A list of explosives made by triple killer Valdo Calocane was not disclosed by Nottinghamshire Police until more than three years after the paranoid schizophrenic went on a deadly rampage.
The former mechanical engineering student also searched online for large venues in Nottingham and made a note about the Manchester Arena, a public inquiry into his stabbings heard for the first time on Tuesday.
Calocane killed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, in Nottingham on June 13 2023 before he tried to murder three pedestrians with a van.
The inquiry, which heard evidence from late February to early June, heard the first closing submissions from core participants on Tuesday.
At the start of the closing arguments, chairwoman of the inquiry Deborah Taylor said: “Over the break since we were last here, some evidence has emerged which ought to have been identified by core participants and disclosed earlier.”
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.
Mr Moloney told the hearing: “There was a failure to investigate VC’s (Valdo Calocane’s) historical behaviour and actions.”
He added that “no-one asked VC why he was searching for explosives and large venues because they couldn’t”, referencing the police’s failure to share the information.
Mr Moloney said it was a “significant failure” that psychiatrist Professor Nigel Blackwood, who assessed the killer before his sentencing, was not shown videos of Calocane’s previous violent behaviour, including an assault on a police officer.
The inquiry also heard that further violent assaults by Calocane on colleagues at warehouses were not disclosed to the inquiry team until after the evidence had finished.
Footage of an attack in February 2023, where Calocane can be seen punching a colleague, was shown to the inquiry for the first time on Tuesday.
Ms Langdale said the Nottinghamshire force also recovered a holdall belonging to Calocane from his address in the days after the fatal attacks.
She said it contained notebooks that were assessed by police as not having “evidential value” to the investigation and were not disclosed to the inquiry until June this year.
Ms Langdale said: “This was an oversight by Nottinghamshire Police.”
She said there were three notebooks in the bag, which included a note written by Calocane saying he was a god and “was a tree that guards the key between heaven and hell”.
Ms Langdale said now retired Nottinghamshire Police Detective Superintendent Leigh Sanders said “nothing in the notebooks would have changed his decisions nor, in his opinion, would the contents have affected the investigation or prosecution”.
She said it was “regrettable” that the “more rational contents in the notebooks was not explored in oral evidence … because the inquiry team was not in possession of this material”.
Reacting to the fact that information was not disclosed by police to the inquiry, Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Miss O’Malley-Kumar’s father, told LBC: “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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