Axel Rudakubana seemed, on the face of it, an unthreatening figure: a quiet boy from a God-fearing family, slightly built and small for his age. He showed passion for acting – once even playing Doctor Who in a BBC Children in Need advert, wearing spectacles and an oversized trenchcoat – but friends said he lacked the confidence for the big stage.
He was on the books of a talent agency at the age of 11. But by the end of his schooling last summer he was a virtual recluse.
How this shy son of evangelical Christians was able to carry out a stabbing of such cruelty will be the subject of intense scrutiny after he pleaded guilty on Monday to murdering three young girls and trying to kill 10 others at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport on 29 July.
Despite months of investigation, combing Rudakubana’s digital devices as well as every inch of his family home, detectives are unable to say why he carried out the worst targeted attack on children in Britain since the Dunblane massacre.
Some will be convinced the attack was terrorism even though the authorities remain unable to prove a specific motive.
What is not in doubt, however, is that the nature of the offences – including his attempt to make the deadly poison, ricin, and possessing an al-Qaida handbook – raises questions about what was known about Rudakubana and whether he could have been stopped sooner.
It can now be revealed that Rudakubana, 18, did briefly come to the attention of counter-terrorism officials but was assessed as not posing a risk of supporting terrorism or carrying out acts of violence in support of any cause.
Yet the Guardian has learned that the Cardiff-born teenager, whose Rwandan parents moved to Britain in 2002, had developed a deep and dark interest in extreme violence, spending hours researching genocide and watching graphic videos of murder.
“He was absolutely obsessed with genocides,” said one senior official. “He could name every genocide in history and how many people were killed – Rwanda, Genghis Khan, Hitler. It’s all he wanted to talk about.”
Rudakubana had a closer connection to genocide than most other British youths: his father, Alphonse, is thought to have fought with the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), an armed force that battled the Hutu-dominated regime in Rwanda and eventually brought an end to the mass ethnic killings of 1994.
Alphonse, now 49, is reported to have been an RPA officer, possibly relatively senior, based in neighbouring Uganda, where his family are thought to have fled well before the genocide. One source said Alphonse had acquired significant military experience.
Rudakubana’s family background was a mystery to the vast majority of those who knew him in Southport.
But by 29 July, the day of his attack, local authorities knew enough to view him as a concern.
One official said the teenager, who is autistic, was under the supervision of social services, and local authority workers would insist on a police officer being present at their meetings with him. Neighbours said they saw police cars outside the family’s smart semi-detached home in the village of Banks “half a dozen” times in the weeks before he attacked the Hart Space centre, 5 miles away.
Social workers knew that he had recently left mainstream education after taking a knife into school and, in a separate incident described by sources, threatened teachers and pupils with a hockey stick on which Rudakubana had written their names.
One former schoolfriend described him, simply, as “a ticking timebomb”.
Neighbours on the secluded cul-de-sac where the Rudakubana family lived rarely saw Axel. Some only realised he existed when the world’s media descended on Old School Close in Southport after the attack on 29 July.
Others, however, thought something strange was afoot earlier that day. One neighbour saw the then 17-year-old “mooching around” at 6am. It was memorable because he was rarely seen out alone – and never that early. “I’ve never, ever seen him walking about the estate,” he said. “He never had any friends around.”
“He was a recluse, he wasn’t somebody that would play football on the street or anything like that,” another said. “He just seemed a bit of a loner.” The neighbour had seen Rudakubana outside his house before he left to carry out the attack, but said: “I’ve lived here a long time, and that’s probably only the second time I’ve seen him.”
“It was unusual, very unusual,” he said. “He was pacing up and down.”
Another said the only time he had noticed Rudakubana was when his father would drive him to and from school. “He was quiet. He used to just stand there kicking stones waiting for his dad to come out,” he said.
Shortly before 11am that sunny day, an hour before the stabbings, Rudakubana was caught on doorbell cameras walking up the street, a green hood pulled over his head with his face partially covered by a Covid-style mask.
He moved purposefully towards a nearby social club, which was due to host a children’s drama club later that day. A short walk away, a skate park was filled with youngsters enjoying the start of the school summer holidays.
Rudakubana returned home five minutes later, his left hand hidden inside his green hoodie and his face still concealed behind the mask.
Half an hour later, at 11.23am, he re-emerged from his home. Within minutes, he would be in a taxi, armed with a knife, on the 15-minute drive to the Hart Space, where parents were arriving to pick up their children.
Born in Cardiff, Wales, four years after his parents moved to Britain from Rwanda in the hope of a better life, Rudakubana appears to have enjoyed a happy boisterous childhood along with his older brother – a talented musician and high-achieving mathematician.
“Mum was a stay-at-home mum, dad went to work in a small car like a Fiesta or Polo,” said a former neighbour, who knew the family when they lived in a rental property in Thornhill, in the north of the Welsh capital. “They were a normal family.
“I knew they came from Rwanda, I knew there was a history there but I wasn’t going to pry. They kept themselves to themselves. We chatted over the garden fence at times. I remember their cooking, they brought the smells and tastes of home obviously.”
The neighbour said Axel was quieter than his older brother, who she said was “full of mischief”. The two of them would “run their mum ragged as little boys do”.
“The younger one was quite clingy, clung to mum quite a bit. So initially I thought they were talking about the older one as he was very mischievous. It was a terrible shock. My heart goes out to the parents. They were normal parents,” she said.
“People have asked me was there signs of any violence? No there was not. Was there any sign of arguments? No there was not. Any signs of unhappiness? No there was not. My heart goes out to them.”
By the time he began secondary school, the family of four had moved 200 miles north, to the seaside town of Southport, telling neighbours that Rudakubana’s father had got a job in Liverpool.
Where they might once have found comfort in the Welsh capital’s Rwandan community, there was less familiarity in the windswept holiday resort on the north-west coast.
While others his age were experimenting in the usual teenage ways, with drink and young romance, Rudakubana became a recluse, retreating to his bedroom and developing a dark interest in some of history’s bloodiest episodes.
He was due to start studying for his GCSEs when schools were closed during the Covid pandemic. When they returned in March 2021, the teenager was beginning to live in a self-imposed form of lockdown.
One senior official said he would talk constantly to professionals about genocides, spanning from the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan to more recent atrocities.
One of his particular fascinations was a conflict closer to home: the Rwanda genocide. The United Nations estimates that as many as 1 million people died in just over 100 days of violence that tore apart the east African nation in 1994.
The Tutsi ethnic group made up about 14% of Rwanda’s population at the time but made up the vast majority of the dead.
Rudakubana’s parents – Alphonse and Laetitia Muzayire, 52 – were among the millions of young Rwandans who fled the country after seeing it divided along ethnic lines.
Both of Rudakubana’s parents are Tutsi and well connected to the current ruling party in Rwanda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), sources among exiles in the UK and western Europe say.
Reports differ about Rudakubana’s paternal grandfather, Dr Rudakubana, who some say was a high-ranking official in the administration of President Juvénal Habyarimana, the Hutu president whose death in 1994 when his plane was shot out of the sky triggered the genocide. Others insist that Dr Rudakubana was one of the founder members of the RPF.
The grandfather’s family were from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, but Rudakubana fled with his family to neighbouring Uganda before the genocide. Spurred by successive rounds of communal violence and growing Hutu extremism in Rwanda, many better-off and better-educated Tutsis did the same.
Alphonse is widely thought to have played a role in fighting Rwandan government forces from its bases in Uganda.
Led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan president, the RPF eventually launched a successful military campaign that ended the genocide and allowed it to take power. Alphonse arrived in Britain two years after Kagame became president in 2000, starting what he hoped would be a better – more peaceful – life for his future family.
Rudakubana’s mother is said to have close links to the current Rwandan regime too. Several sources have claimed that Muzayire is related to the RPF’s general secretary, Wellars Gasamagera, one of the regime’s most powerful officials, though this remains unconfirmed.
When they lived in Cardiff, Muzayire had a clerical role at the university’s school of dentistry but she is not believed to have found work in Southport, where they moved in around 2013.
Alphonse worked as a taxi driver while trying to make a success of his fledgling online retail business, selling everything from bags to floor mats, clothes, laptop stands and jewellery.
The family may well have turned to their Christian faith for solace in recent months. Contrary to the online disinformation, fanned by rightwing figures, that Rudakubana was an Islamist extremist, his background is in fact tied to the church.
Although the majority of Rwandans are Catholic, his mother has in recent years found comfort in evangelical Christianism.
She is a fan of the popular US evangelist David Turner, who claims to be able to “heal” chronic illnesses and disabilities “through the power of Christ” and four years ago asked online for his support.
Rudakubana, when on the brink of his teenage years, is believed to have been diagnosed with a form of autism after displaying behavioural issues at school.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when he took his wrong turn but by summer 2024, he had travelled down a very dark path. As he approached his 18th birthday, he hatched plans to inflict harm on a wide scale.
In a sealed container hidden away in his bedroom, police found he had attempted to make the deadly poison ricin. It is not known how much of the toxin he managed to make but even tiny quantities – as little as 0.5mg – can be fatal when inhaled by adults.
Detectives do not believe he had used ricin on 29 July, or at any time before, suggesting he was at the experimental stage of his plans.
But his interest in carrying out some kind of attack was clear: on his computer, police found a pdf document entitled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The al-Qaeda Training Manual”.
The possession of this material elevated Rudakubana’s case to terrorism – warranting a charge under the Terrorism Act 2000 – although no other prohibited extremist material has been found on his devices since. This partly explains why the attack itself has not been declared a terrorist incident, as detectives are unable to point to a clear motive.
One former school friend, who did not want to be named, said he had been shocked by Rudakubana’s “horrific” crimes but felt he was a “ticking timebomb”.
He said: “People know he’s mentally ill. The system know he’s mentally ill. A normal person doesn’t bring a [hockey stick] into school. He’s not a well lad – we know that. If it was my guess, the system know that and he’s a ticking timebomb.”
Shortly after midday on 29 July, a bloodied Rudakubana was arrested by officers armed with stun guns who found him in the Hart Space, a perinatal yoga studio, which by now was surrounded by screaming and terrified parents.
A convoy of armed police arrived at speed on Old School Close barely an hour later.
The Guardian has been told that in the frantic hours that followed, officials were briefed that Rudakubana was “known to police, went in there with a kitchen knife, and had been looking at beheading videos”.
One of those involved in emergency meetings said the teenager was described as “well known for looking at grotesque images and went [to the Hart Space] with the intent to kill a child”.
Nearly six months after a killing rampage that left three young girls dead and countless more scarred, ministers will now be pressed to uncover precisely what was known about Rudakubana at the time and – crucially – if he could have been stopped.
