Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane ‘must never be released just like Ian Brady’

The Nottingham killer must never be released just like Ian Brady, his victims’ families have said after pleading with judges to jail him for life.

Paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane was given an indefinite hospital order in January after admitting the manslaughter of students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and bus driver Ian Coates.

Prosecutors accepted the 32-year-old’s not guilty pleas to murder charges at his sentencing hearing in January after psychiatrists gave evidence stating he was in the grip of psychosis at the time.

Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal in February, with lawyers telling a hearing on Wednesday that it was “unduly lenient”.

Emma Webber, Barnaby’s mother, said they did not expect his sentence to be changed.

She said what the families now wanted was to ensure Calocane became one of only a small number of people sentenced to hospital orders who were never released.

She said statistics showed 98 per cent of those subjected to hospital orders were freed within 20 years. One of the few not to be released was Ian Brady.

Serial killer Brady, who carried out the Moors Murders in the 1960s in Bradford, was diagnosed as a psychopath in 1985 and sent to Ashworth high-security hospital, where Calocane is now being held.

In 2013, he lost a legal challenge he launched to be moved back into the prison population, with judges ruling he had to stay in hospital to receive treatment. He died in hospital aged 79 in 2017.

Mrs Webber added: “We have a lifetime, and our children have a lifetime of having to make him the next Ian Brady to ensure he doesn’t come out.”

If Calocane’s hospital treatment is successful, the Ministry of Justice or a mental health tribunal would approve any potential discharge.

Once discharged, he would be under further restrictions in the community to protect the public, under section 4.

The families of the victims attended Wednesday’s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice while Calocane appeared via video link from Ashworth Hospital.

Calocane, wearing a hooded jumper and sitting in a leather chair, remained emotionless throughout the hearing as details of his crimes were read out.

He fatally stabbed the 19-year-old university students as they walked home from a night out in the early hours of June 13 last year in what prosecutors described as an “uncompromisingly brutal” attack.

He then went on to stab Mr Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, 15 times and stole his van which he used to knock down three pedestrians.

Deanna Heer KC said Calocane should be given a life sentence as part of a “hybrid” order, where he would be treated in hospital initially, before serving the remainder of his sentence in prison.

Calocane’s barrister, Peter Joyce KC, insisted his client’s mental health problems were not of his own making.

Calocane declined to give toxicology samples following his arrest and police were criticised by the victims’ families for not taking them.

Mr Joyce said Calocane had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia since 2019 and was formally diagnosed in 2020.

“There is no concoction here at all,” he said, adding: “He was stricken by this dreadful condition through absolutely no fault of his own.

“He didn’t cause it to happen to him by taking drugs. He didn’t cause it to happen to him by his behaviour. He didn’t cause it to happen to him by taking alcohol.”

Mr Joyce said that psychiatrists who had assessed Calocane since he had been in hospital reported he was still hearing voices he believed were “controlling him”.

He added: “Those voices are gloating at the trouble they got him into here, that they got him into in Nottingham.

“They are pleased with the effect they had on him.”

He said that if Calocane was sentenced to a hybrid order, and went to prison, he would be a risk to the prisoners and also his treatment would not be managed as effectively as it would in hospital.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Edis and Mr Justice Garnham said they would give their judgment at a later date.

In a written statement on behalf of all the families and shared with the press, Mrs Webber raised concerns that the decision to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal had been made to “appease the public”.

She added: “Having met with the AG’s legal team and our own adviser, it became clear to us that they do not believe in their own case and are pursuing this referral with absolutely no conviction.

“We fear that she has done so merely to appease the public, for the optics of showing them that she is making some attempt to make up for what happened following this murderous crime, and to pay mere lip service to us.”