Chilling police interview footage: Boy who idolized the Ripper murdered two strangers and was hunting a third

James Fairweather was just 15 years old when he knifed James Attfield and Nahid Almanea to death in two horrific attacks in Colchester, Essex, which terrified the local community.

He was hunting a third victim when he was caught by police.

Fairweather, whom a jury heard had obsessively studied the 13 murders carried but by Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe between 1975-80, stabbed Mr Attfield 102 times as he lay helpless in a park in March 2014.

Three months later, he knifed Saudi student Ms Almanea, 31, with a bayonet and stabbed her in both eyes as she walked along a nature trail in Colchester.

He admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, claiming he believed he was possessed by the devil and heard voices that compelled him to kill.

Mr Attfield’s mother, Julie Finch, branded Fairweather, now 17, “a monster”.

She said in a statement read for her on the court steps: “James Fairweather is a monster in our eyes - and we will never be able to forgive him.”

The jurors had taken eight hours and 33 minutes to find him guilty of the murders.

Fairweather was “turned on” by serial killers and researched Ian Huntley and Moors murderer Myra Hindley, as well as Sutcliffe, whose picture he kept on his phone, Guildford Crown Court heard.

He wanted to emulate the murderers he idolised, and also fantasised about killing his headteacher and parents, the jury heard.

He had played violent computer games Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto since he was 13, and had a stash of horror films, a DVD about Sutcliffe and a book called The World’s Worst Crimes.

After he killed, he obsessively looked up press coverage of the murders on the internet.

He spent his days thinking about “killing, raping and watching pornography”, the court heard.

The murders sparked a massive police hunt in Colchester, and the teenager did not attack again for another year.

He was arrested on May 26 last year while wearing gloves, armed with a lock knife and on the prowl for his third victim by the Salary Brook nature trail where he had already killed.

Fairweather, who has been diagnosed with autism, told detectives he heard voices, adding: “They said we need another sacrifice and I was going to get my third victim but there was no-one about.”

His defence lawyers argued he had full-blown psychosis and did not fully understand what he was doing. But this was dismissed by prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC, who said the youth “understood his conduct at the time” and “was able to form a reasonable judgment”.

He said the teenager had made preparations for killing and “took steps to conceal afterwards” by throwing the murder weapon into a fast-flowing river.

Psychiatrist Dr Philip Joseph said the teenager’s “clichéd” description of hallucinations appeared to have been plucked from a horror film.

After the case, Essex assistant chief constable Steve Worron said: “Fairweather admitted killing James and Nahid but denied their murder was calculated and pre-planned. He then forced their families to endure the pain and grief of a trial rather than admitting that he had murdered them.”

Paul Scothern, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This was a shocking case, particularly because of the young age of the defendant at the time and because the brutal attacks he carried out were entirely random.”

Fairweather will be sentenced next week.