The FBI and the US Department of Justice have joined the investigation into the Southport killer, Axel Rudakubana, and are reported to be helping UK police recover his deleted internet search history.
Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January for murdering three young girls and attempting to murder eight others in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July last year.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Merseyside police said in a joint statement: “The Southport attack has devastated the lives of the victims, their families and the wider community. A specialist liaison CPS prosecutor in the United States has been working with international partners to obtain material which may be relevant. We are thankful to the US Department of Justice and the FBI for their ongoing assistance, and the importance which they have placed upon our request.”
According to reports, investigators hope to recover deleted searches from Rudakubana’s Google and Microsoft accounts within weeks.
Rudakubana fatally stabbed Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a dance class at the Hart Space in Southport just after 11am on 29 July last year.
Police discovered a number of devices during a search of Rudakubana’s home in Banks, Lancashire, after the attack, but he had deleted his internet history 10 minutes before he left home to carry out the killings.
A search on X made minutes before he left home, about the stabbing of Mar Mari Emmanuel, a bishop who was injured in a terrorist knife attack on an Australian church in April last year, was the only thing that remained, police have said.
It is believed the data could hold vital clues about why he targeted the dance class for young girls five miles from his home. Officers believe he must have seen the class advertised, but they have been unable to prove their theory.
He bought the 20cm (8in) kitchen knife used in the attack on Amazon days after the class was advertised on 7 July.
To uncover what Rudakubana had been searching for in the days and months before the attack, detectives said they had to go through Microsoft, which owns the search engine Bing, and Google, which owns the browser Chrome. Both are US companies.
The senior investigating officer, DCI Jason Pye, previously said the process of retrieving the information was ongoing and that it could take years.
He said that if the incident had been classed as a terrorist attack, the process would be quicker. The murders were not declared terrorism because police have been unable to find any clear evidence that they were carried out to advance any political, religious or ideological cause.
“Our case has always been, based on the evidence, it’s not counter-terrorism. There is nothing in terms of ideology. So I couldn’t go down that path to try and get that information any quicker,” he said.
“There is a process of getting it quicker, but because it’s in the serious organised crime, major crime category, unfortunately, I can’t get it as quick as we would like. The process of getting that could be years.”
