The moment David Billingsby’s world collided with that of one of Britain’s most evil killers is one which will undoubtedly haunt the 79-year-old for ever.
The meeting between the respectable businessman and 19-year-old Nicholas Prosper on a Luton council estate lasted barely eight minutes but, by the time they parted, Mr Billingsby – one of Britain’s most talented clay pigeon shooters and a Guinness World Record holder in the sport – had handed over the shotgun and ammunition which, a day later, the teenager would use to blast his mother, sister and brother to death.
Prosper’s plan to then carry out the ‘massacre of the century’ at his old primary school was mercifully foiled but this week, as he was jailed for life at Luton Crown Court for triple murder, deeply troubling questions remain about how easy it was for him to get his hands on the lethal firearm he used to kill three members of his family. Police have emphasised that Mr Billingsby, who was duped by both Prosper’s forged shotgun certificate and his faked enthusiasm for clay pigeon shooting, committed no offence when he sold his Japanese Kikko shotgun to the then 18-year-old on September 12 last year. Indeed, as he drove into the car park next to the killer’s tower block home that morning, Mr Billingsby had no idea just how close he was to becoming the soon-to-be killer’s first victim.
For, as the Mail can now reveal, had Mr Billingsby not been fooled by his fake certificate, Prosper had planned to stab the innocent father-of-two to death and simply take the £450 shotgun which he’d seen advertised online. Later, Prosper admitted that he would have been deterred by the unexpected presence of Mr Billingsby’s wife, who decided to join her husband on the 80-mile journey from their home in Kent. She remained in the front passenger seat of the couple’s car throughout her husband’s encounter with the teenager, every sinister second of which was captured on CCTV.
A fellow clay pigeon shooter who knows Mr Billingsby told the Mail he is ‘a very upstanding citizen who is highly respected in our community’. He added: ‘David has been shooting for a very long time. He’s very safe. Anybody could have been duped like that.’
Prosper began researching mass murders in autumn 2023 but his serious search for a gun began in April 2024 when he became a member of the online site GunTrader UK. In June he began researching how to forge a shotgun certificate. According to police, he spent hours looking for templates and checking which logos to use. The certificate even carried the forged signature of Nicola Baxter, a sergeant in the Bedfordshire Police firearms unit.
On August 28, Prosper emailed private seller Jonathan Middleton, who was advertising a double-barrelled shotgun for £150 on GunTrader. Prosper texted him a photo of his forged shotgun certificate.
Mr Middleton’s suspicions were quickly aroused, however, not least because the teen started asking questions about how recently the gun had been fired and how it operated. He was also concerned when Prosper offered £500 – well over the asking price – if ammunition could be included in the sale. To get rid of him, Mr Middleton falsely claimed that the gun had already been sold.
Nicholas Prosper (pictured) filmed himself pretending to fire shots with a wooden stick in his kitchen
The moment the gruesome killer purchased the shotgun he would use to kill his family was caught in CCTV footage
Nicholas Prosper bought his murder weapon off David Billingsby (pictured) in a meeting which lasted barely eight minutes
Just two days later Prosper spotted Mr Billingsby’s ad on another website called Gunstar. Again, he offered well over the asking price – £450 – saying he would pay £650 for the shotgun and 100 cartridges plus £30 petrol money.
He initially offered to collect the weapon on September 11, but in a WhatsApp message asked to change the date to the 12th: ‘After checking my schedule I would have to move some things around, as I’m returning on the 7th from Minsmere volunteer work, and I’d have to catch up with college.’ A clearly confident liar, Prosper added: ‘Thank you for your cooperation, and please, since you’re the one making the journey, do be honest as I’d hate to make things more difficult for you.’
Once Mr Billingsby offered to drop the gun off on September 12, Prosper replied: ‘Sounds great! I’ve been investing so I wouldn’t mind throwing in some extra gas money as thanks. Again, thank you David. I look forward to meeting you.’
The timing of the delivery was crucial. Prosper had become fixated with carrying out his murderous plan on Friday 13th. He wanted to complete the sale of the weapon as close as possible to that date to minimise the risk of being discovered.
By law, vendors have seven days to notify police of a gun sale. In fact, Mr Billingsby notified both his home force and Bedfordshire Police at 5.30pm on the day of the sale. As cunning Prosper had evidently foreseen, there wasn’t enough time for either force to carry out the checks which would have revealed his licence to be a forgery.
Unaware anything was amiss, Mr Billingsby drove into the car park next to Leabank, the Luton tower block where Prosper lived with his 49-year-old Argentinian mother Juliana, his brother Kyle, 16, and sister Giselle, 13. It was there in his bedroom in the family’s eighth-floor flat that the disturbed teen had become a recluse since dropping out of school – where he had been studying for A-levels in psychology, criminology and art – in March 2023.
Aside from going to the gym and working as as a shelf stacker at Sainsbury’s between October and December 2023 – when he was dismissed – all his time was spent online. He visited the dark web to watch videos of real-life killings and spout his own sick views on paedophilia, murder and necrophilia.
He was obsessed with mass killers such as Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, and Adam Lanza, who shot dead 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the US in 2012.
19-year-old Prosper was jailed for 49 years for murdering his family and a failed plot to kill 30 young children in a school shooting
Left to right: Giselle Prosper, 13, Juliana Prosper, 48 and 16-year-old Kyle Prosper were all killed in their own home. Each suffered shotgun wounds to the face, while Kyle was also stabbed more than 100 times across his body before being shot
The 19-year-old pictured in Luton Crown Court on Tuesday in an artist’s impression for the first of what was a two-day sentencing hearing
CCTV footage shows Mr Billingsby parking at 10.44am, getting out of his silver Kia Sportage and opening the boot. He waits for nearly nine minutes for Prosper to arrive. As the teenager approaches on foot, carrying his forged gun licence in a plastic folder, Mr Billingsby greets him with a cheery wave. The two shake hands – Prosper, who speaks in a disturbing and monotonous voice in the terrifying videos he made in the hours before he started killing, is all smiles as he follows Mr Billingsby to the rear of the car.
Mr Billingsby would later describe Prosper as ‘polite and well speaking’ and ‘reasonable’. He checked the forged shotgun licence and, seeing nothing wrong, a transfer of firearm document was completed. Prosper handed over a total of £680 in cash.
By 11.01am, the deal was done and Prosper walked off with a farewell nod of his head and the gun in a fishing rod bag.
While Mr Billingsby drove home with his wife – and correctly notified police of the gun sale – Prosper hid the gun in his bedroom as the final countdown to his murderous spree began. The true horror of what took place in the hours that followed was laid bare in court this week as Prosper, who was motivated by a sick desire for lasting notoriety, was sentenced for his terrible crimes.
A video he made of himself showed him practising with a piece of wood as a mock gun, moving around the kitchen at the family’s flat and saying ‘bang’ as he pretended to fire it. He also tested the gun he’d bought from Mr Billingsby by firing it into a teddy bear in his bedroom.
Unimaginable horror unfolded at around 5am on Friday 13th. Prosper planned to kill his family in their sleep but his mother woke up and confronted her son, prompting what the prosecution said in court was a ‘prolonged, violent struggle’ with blood found across the flat. Prosper’s brother and sister were also woken.
Juliana was killed in the hallway by a single shot to the top of her head but had slash injuries to her hands and left arm after desperately trying to fight off her son. A copy of the comic novel How To Kill Your Family was later found resting on her legs.
Prosper is pictured in his police mugshot after being arrested by officers in September
Giselle, who desperately hid under a table in the living room, was killed by a single shot to her head. The injuries suffered by her brother Kyle were said in court to be ‘particularly distressing’. More than 100 knife wounds were found on his body. He was also shot in the right side of the chest and on top of his head.
But Prosper hadn’t accounted for the disturbance his unfettered violence would cause. In the flat below, neighbour Clarice Reyes heard banging and what in court was said to have ‘sounded heavy and like people fighting’.
In court, prosecutor Timothy Cray explained in terrifying detail how Clarice went upstairs to complain about the noise, not realising how much danger she was putting herself in.
‘She stepped into the hallway and could still hear the banging and crashing: there were noises like things were being thrown around,’ Mr Cray said in court. ‘She moved to the front door of the Prosper flat. She knocked on the door by flicking the letterbox out and letting it bang back a few times. The banging and ruffling noises stopped a few seconds after she knocked this first time. She could hear a boy groaning. She then heard something like punching or kicks and then groaning which was not stopping.
‘Every time she heard a hit the groan would come. After around 20 seconds she knocked again using the letterbox in the same way. She could still hear the groaning and the punching or kicking noises. It had carried on despite her knocking.
‘After another 20 seconds she knocked a third time. After this third time the noises slowed down a bit and within five seconds she heard a big bang like a gunshot come from the hallway.’
Clarice fled back to her flat and called the police. Other neighbours told the Mail that she was ‘broken’ by what had happened and now trying to move to a new home, although by calling the police she may well have stopped Prosper from carrying out his planned massacre at his former school, St Joseph’s Primary.
Prosper was furious that his murderous plans so quickly descended into chaos. A seized note he wrote in custody said: ‘I was right in predicting no one would’ve called the police had I killed them in their sleep. Three shots under 30 seconds. The only known phone call to police that day was made by the bitch at the door as a result of my B**** mother waking them up and it being turned into a long struggle. My plan wasn’t ‘stupid’. I was f**king right. MY MOTHER IS A STUPID F*****G COW.’
The scene at Prosper’s home in Luton where he carried out the triple killing of his family
Prosper left the flat at 5.33am and hid in a wooded area near his home for just over two hours before waving at a passing police car at around 7.50am. He then led them to his hidden gun and bag of cartridges, later saying that he believed schools in the area would have been locked down, preventing him from carrying out his planned mass shooting.
Following his triple killing, however, the National Crime Agency (NCA) launched a campaign ‘in response to the rising threat of fraudulent firearms documents being used in an attempt to unlawfully acquire legally held firearms in the UK’, along with a video of ‘quick and easy checks’ which should be made when a firearm is sold or transferred.
The ABC of check urges sellers to ‘always see the original certificate’ and ensure it isn’t printed on plain paper, to ‘beware of the buyer offering you more money than you have stated in the advert’ and to ‘compare their certificate to your own’ and ensure the layout and format of the certificate is the same. The video shows how to check watermarks.
According to those that know him, Mr Billingsby is a highly experienced and ‘very safe’ clay pigeon shooter. In 2005 he was part of a team of five at Kent Gun Club in Dartford that set a Guinness World Record, which stood until 2019, for the most clay pigeon targets shot in 12 hours – 4,602. The team’s achievement raised thousands of pounds for a stroke victim.
One of his neighbours said this week that ‘no blame should be attached to his actions whatsoever. He must feel dreadful.
‘Can you imagine thinking you’d followed all the correct procedures and then finding you’d had a hand in the killing of an entire family? It must be unbearable.’
While Mr Billingsby followed the letter of the law, Gill Marshall, chair of Gun Control Network, a charity set up in 1996 in the wake of the massacre at Dunblane Primary School, said that gun legislation dating back to 1968 needed a ‘complete overhaul’ but ‘no political party wants to give it the time necessary’.
The killer is seen in a court sketch, flanked by a prison guard during his sentencing hearing
She added: ‘There should not be private sales of these weapons of mass destruction taking place in car parks or online – or anywhere else. Gun sales should be conducted by licensed gun dealers in conjunction with the police who will check certificates and do background checks before a gun is handed over, not afterwards.’
She said that background checks should be extended to include social media use.
Nick Morgan of the National Firearms Association said the UK had incredibly strict gun control but conceded that an online system for firearms certificates was required following the Prosper case. ‘There should be an online system where those who have jumped through the hoops to gain a firearms certificate are registered along with their pictures,’ he said. ‘That would take away the scenario in this case where someone committing a fraud with a fake certificate gets access to a firearm that they are not entitled to.’
Exactly 29 years to the month since Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School, the most pressing question the Government must now answer is how Prosper was able to come so close to fulfilling his monstrous plot.
And whether, given the ease with which he forged a shotgun certificate, the UK’s gun laws are even fit for purpose.
