. Bird, at that point,
was still, you know,
00:07:22
employed in various odd jobs. -A year later,
Bird became a taxi driver. He finally had
a stable job again,
00:07:31
but his love life
was anything but. His relationship
with his partner was becoming
increasingly volatile.
00:07:39
-Now, they're together
for some years. It's alleged that there was
some domestic abuse.
00:07:44
-The extraordinary nature
of Bird's relationship is demonstrated by the fact
that in January 1998,
00:07:49
the police are called
after she insists that he's head-butted her. But no charges are brought.
00:07:57
-In October 1998, Bird's life
was turned upside down yet again when his father died.
00:08:05
Even though he was still working
as a taxi driver, Bird became his mother's carer,
00:08:11
and he would visit her
every day. The instability of this
double life began to spill into his day job,
and just over a year later,
00:08:20
Bird was arrested for
demanding money with menaces. However, no charges
were ever brought against him.
00:08:28
By now, his partner had
had enough, and in 2000, after six years,
she finally left him.
00:08:35
-She says that Bird became
emotionally detached, wasn't sympathetic,
wasn't compassionate.
00:08:41
I don't think Bird
was capable of compassion. I don't think he felt much in
the way of anything for anybody.
00:08:50
-Life as a taxi driver became
hard for the father of two, and he'd started to get a bad
reputation among the drivers.
00:08:59
-Being a taxi driver in a fairly
isolated seaside town in Cumbria was getting more difficult.
00:09:07
More taxi drivers,
fewer passengers. There was a good deal of rivalry
on the Whitehaven cab rank,
00:09:14
clearly, with some not
particularly pleasant remarks one driver to another. He's not a popular figure
on the Whitehaven rank.
00:09:26
-Bird had a particularly
volatile relationship with a young driver
called Darren Rewcastle.
00:09:32
-Darren, he had a few bust-ups
with Bird, 'cause Bird used to drive
in front of the taxi
00:09:39
before there was readers
put there, and Bird was one
of the worst for that. And one day, he found this sour
milk thrown all over his taxi,
00:09:48
all over the back seat
of the taxi, and that upset him, and he had a good idea
it was Bird that did it,
00:09:56
because Bird had taken
a fare off him. -Sharon Moore, Darren's sister, recalls the hostile relationship
between her brother and Bird.
00:10:09
-I can't say a bad word
about him, because he was me brother. He definitely,
definitely wasn't a bullier.
00:10:18
But most of these
taxi drivers got, "He used to bully Derrick, and he used to do this,
he used to do that."
00:10:25
It was tit-for-tat,
do as bad as each other. -Over the next few years, the rivalry between
the two drives intensified.
00:10:36
-Darren Rewcastle,
he slashed Derrick Bird's tires. There had been a number
of incidents,
00:10:42
but that was, obviously,
the most severe, and it would've been expensive,
because new tires for a taxi
00:10:46
are not a cheap thing to buy. There was a whole sense of it being relatively difficult
to make a living.
00:10:55
-Isolated from the other
taxi drivers, in 2002, Bird was involved in a fight outside a nightclub
in Workington.
00:11:04
His nose was broken, but he withdrew the charges
against the other man. Five years later, aged 49,
Bird was attacked again,
00:11:14
this time whilst he was working. -Derrick Bird was assaulted
by some passengers who'd made off
without paying from his taxi.
00:11:23
It was a serious assault. He had a laceration to the head,
he had broken dentures,
00:11:27
he had a chipped tooth. This was something that he took
very, very personally, This is further fuel
to the fire.
00:11:36
-His first girlfriend
leaves him. His second girlfriend
leaves him. The only good job he ever had
at a nuclear plant,
00:11:43
he loses because
he engages in theft. He has his tires slashed
by other taxi cab drivers,
00:11:50
fares who run out on him,
assault him, one assault being serious enough
that he was hospitalized.
00:11:57
His life was just
on a downward descent. -Bird had been
briefly hospitalized after being attacked
by passengers in his taxi.
00:12:08
The incident had left
Bird anxious. -He actually changed the nature
of how he did his cab work,
00:12:16
when he did his cab work. He became more cautious,
he had nightmares, he obsessed about it
as a repetition compulsion.
00:12:23
Now, those are
all valid symptoms of post-traumatic
stress disorder. I don't doubt that he had it.
00:12:28
What's odd is that the trauma
is relatively minor compared to most things
that cause PTSD.
00:12:35
And what that makes me
think is that before that assault occurred, because of the nature
and stresses of his life,
00:12:42
he was in a state of
such fragility that his fabric just wasn't sufficient
to deal with the next stress.
00:12:47
-Bird was a gun enthusiast and would regularly go
on holidays to Thailand where he would visit
shooting ranges.
00:12:56
He owned several guns,
and in March 2007, he purchased a new
22-caliber rifle. -There's no doubt that he had
a great interest in guns,
00:13:06
which I think had been given
to him by his father. He had a shotgun license
for many years, in 1974.
00:13:14
He had a proper license for
a 22-caliber rifle, complete with a silencer. He had a license to have
quite a lot of ammunition.
00:13:23
-Bird loved shooting. It was very much
a solitary pursuit. He had very little in common
00:13:30
with his fellow taxi drivers
in Whitehaven. In February 2008,
his taxi was vandalized,
00:13:37
and he suspected one of them. -There is often quite a bit
of banter between taxi drivers,
00:13:44
and sometimes
this can turn quite nasty, especially when there
are disputes over fares,
00:13:49
whether somebody has picked up
somebody else's passenger, because this is how these guys
make their living.
00:13:57
But for Derrick Bird, he attaches an awful lot
of significance to this, because he has this permanent
exclusion narrative --
00:14:05
"Everybody is out to get me,
everybody is against me." And I think this
just added to that.
00:14:12
-Money was tight for Bird, and he became increasingly
paranoid about it. -When Derrick Bird's father
had died,
00:14:22
there was an argument
about the will and who was to get
what in the will. Bird felt that his twin brother
and the family's solicitor
00:14:31
were planning to reveal
to the tax authorities, who were examining
Bird's affairs at the time,
00:14:38
that he had
a secret bank account in which there was £60,000. He was convinced that the world,
his brother, his solicitor,
00:14:46
and every other taxi driver
was against him, and then added on top of that, a little fuel
that everyone was against him.
00:14:54
-Bird also discovered
that his father had lent his twin brother David money
before he died.
00:15:01
-Derrick found out
that his father made an unspoken
secret loan to David. Even at the point where he's
the person, you know,
00:15:09
taking over
and being responsible for the welfare of his mother,
David is getting the money.
00:15:15
Feeling disinherited
and believing as he did that his brother
and his accountant
00:15:22
were plotting against him
to get him jailed for tax fraud, were just too much for him.
00:15:28
-He was of the view
that his brother and his solicitor had conspired
against him.
00:15:33
He felt very bitter
about a £25,000 loan that his father had made to
his twin brother back in 1998.
00:15:42
So this is somebody who
really does hang on to grudges. He collects them,
he stores them away.
00:15:47
He doesn't deal with
those issues, with that anger, and it all boils
and boils and boils away.
00:15:54
-He was a man who was
rapidly going nowhere, was finding himself alone. The frustration was simply
too much for him.
00:16:02
-Alienated from everyone
and increasingly annoyed that his twin brother
may have benefited
00:16:08
from his father's death, Derrick Bird had finally
had enough and came to a fateful decision.
00:16:16
Full of rage and armed
with his rifle, in the early hours of June 2nd, he drove to his brother's house
in Lamplugh.
00:16:25
-Derrick Bird arrives in his
brother David's house with his silenced
22-caliber rifle
00:16:36
and confronts him
sometime in the early hours. I can only imagine
that the brother
00:16:40
would've been
utterly bewildered. Suddenly, his brother appears
in the middle of the night,
00:16:45
wakes him up. Bird proceeds,
without any warning, to shoot his brother, not once or twice,
00:16:57
but 11 times in the head
and the body. -This was a really,
really cowardly act. He's caught his brother at the
time when he's most vulnerable.
00:17:09
It wasn't just
an intention to kill, it was an intention
to completely destroy. Shooting somebody 11 times,
that's way more violence
00:17:19
than you need
to get the job done, so I think this does show
the intensity of the resentment
00:17:24
that Bird felt
towards his brother. -For him,
it was a cathartic release. Remember, this isn't just
a brother from
00:17:34
his point-of-view, that cheated
him out of some inheritance, you know, late in life.
00:17:38
This is a brother who
was the person to whom he was compared for his whole
life and compared unfavorably.
00:17:46
So, this was the final act
of justice, from his point-of-view. -Having shot his
twin brother dead,
00:17:54
Derrick Bird then
left David's house and made his way to the home
of 60-year-old Kevin Commons.
00:18:01
-Just after 5:00 that morning,
Derrick Bird drives to the house of his solicitor,
Kevin Commons,
00:18:07
and he hangs around waiting for
him for around about four hours. So, for me, this is
really significant
00:18:13
because it's showing
that Bird has a rage that is not dissipating. I think when most people
are angry
00:18:19
and they don't have an outlet
for that anger, it does fizzle away, and people
calm down, people feel better.
00:18:25
But not Derrick Bird. -Several dog walkers saw Bird
outside Kevin Commons' farmhouse
00:18:33
in the village of Frizington. He waited there
for several hours planning his next deadly move.
00:18:39
-Around about 10:00
that morning, Kevin Commons
drives up his driveway, sees Derrick Bird
blocking him in,
00:18:46
and probably wonders
what on earth is going on. He's not given long to process
that thinking,
00:18:52
until Bird comes out
and shoots him twice. He must be absolutely shocked. You know, what on earth
is he doing?
00:19:01
So he's just basically
trying to survive at this point in time. He hasn't killed him.
00:19:06
So, he stumbles to his feet,
he starts to crawl away to go back towards his house.
00:19:12
-A neighbor heard the gunshots
and saw Kevin Commons trying to flee. -Bird follows him, but replaces
the shotgun with a rifle
00:19:22
and proceeds to shoot him twice
more, killing him on the spot. ♪♪ -Just after 10:00 A.M.,
the concerned neighbors
00:19:36
call the police, who discovered
Kevin's body in his driveway, but Bird was nowhere to be seen.
00:19:43
He'd fled the scene in his car
armed with two weapons, a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun
and a 22-caliber rifle.
00:19:52
-Shotguns and rifles are
very different weapons. A rifle is designed to send
a stable projectile
00:20:00
a long distance. A shotgun is designed
to spread pellets out. A rifle certainly can fire
a small projectile
00:20:10
that can kill you,
but it's short range. The massive pellets can produce
utterly devastating injuries.
00:20:19
With greater range,
less effective, but close up, a shotgun is far more deadly. -Derrick Bird had killed
two innocent men --
00:20:33
his twin brother David, and 60-year-old family solicitor
Kevin Commons. Having fled the scene,
Bird returned to his
00:20:43
home village of Rowrah, and at approximately
10:30 that morning, he decided to go
to his friend's house
00:20:50
to collect another gun
he'd left there. His friend wasn't home,
so Bird couldn't get his gun.
00:21:01
He quickly left and made his way
to Duke Street in Whitehaven, where 43-year-old
Darren Rewcastle
00:21:08
had just started his shift
at the taxi rank. -I used to have
breakfast with him.
00:21:17
But I don't know why,
for some reason, I stayed in bed that morning, and he'd just gone out
when I came downstairs.
00:21:26
If I'd got up when I normally
did to have breakfast with him, he would've gone out later
00:21:30
and this thing
might never have happened. -Darren Rewcastle was strolling
across the road with a coffee
00:21:40
in one hand and a cigarette
in the other, just like it was
any other normal day.
00:21:44
And Derrick Bird
pulls up in his car and calls Darren over to him. He's got that control over him.
00:21:52
He knows what he wants to do
with this victim. He wants Darren
to be facing him.
00:21:57
And when he is,
he shoots him in the face. I think this is a really
significant murder
00:22:06
because he feels slighted
by Darren. He feels that this popular,
affable, likeable man
00:22:13
is somebody
who has turned against him. He's somebody
who has basically turned the other drivers against him,
00:22:19
so he's externalizing
all of that rage. And the fact that he shot him in
the face is really significant,
00:22:25
because somebody's face
is their identity, it's a sense
of their personhood. So it wasn't sufficient
for Bird to kill him.
00:22:34
He wanted to absolutely
obliterate this individual. -Sharon received the devastating
news about her brother's murder
00:22:44
just minutes later. -I got a phone call at 10:35 to say that Darren
had been shot.
00:22:54
It was one of the taxi guys. He was quite close
to our Darren. He just said --
he said, "Sharon,"
00:23:03
he said, "I'm so sorry." He said, uh,
"Darren's been killed." And I just went,
"You're joking, aren't you?"
00:23:12
He went, "No."
He said, "I'm serious." I said, "When was he killed?" He said, uh,
"Couple minutes ago."
00:23:21
And he might as well have hit me
in the stomach with a sledgehammer, because it was
the worst feeling ever.
00:23:34
Ever. I couldn't get the words out. I feel really sick.
I was crying. It was just...
00:23:46
It was as though it was
happening to somebody else. -In utter disbelief,
Sharon called the police.
00:23:55
-And I rang the police,
and I said to them, I said, "Can you tell me if
it's Darren Rewcastle, please?"
00:24:02
And she went, um,
"Well, who's calling, please?" I said, "It's his sister." And she turned around
and she went,
00:24:12
"Well, I don't know. We haven't got everybody's names and this, that,
and the other and..."
00:24:21
So, she says, "I'll ring you
back at half-past 11:00." -With no one to officially
confirm Darren's death,
00:24:28
his family had an agonizing wait
ahead of them. With the reports of another man
being shot dead,
00:24:37
the police deployed every
armed officer in the county to try and stop
the deadly gunman.
00:24:43
-He was literally shooting
at anything he felt like. That's what made it
quite difficult for the police
00:24:51
to stop him at once, because
there was no obvious pattern. -Bird was now on the run,
but he wasn't finished.
00:24:58
Still at the taxi rank,
Bird then fired his gun at two other local taxi drivers.
00:25:04
Donald Reid was shot in the back
and Paul Wilson in the face. Incredibly, both men survived.
00:25:14
-It's no accident that Bird,
who is by now, clearly obsessed with revenge
against his fellow taxi drivers,
00:25:24
that he aimed at their faces. He's not seeking to wound.
He's seeking to disfigure.
00:25:31
-Derrick's Bird's rage goes from
the specific to the general. So he's targeted his brother,
he's targeted his solicitor,
00:25:38
he's targeted the men
at the taxi rank, but after this point, anybody
could fall victim to him.
00:25:44
He is literally driving around
the streets of Cumbria picking off people
that he comes across.
00:25:50
-What I believe happens
then is he loses all control over the aggressive impulse.
00:25:57
It's now just a wild, derelict impulse
seizing a moment to kill. -A local police officer in
Whitehaven heard the shootings
00:26:08
and spotted Bird's silver car
with a shotgun pointing out
of the front passenger window.
00:26:14
As he gave chase, he saw Bird
aim his shotgun at another taxi traveling with a passenger
in the opposite direction.
00:26:22
-He didn't do anything
to avoid capture. He was driving around
killing people. The net result of that,
was within moments,
00:26:29
every member of the people force was on the street
looking for him. So he operated without regard,
00:26:35
the possibility
that he would be caught. -The local policemen stopped to
help the occupants of that taxi.
00:26:42
Driver Terry Kennedy was shot
in the hand and passenger Emma Percival was hit by pellets
in the neck, arm, and side.
00:26:51
Both received significant
injuries, but survived. Another police van took over
the pursuit and confronted Bird,
00:27:01
who'd pulled into a driveway. The officers, however,
were unarmed. -When the police finally did
catch up with Derrick Bird,
00:27:11
he's a very dangerous
individual, at this point in time. He has got nothing left to lose.
00:27:16
So, when he points his gun
at the police officers, they quite wisely back away,
and that gives him
00:27:23
the opportunity
to go on the run again. So, they've come very close
to getting him,
00:27:29
but I think it
was a wise decision to give him a wide berth
at this point in time.
00:27:36
-After Bird threatened them
with a shotgun, it became clear
to the local police they would need help
to apprehend him.
00:27:44
-This is Cumbria. This is not the mean
city streets. You're not expecting
there to be a spree killing
00:27:50
in this part of the world,
so the police were perhaps not as well set up to respond
to this as they could've been.
00:27:57
So, there were some issues
with the radio communications, there were some issues
in passing information
00:28:02
from one service to another. So, I think this spree killing really did take
everybody by surprise.
00:28:09
-By now the shocking news broke
that a deadly gunman was on the loose in Cumbria.
00:28:15
-Stay indoors. He's randomly shooting people
on the street. -With modern news,
you can actually see
00:28:24
these sort of events
evolving in real time. You don't see serial killers
in real time.
00:28:30
But to sit there as a person
and watch as it's unfolding live is just unbelievable, really.
00:28:38
-At 11:00 A.M.,
the body of David Bird was discovered,
and the police realized they now had three people dead
00:28:46
and four people
seriously injured. Helicopters were deployed
to scour the area for the crazed gunman.
00:28:54
But Bird continued
his deadly mission and arrived at the village
of Egremont, where he killed his next
two victims in quick succession,
00:29:03
57-year-old Susan Hughes,
who was out doing her shopping, and 71-year-old
Kenneth Fishburn,
00:29:10
a retired Sellafield worker. -His M.O. was as simple
as can be. You drive around,
you see somebody,
00:29:17
you have the slightest
inclination to kill 'em, you kill 'em,
and if you don't, you kill 'em.
00:29:21
He virtually killed almost
everyone within range of his gun and taxi
as he drove around.
00:29:28
-Bird's next victim
was 65-year-old Isaac Dixon, who was killed in a field
in the village of Carleton.
00:29:37
Between 11:05 A.M.
and 11:10 A.M., he then drove to the village
of Wilton. It was thought he was looking
for members of a diving club
00:29:47
with whom he'd fallen out. Unable to find anyone, he turned
his gun to an elderly couple,
00:29:54
Jennifer and James Jackson. -I suspect he's now become
so dissociated from the world,
00:30:00
he doesn't really know
what he's doing. He knows vaguely that he's got
an end game in his mind,
00:30:05
but there's no predictability. -The police urge the public
to stay indoors whilst they try to track down
the crazed gunman.
00:30:17
Bird then made his way
to Gosforth, where a 31-year-old
part-time farmer and semi-professional
rugby player
00:30:25
was shot dead
as he was working in a field. -He wasn't seeking out people. He was shooting at people
pretty much at random --
00:30:34
passerby, a woman on the way
back from the shops, a man with his dog,
a man in a field.
00:30:40
-Around 11:25 A.M.,
Bird drove to Seascale, where he aimed his gun at 23-year-old estate agent
Jamie Clark,
00:30:49
who, upon being shot at, crashed
his car and tragically died. Minutes later, Bird shot
at 40-year-old Harry Berger,
00:30:59
a pub landlord, who survived,
but lost two fingers. -He's being pursued by
armed response officers,
00:31:07
helicopters,
the whole panoply of a manhunt, and he's literally zigzagging
across western Cumbria,
00:31:16
I mean, it's horrifying to say,
but looking for targets. There is no rhyme
nor reason for that.
00:31:24
The only rhyme or reason is in
the completely distorted reality of the empty, lonely shell
of Derrick Bird.
00:31:33
-At approximately 11:27 A.M., Derrick Bird shot
two victims in Seascale, 64-year-old cyclist
Michael Pike,
00:31:43
and 66-year-old Jane Robinson,
who was just yards away from the house
she shared with her twin sister.
00:31:51
Bird had murdered 12 people
on a frenzied shooting spree and injured seven more.
00:31:58
The police knew who
they were pursuing, but were still unable
to apprehend the 52-year-old taxi driver.
00:32:05
-There were a couple
of occasions, without question, in which Bird might
have been stopped.
00:32:11
At one point,
a police armed response team were pursuing him,
following radio instructions.
00:32:18
When he passes them
in the opposite direction. They do an abrupt U-turn
and follow him,
00:32:22
but then, Bird gets through
some roadworks before they do, they get stuck under a bridge,
he gets away.
00:32:30
-Fleeing police, Bird drove
to Eskdale Valley and opened fire
at six random people.
00:32:37
He then stopped carer
Fiona Moretta and asked her if she was having a nice day
before shooting her in the face.
00:32:45
Incredibly, she survived. -He drove around
until literally he ran out of bullets.
00:32:50
The only thing that stopped him
was running out of bullets. -By this point,
Bird is pretty well aware
00:32:55
that the net
is closing in around him. He then starts to crash
into vehicles. You can imagine by now
his grasp of reality
00:33:04
is distorted,
to put it politely. He bangs into vehicles,
he damages the tires of his taxi,
eventually, so badly
00:33:14
that one deflates completely,
he crashes into a wall. ♪♪ -Bird was now
running out of petrol.
00:33:26
With no ammunition
and his car damaged, he drove to a beauty spot
near Boot called Doctor Bridge.
00:33:33
-He'd run out of
shotgun bullets, and suddenly, he realized that, unlike his hyperbolic fantasies
before this,
00:33:45
life as he knew it
was really over. -At approximately 12:30 P.M.,
police found Bird's car
00:33:53
abandoned with one of
his guns inside. Bird was now on foot armed
with his rifle.
00:33:59
With the public still
at high-risk, the police had now
taken the decision to name Derrick Bird
as their prime suspect,
00:34:07
but there was still
no sign of him. Then, at approximately
1:30 P.M., police officers found
Derrick Bird's body
00:34:17
in a wooded area near Boot. He'd shot himself. -He'd engaged in
the ultimate failure act.
00:34:27
There was no reason for him
to be here anymore. -He's got nothing left to lose
at this point in time.
00:34:33
And spree killers will often
take their own lives, and what this represents
is a way of taking back control,
00:34:41
so they are the ones who are
making the final decision on when it is they die. They don't want to go to prison.
00:34:48
They don't want to have to
face the consequences of their actions,
so they take that very calculated decision
to kill themselves.
00:35:00
-Meanwhile, Sharon was still
waiting anxiously for news on her brother Darren. -So, we waited and we waited.
00:35:10
Half-past 11:00 came and went,
no sign of any phone calls. And I said,
"We'll just go up to Mum's."
00:35:18
Went up to Mum's,
and I walked in, and Mum said to me, she says,
"What do I owe this pleasure?"
00:35:33
And I just said to her,
I says, "Put Sky News on." So, she put the Sky News on, and she just started screaming,
and she went,
00:35:42
"That's our Darren,
that's our Darren." -And then about 6:00,
police came to tell us
00:35:47
it was Darren. He was just left
on the pavement. That's what really got to us. They never covered him,
never put a tent over him.
00:36:01
When the police came, we asked
them about that, and they said, "We haven't got one."
00:36:07
So, that was it. -Sharon realized she had met
her brother's killer before, but could never have known
what was to happen.
00:36:21
-A week before
all that happened, I got in Derrick's taxi. I said to our Darren,
00:36:29
"The taxi driver was
really unsociable, so I think," and he was like,
"Oh, that's just Derrick.
00:36:36
He's harmless." I think that's the puzzling bit
out of it all for me, is when our Darren said,
"Oh, he's harmless."
00:36:48
I always say, "You never know
what goes on in someone's head." -With the news of
the Cumbria shootings
00:37:00
all over the national press,
people were still trying to make sense of why
Derrick Bird did what he did.
00:37:08
-A large number of people that he killed were
literally people whose killing was a punishment for them
being on the public streets.
00:37:17
There is no motivation there, there's no connection there
to anything in his life.
00:37:21
It is really what
some people would call an expressive homicide, a homicide that's taking place
more to give him
00:37:29
cathartic relief than anything
to do with who the victim is and whether or not
they deserve to be punished.
00:37:36
-The Queen paid tribute
to the victims and the then-British
Prime Minister David Cameron,
00:37:42
visited the scene. The small close-knit
community in Cumbria was hit hard by the killings
00:37:50
and wanted to show their support
for the victims. For Darren Rewcastle's family,
it was overwhelming.
00:37:58
-We booked the crematorium
for 150 people, but when we got there was,
I would say,
00:38:06
a couple hundred stood outside. The taxis made a procession
to follow the hearse.
00:38:20
I would say just about every
taxi in the area was there. People lining the streets
as we went past.
00:38:33
♪♪ [ Sighs ] It was heartbreaking. So many people knew him, and so many people liked him.
00:38:53
-It was a huge,
huge amount of people there. They're proud of him. To think how many people
he touched,
00:39:10
and not just in his job, but in general. -The families could now
put their loved ones to rest,
00:39:23
but nothing could explain
Bird's actions. -Well, I'll be honest with you,
I hated him,
00:39:31
because he took somebody
special away from me. Then I'll be like, it's his
family I feel sorry for
00:39:42
because you've destroyed
your own family. And then his lads
were at school, the same school
as my lasses went to.
00:39:57
And he just wrecked
so many lives just because
he couldn't handle his own. You can't be a normal person
00:40:13
and shoot people several times. There's no justification
for it anyway. None whatsoever,
apart from losing the plot.
00:40:31
-This is an individual
who's wrought complete havoc, and he's never going to be
brought to justice
00:40:38
for doing this. -Bird certainly never explained,
what did you do that for? He left no suicide note,
for example, no note of apology,
00:40:51
no suggestion of
what was in his mind when he suddenly decided
to shoot all these people.
00:40:59
Anyone who is prepared
to take lives at random or apparently at random,
for no obvious reason,
00:41:09
without any explanation,
to me, is genuinely evil. -Bird callously aimed his gun
at anyone that stood in his way
00:41:22
or he felt had wronged him. In less than 24 hours,
he murdered 12 innocent people,
00:41:29
including his twin brother,
and injured 11 others. All of this makes Derrick Bird
00:41:35
one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪