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A teenager has pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in a “meticulously planned” knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in north-west England in July last year.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, admitted to the attack in Southport at the opening of his trial. Not guilty pleas had previously been entered on Rudakubana’s behalf after he refused to speak at an earlier hearing, and he had been due to stand trial for several weeks.
He also pleaded guilty to possessing an al-Qaeda training manual and of producing the deadly poison ricin, as well as 10 charges of attempted murder.
Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed in the stabbings, which led to national outrage and sparked some of the worst rioting in the UK in decades.
Speaking outside Liverpool Crown Court after Monday’s conviction, prosecutor Ursula Doyle called the attack a “meticulously planned rampage”.
She said Rudakubana was “a young man with a sickening and sustained interest in death and violence” who “showed no signs of remorse”.
The conviction is likely to raise questions about the role of local agencies and the security services in monitoring Rudakubana’s previous behaviour, including any involvement of the government’s counter-extremism Prevent programme.
The security services have so far refused to confirm or deny whether he was known to them or on any watchlist, on the basis that the killings had not been motivated by terrorism.
Sir Keir Starmer on Monday said there were “grave questions to answer as to how the state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls” and vowed to “leave no stone unturned” in finding answers.
He added: “The news that the vile and sick Southport killer will be convicted is welcome.”
Further details of the teenager’s past behaviour may emerge at his sentencing on Thursday.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said a “complete account” was needed of “who in government knew what and when”.
Following sentencing, she said, there would be “many important questions the authorities will need to answer about the handling of this case and the flow of information”.
Rudakubana refused to confirm his name at the start of his trial on Monday, but not long into the proceedings he broke his silence and changed his pleas on all 16 charges.
The charges included possession of an electronic document titled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual.
Ricin was found during police searches of his home in Banks, Lancashire, alongside the training manual.
Despite the discovery of the document, the authorities have not deemed the killings to be a terrorist attack.
Mr Justice Goose, the trial judge, told Rudakubana that he faced life imprisonment. Survivors and relatives of the victims were not in court to hear him plead guilty, as they had been expecting the trial to start in earnest on Tuesday.
Riots erupted across the country in July after reports circulated online falsely identifying the perpetrator as an illegal immigrant or asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the country by boat.
Far-right influencers and conspiracy theorists exploited public horror at the knife attack to whip up tensions and stoke anti-immigrant sentiment.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff to parents who had emigrated from Rwanda. He was 17 at the time of the attack. Reporting restrictions originally prevented him from being named, but a judge lifted them to prevent the spread of misinformation.
For more than a week after the killings, sporadic violence continued to break out in towns and cities across England, including in Southport itself.
A hundred miles away in Rotherham, a mob set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers, barricading the windows and chanting racist abuse. In several areas, police officers were injured in the resulting violence.
Dozens of rioters have since been convicted of public order offences, some of them racially aggravated and some carried out online.
Rudakubana was initially charged with murder and attempted murder. It was only three months after the attack — following what Merseyside Police said was a “lengthy and complex investigation” — that he was charged with possession of ricin and the document.
Merseyside’s chief constable Serena Kennedy said at the time that “motivation” would need to be established for a matter to be declared a terrorist incident.
Southport’s Labour MP Patrick Hurley told the BBC that there was “surprise and shock” locally at Rudakubana’s sudden guilty plea on Monday.
The town, and particularly those families close to the case, had been “bracing” themselves for several weeks of trial, he said.
“I’m very pleased . . . they’re not going to be put through that mental torture now,” he added.