James Desborough was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison after murdering and dismembering two friends and strangling a third man while awaiting trial. The judge described the case as exceptionally serious and ordered a rare whole-life sentence.
Desborough targeted vulnerable individuals he considered worthless and hid body parts in Cornwall. Police are reviewing other deaths linked to the same homeless shelter, but currently see no connection to Desborough.
A triple killer who murdered and dismembered the bodies of two of his friends before strangling a third man to death in prison while awaiting trial has been told he will spent the rest of his life behind bars.
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Mr Justice Saini, who sentenced James Desborough, 40, at Winchester crown court, said the circumstances of the case were unique.
Handing Desborough a rare whole-life order, he said the killer was a highly dangerous person who had considered his victims “worthless”.
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The judge said Desborough killed his two friends because they were vulnerable, homeless, physically slight individuals who he considered would not necessarily be missed given their chaotic personal lives.
“I also find you did not consider them to be worthy of respect as humans,” the judge said. Saini added that a whole-life order was a “last resort”, used only when the seriousness of a case was “exceptionally high”.
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Devon and Cornwall police have revealed they are reviewing the deaths of four people who were living in a homeless shelter at the same time as Desborough and his two victims.
Det Supt Rachael Bentley, the head of the major crime investigation team, said at this stage the force did not believe Desborough had killed any of the four, “but it’s an ongoing investigation.”
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Desborough killed Claudio Aquilino, 57, and Daniel Coleman, 43, cut up their bodies and hid them in woodland close to a shack where he sometimes lived off-grid in south Cornwall.
While in Exeter prison before his trial he murdered his cellmate, Steven Kempster, 65, apparently because his snoring annoyed him.
During the sentencing hearing, emotional victim statements were read out that made clear the men who were killed were loved and did have worthwhile lives.
Coleman’s 14-year-old daughter said: “I love him. I was a daddy’s girl; now I can’t be. It hurts to see I’ll never see him smile again.” She said it terrified her to think her father would have been frightened when he was killed and told Desborough he was a “miscreant killer”.
Aquilino’s family said he had been a talented artist and a good cook, although addiction problems had made his life very difficult.
Sean Brunton KC, for Desborough, said he had been in trouble only once before, 20 years before the murders.
The barrister said Desborough was “highly intelligent” and as a younger man had had great potential and found some success. In court he was polite and easy to deal with.
Brunton said it was not possible to say if the “bleak events” had been brought on by drink and drugs or because Desborough had wrongly perceived the men he killed had nothing to live for.
More than 700 officers and scientists were involved in the 175-day search of the woods, with Devon and Cornwall police drawing on resources from five other forces. The weather was very hot and the nature of the terrain jungle-like and boggy. Officers sometimes had to wade through water up to their chests as they searched.
The force said they had even diverted a stream to enable the systematic sieving of 300 metres of its bed, which they said was a first. They discovered 1,900 burned bone fragments from the body of Aquilino and the remains of Coleman.
Aquilino and Coleman, who suffered from long-term addictions, had previously lived with Desborough at a homeless hostel in the Cornish surfing hotspot of Newquay.
Desborough used the men’s money to buy drugs and alcohol after their deaths.
Desborough told a forensic biologist who was searching the woods that he had “particularly enjoyed the dismemberment scenes” in the television serial killer series Dexter.
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