‘A control freak’: murderer James Desborough convicted of two further killings | UK news
On a spring day last year, James Desborough walked into the county hall in Truro, Cornwall, and began bombing the offices with dozens of eggs stolen from a supermarket.
It was a drug- and booze-addled protest against his plight; homeless, unemployed, and generally angry at the world. He was expecting to be arrested and texted a friend: “If I’m going to get ripped off, I better get the charges.”
He certainly did that. In the weeks and months after the egg incident, Desborough committed three murders.
He killed two defenseless friends, Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman, whose mangled and charred bodies were sometimes found in woodland near a cottage where he lived off the grid in south Cornwall.
Later, while awaiting trial, he strangled his cellmate in Exeter prison, Steven Kempster, to death because he was disturbed by his snoring.
Desborough, 40, is currently serving a life sentence for murder in prison. He may never be released after a jury at Winchester crown court found him guilty of murdering two friends. Mr Justice Saini will sentence Desborough on Wednesday and made it clear he could face life imprisonment.
The judge described the circumstances as “unique”, such as a man being sentenced to prison for two murders but already serving a life sentence for killing someone in prison.
Acquaintances said Desborough was a “control freak” with a terrible temper (he has a long-standing belief in grievous bodily harm) and was furious at what he saw as his bad luck in life. He was a civil engineer by profession and had fallen on hard times as a father.
It’s unclear exactly what drove him into an explosion of violence. He used Aquilino and Coleman’s bank cards after the murder, but police do not believe this was a simple case of theft.
The prosecutor at his trial, Ahmed Hossain KC, testified to Desborough that he may have killed them because he thought they were worthless, that they deserved to die because of their troubled lifestyles, and that they were “dinlos”, a local slang term for fools. Did he get angry and snap at them? “I thought they were fine,” he replied in court. “They were good friends.”
The trial focused on a Cornwall decidedly different from the one most holidaymakers in the county love. It highlighted not the surfing beaches and historic sights but the deep-seated social problems that make life difficult for many in the south-west of England. There are areas of severe deprivation in Cornwall where people experience homelessness and addiction problems.
Desborough, Aquilino and Coleman were among those who, defense attorney Sean Brunton KC said, escaped through the cracks in society. The three of them got to know each other while living in a hostel for homeless people in the seaside resort of Newquay.
In the months before his death, Aquilino, 57, had been using hard drugs, suffering from depression and was subject to “cuckolding,” in which dealers take over a vulnerable person’s home. Coleman, 43, was a heavy drinker and suffered from cirrhosis. When she was 13, she was kidnapped and stabbed, which left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Police were first called after Coleman was reported missing. He was last seen drinking with Desborough on June 3, 2025. Police thought they had solved the case quickly when they found a body in woodland between Truro and the village of Probus.
However, it turned out that the man missing from Truro was not Coleman or Aquilino, but a third man named Lee Hockey. Police believe he may also have been killed, but have not linked his death to Desborough.
Attention has begun to focus on Paramoor Forest near Stick, which was once a mining settlement and is now popular with people working in the town of St Austell.
Desborough had inherited land there from his grandfather and built a shed, but disappointingly he did not have the correct planning permission and was told by the council that he was not allowed to live there permanently.
He allowed homeless friends to camp there, grew marijuana and had a “stash tree” where he kept class A drugs in a hole. Machetes, knives and saws were also scattered around the property.
Police searched the woods for five months and eventually found the remains of Coleman and Aquilino. The latter was last seen alive on 18 April 2025, again while drinking with Desborough.
The search, codenamed Operation Honeyfall, was extraordinary. More than 700 officers and scientists were involved, with Devon and Cornwall police drawing on the resources of five other forces. Dog teams, soil experts and anthropologists were brought in.
The weather was very hot and the nature of the land was forest-like and swampy. Officers sometimes had to wade through chest-deep water while searching.
More than 1,900 burnt bone fragments (Aquilino’s remains) were discovered in a stream, while Coleman’s burnt body parts were found in a shallow grave. An ax was hanging from a nearby tree.
Another unusual feature was that Desborough followed the search closely. Before enough evidence was obtained to take him into custody, he went around at one point telling the forensic biologist that he liked the dismemberment scenes in the serial killer show Dexter.
Sometimes officers smelled something burning, other times they heard the sound of digging, presumably as Desborough tried to destroy evidence.
As well as discovering the victims’ remains, police discovered notes and plans that suggested Desborough planned to change his appearance through plastic surgery after the murders and flee the UK, perhaps to Southeast Asia.
Detectives also discovered that immediately after cutting up Coleman’s body, he used his victims’ debit cards to purchase goods and services, including a roast dinner.
He was eventually charged with two counts of murder and held in Exeter prison, sharing a cell with Kempster, who was jailed for drunkenly strangling his 91-year-old father in North Devon.
Desborough’s appearance in the witness box was remarkable. He was deemed so dangerous that he was handcuffed to a police officer as he was taken from the dock to the main area of the field.
He was articulate when talking about his time as a civil engineer and the building regulations for his cabin, but was less confident when telling the story of the discovery of Aquilino and Coleman’s bodies.
He claimed that he found one hanging from a tree and the other naked in the stream. It was, in his words, “a series of unfortunate circumstances.”
Desborough repeatedly denied killing the couple, but agreed to burn and hide their bodies while drinking ketamine and tequila.
There was a suggestion during the trial that Desborough may have continued to murder, kill members of his circle who may have been involved in the deaths of his friends or who may have simply angered him.
In one note he wrote: “I am a murderer and ready to execute any predator.” In another, in a speech titled “bug out” (military slang for retreat), he laid out what appeared to be escape plans but added: “Get the remaining puppets out.”
Det Supt Rachael Bentley, head of Devon and Cornwall police’s major crime investigation team, said of the murders of Aquilino and Coleman: “Both men were defenseless and trusted James Desborough as their friend. Not only did Desborough brutally murder both men, he then brutally desecrated their bodies in a bid to conceal evidence of their crimes. By doing so he denied both respectable men and their families the opportunity to say goodbye.”
