History of drink problems for killer with a 'slow fuse'

Until then neighbours in Buckrose Court, Commercial Street, Norton, barely gave the handyman a second glance as he went to and fro in his van, laying paving stones and fixing windows.

Neighbour George Small said: "He seemed to be a regular sort of guy. In fact the night of the fire was the first time I had seen him drunk."

But Brown's former boss Alan Foster, owner of Buckrose Court, saw a different side to the man who became his tenant in June 2006. Mr Foster said: "He would sit there and talk to me every night.

"But after he had a drink if something had upset him – if he could not get access to his son – he would get mad and damage people's property.

"After the fire we found whisky and cocaine in his bathroom cabinet."

Brown was born in Falkirk and brought up in Dyce, Aberdeen. Since his father had lived in Hunmanby for a number of years, Brown settled in the area after coming back from Spain with a Spanish wife.

Mr Foster said Brown was kicked out of the family home in Malton because of his drinking. When he first moved to the flats he was working at Malton Bacon Factory but lost his job.

Mr Foster said it was because he was seen drinking in his car in the car park before starting his afternoon shift.

Brown then got into rent arrears and asked for work with the builders working on the Buckrose Court flats. He was given a driving job and moved into a bigger bedsit so he could have his son to stay.

Last year, when the caretaker manager at the bedsits left, Brown got the job cleaning the toilets and kitchens and doing other work there.

He received 50 a week for that from rents he collected

and moved into one of the

flats.

But Mr Foster said he burned holes in the furniture with his cigarettes. He was also said to have stabbed smoke alarms with a knife and tampered with them in other ways to stop them going off when he had a cigarette.

He also said Brown complained about the tenants taking drugs but the tenants later told him Brown tried to get them to come to his flat to use them.

In his view Brown had shown no remorse. Before the blaze, there had been a spate of unexplained breakages around the flats and Mr Foster believes the handyman was responsible.

"He was a slow fuse," he said.