The final act of Juliana Falcon’s life, in the minutes before she was shot dead by her son, potentially saved dozens of others.

Realising the unthinkable about her child, her intervention was crucial in preventing him from carrying out what could have been one of the worst mass killings ever to happen in the UK.

Triple killer who murdered family jailed for at least 49 years

It was late at night when the 48-year-old interrupted her teenage son, Nicholas Prosper, in his bedroom with a gun.

He was preparing to carry out a massacre at his old primary school the following day.

Police believe Juliana spotted the shotgun and confronted her son about what he was up to, and there was a struggle as he began attacking his mother.

Her intervention changed everything.

Prosper, 18, shot his mother dead with the firearm he had bought illegally less than 24 hours earlier.

Over the next few hours in the family’s eighth-floor flat in Luton, he also shot dead his 13-year-old sister, Giselle, and shot and repeatedly stabbed his 16-year-old brother, Kyle.

The noise of the killings alerted neighbours and meant police would be on their way, so Prosper’s plan had to be brought forward.

“My f****** mum messed it up,” he wrote down while in custody. “My mother is a f****** stupid cow.”

A plan for ‘notoriety’

Prosper left the flat at 5.30am on 13 September last year, hours before the school would open.

He had meticulously researched school massacres, was fascinated by violence and led a dysfunctional life online. He craved notoriety.

He took with him more than 30 shotgun cartridges which, he had calculated, would enable him to kill more children than any other school attack.

When he was arrested, he was on his way to his old primary school to target the youngest children there, aged just four and five.

In a note he later wrote in prison, he confessed he “wanted to cause the biggest [school] massacre in the 21st century and be more famous than Sandy Hook”.

A total of 26 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, USA in 2012. The killer there had shot dead his own mother at home before going to the school.

Prosper’s mother’s actions in Luton, disturbing his plan early, denied him that appalling place in history.

Senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Sam Khanna, of Bedfordshire Police, told Sky News that Prosper’s ambition “was most definitely notoriety… to be known as being responsible for the biggest school shooting on record.”

He had researched in detail every shooting school shooting across the world “within the last 15, 20 years,” he said.

“He’d done his sums, and he wanted to be responsible for the most amount [of deaths]. Killing his family was the first part of it. But then going to a school and killing numerous children, teachers, then finally himself.”

Concerns raised

Prosper was raised in Luton and had attended St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, where he planned to carry out an attack three-quarters of a mile from his home.

Growing up, teachers thought he was a quiet, introverted boy, with a small group of friends who were interested in computers.

When he went to sixth form aged 16, staff noticed he had become more withdrawn.

The school raised concerns that he could be on the autism spectrum, but he refused to see a GP or accept any help.

DCI Khanna said “very little” was known of Prosper, and “there was certainly no Prevent referral”.

Prevent is the UK’s counter-terrorism programme designed to identify and stop young people being radicalised.

Both of Prosper’s parents “had expressed concerns to the school”, the detective said.

The school had shared those concerns, he said, “but because of his unwillingness to engage with mental health professionals, it didn’t go any further”.

A consultant forensic psychiatrist concluded the teenager shows “all the symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)” but that it was undiagnosed at the time of the killings. He said Prosper has “an extreme lack of empathy with others and an extreme lack of remorse”.

Read more:
What is Prevent?

How did Prosper get a gun?

So how was an 18-year-old able to source a shotgun? The answer is by deception.

Prosper convinced a legitimate seller, who had only previously sold to registered firearms dealers, to deliver the weapon to him.

The teenager produced a convincing but fake shotgun certificate and paid the seller £650 in cash and an extra £30 petrol money to bring the gun and 100 shotgun cartridges to Luton the day before the killings.

Bedfordshire Police investigated and concluded the seller would not face criminal charges. He had been duped by Prosper.

DCI Khanna said Prosper “went to great lengths, looking at templates, looking at prototypes, getting police force logos, signatures, and having copies of genuine certificates, so he could produce what he thought would be good enough to enable him to obtain that shotgun – even down to the printing of the paper with watermarks”.

Prosper spent a lot of time online alone in his bedroom posting troubling comments supporting sexual relationships between adults and children and expressing other extreme views.

He had also become obsessed with the Walking Dead video game, and particularly a character called Clementine who is a vulnerable young girl.

Detectives can’t say if there is a direct link between his “avid use” of the game and the school shooting plan, but it is one aspect of a complex and unhealthy life he led online.

DCI Khanna said Prosper “certainly believed that he had some form of relationship with Clementine, albeit she’s a video game character”.

Police also found indecent images of children on Prosper’s devices.

The investigator said his online research of school massacres was persistent and extremely detailed.

“There’s a lot of talk about the dark web, but this was on the surface web and sites where… you can read manifestos of people that have done horrific acts. They shouldn’t be available to be seen.”

After his arrest, Prosper told a nurse at Bedford prison about his school massacre intentions. He had also written two detailed plans of what he intended to do at the primary school he used to attend.

“We didn’t find any evidence that he had harboured any grudges towards that particular school… it was purely around his knowledge of it,” DCI Khanna said.

After killing his family, he left home “with the right amount of cartridges to complete his plan, right down to the final detail”, he added.

“Once in prison, he has openly talked about the fact that that was his plan – to go to the school and kill children and teachers before finally killing himself.”

Prosper had chosen black and yellow clothes for the attack and as he made his way towards the school in Luton he was spotted by police officers on patrol.

They thought he was acting strangely and knew three members of the same family had been shot dead nearby.

“It’s not murder,” he repeatedly told the officers as they handcuffed him by the roadside.

Months later, he pleaded guilty shortly before he was due to stand trial.

Remembering the victims

The dilemma of whether to make his school shooting plan public has been difficult for police and prosecutors.

It is clearly deeply upsetting for the school community and they are mindful that Prosper craved attention and publicity, but it is also about challenging this kind of extreme behaviour online.

DCI Khanna’s investigation team has examined this “deeply troubling” case with the victims at the forefront of their minds.

“The family has really told us what wonderful people they were,” he said.

Juliana, he said, was “a doting mum who did a lot of work for charity and [was] a very keen runner”.

He described Giselle as “so popular amongst friends, a bright girl with an infectious smile”, while Kyle was a “funny young man, really into his sports and again very popular at school with his friends”.

Now, DCI Khanna said, the focus should be on the victims – “and how much they’ll be missed”.

The mother of a young soldier who took her own life says she has “sleepless nights” knowing there are abusers still serving in the Army.

A coroner ruled that the Army’s failure to take action after 19-year-old Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck was sexually assaulted by a more senior soldier and harassed by her line manager contributed to her death at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in 2021.

One of the men has since left the Army but the other continues to serve.

Jaysley Beck’s mother, Leighann McCready, believes he has been protected by the Army.

“Why should they continue to carry on serving when we’re left absolutely heartbroken? We have to deal with this for the rest of our lives and it’s not fair. It’s absolutely not fair that no action’s been taken.”

Reacting to the announcement that claims of sexual harassment in the Army will be removed from the chain of command and instead dealt with by a new, specialist taskforce, Ms McCready said it was a “step in the right direction” but added that “it should have happened a long time ago”.

Last week, a Sky News investigation revealed claims of widespread sexual abuse.

One former soldier described how, after reporting an alleged rape, she discovered the officers dealing with her case had called her a whore.

Ms McCready praised the hundreds of servicewomen who have spoken out since her daughter’s death and urged the Army to root out their abusers.

“This causes me sleepless nights to know that they’re still serving. It’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to think this is still going on.

“All I want now is for action, for real action to be taken and to continue with the change and continue speaking up”.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said “the Army and MoD have undertaken to carefully analyse and assess all of HM Coroner’s findings into the tragic death of Gunner Jaysley-Louise Beck.

“There is no place for bullying, harassment, or discrimination in the military. This government is totally committed to making the reforms that are needed to stamp out inappropriate behaviour and hold people to account.”

On Tuesday the head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, told MPs “I absolutely recognise that we still have work to do. There are some recurring themes which we are addressing. Self-evidently, there continues to be a prevalence of bullying, harassment, and discrimination within our ranks.

“We have to recognise that there are some cultural and structural barriers still.”

Labour was the party that created the welfare state. Now it is intent on cutting it back.

And in Liz Kendall, the government has found a Labour work and pensions secretary clearly entirely comfortable in going harder on benefit cuts than any of her Conservative predecessors since 2015, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

When I ask her about that, she is unrepentant and unfazed by colleagues’ criticisms.

“I am going to be a Labour work and pensions secretary who fixes a broken system,” she said, “who says to people who’ve been written off and denied chances and choices that we believe in them…

“I am cross, because I’ve seen in my own constituency people written off to a life that is not the life they hoped for themselves or their children or their families.

“I want to fix it. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”

This, then, is the moral case for reform that she and the prime minister have talked about in recent weeks.

And on Tuesday, Ms Kendall outlined reforms designed to reduce those claiming the main disability, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to lose personal independence payments (PIP) if they suffer from milder mental health conditions and less severe physical difficulties.

Read more: Further benefit cuts not ruled out

The target is to save £5bn from a disability benefits bill for working-age people set to balloon by over £20bn to £75bn by the end of the decade.

Ask some in Labour and they will privately acknowledge and argue this is but a drop in the ocean, with one insider telling me this week they didn’t think the reforms went far enough.

“I don’t think people have clocked the size of the numbers going on here,” they said. Look at the public finances and you can see why.

While the Labour Party clearly talked about welfare reform in its manifesto, it never signalled it would make these sorts of cuts to the benefits bill. But the environment has changed.

Growth is sluggish, which many businesses – and the opposition – blame on tax rises in the October budget, while the cost of government borrowing is on the rise.

The chancellor now finds herself with a hole in the public finances to the tune of £9.9bn, which she has to fill if she is to fulfil her self-imposed fiscal rule that day-to-day government spending must be funded through tax receipts – not borrowing – by 2029/30.

She was crystal clear to me in our conversation for the Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast that she was not going to loosen her fiscal rules – although many MPs think she should.

She was also clear she wasn’t coming back with more tax rises. Instead it will be spending cuts, and welfare is the first wave, with a spending squeeze across Whitehall departments expected in the Spring Statement.

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The town where almost a third are out of work

Sir Keir Starmer told me last week that his plans to reform the state, with thousands of job cuts already signalled in NHS England and benefit cuts, that there will be “no return to austerity”.

His hope is that reform – be it through technology or efficiency savings – can mean public services are maintained even if rates of spending growth are reduced.

It may not feel like that for those who are at the sharp end of the £5bn of benefit cuts coming down the track.

Liz Kendall would not rule out further cuts to the welfare bill further down the line in an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, which will make many in her party nervous with some MPs and ministers concerned about the motivations of the government in its overhaul of the benefits system.

“The intellectual question hasn’t been answered here: is this about principled reform or is it a cost-saving exercise?,” one cabinet source told me on Tuesday.

“There are some concerns this doesn’t fix the issues around welfare but rather is about finding quick savings.”

Read more from Sky News:
Why Starmer’s backbenchers are deeply uncomfortable
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There will be unease among MPs, unions and charities as the Labour Party moves onto traditional Tory territory with welfare cuts as a strapped Labour government looks for savings. It is uncomfortable terrain.

“I have to say these are Conservative policies that Labour MPs will be voting for,” the former Tory work and pensions secretary Baroness Coffey told me on Tuesday.

“Overall, I think a lot of Labour MPs will be very unhappy about what they heard today [but] I think the Conservatives will support a considerable amount of that because, as I say, a lot of this was Conservative policy. We didn’t have time to do the legislation, unfortunately, towards the end of the parliament.”

Sir Keir Starmer has the majority to bring in these changes, but cutting the benefits of those living with disabilities will be controversial in the Labour movement even if the measures are more popular with the wider public.

As one veteran Labour MP put it to me: “This is one of these issues that come back to bite later.”

The devil will be in the detail, and for now, hundreds of thousands of benefits recipients don’t know if they will still be eligible for the main disability benefit – personal independence payments – in the coming months, with the government yet to outline where the £5bn of savings will be found.

It is an anxious time for those who rely on the welfare state. How long a shadow these reforms will cast over Sir Keir’s domestic agenda is hard to tell – but these reforms look set to become his hardest sell.