UK killer held 13-year grudge against twin brother over inheritance

 London: Derrick Bird shot his twin because he believed he had robbed him of a £25,000 inheritance that could have saved him from jail for tax evasion.

Bird discovered that, 13 years ago, brother David had been given the cash by their father Joseph to tide him over financial difficulties.

This was supposed to have been repaid following Joseph's death but it never happened.

With their mother, Mary, desperately ill after suffering a stroke and fighting cancer, jealous Bird is thought to have feared the contentious gift would wipe out the payout from her own will on which he had been counting.

Cumbria Police confirmed Saturday that he was being investigated by HM Revenue and Customs. They also revealed they have found no suicide note or "grudge list" of targets for his killing spree.

Bird, 52, told other taxi drivers on Tuesday night that he feared he would be jailed for between four and ten years.

The next morning he shot David dead in his bed, then gunned down the solicitor he believed was colluding with his twin — starting a killing spree which left 12 dead.

Evidence

The evidence of Bird's simmering discontent over the inheritance came as it emerged that:

- Police given ‘shoot to kill' orders were as little as 30 seconds behind the crazed taxi driver as they pursued him through the lanes of West Cumbria following his shooting of a colleague in Whitehaven.

- The Independent Police Complaints Commission could investigate Cumbria Police's efforts to stop the massacre.

- Bird's frail mother Mary was taken to hospital after the realisation dawned that she had lost two sons on one day, one of them now a notorious mass murderer.

Joseph's will, which is publicly available, revealed that he gave David the money the year before his death in 1998, apparently after his son's garage business foundered.

David's share of the inheritance following their mother's death was meant to be reduced accordingly, but legal experts said the assurance was worthless.

Derrick's furious sense of betrayal as he realised he could receive next to nothing is thought to have been the final straw.

Bird and his twin were to have shared equally in their father's estate — worth less than £10,000 — along with their elder brother, Brian, under his will drawn up in 1987, should their mother die first.

But in the early 1990s, shortly after Derrick quit his job at the Sellafield nuclear plant and was convicted of the theft of building materials, his twin set up a garage business in the hamlet of Lamplugh.

On Friday friends told how the business foundered and it was in this period when his father — an ex-council roadman — effectively gave him a £25,000 advance on his inheritance to see him through.

David had been working as a police mechanic, and friends said his twin's court shame drove a rift between them. Matthew Shield, 52, who had known them since secondary school, said: "I think his father played hell with him for being sacked for stealing the paint."

Following the gift, David — who had three daughters now aged between 28 and 19 — got himself back on his feet by getting a job as a vehicle driver for a landscape gardening company.

Two years ago he netted what is thought to have been a six-figure sum by selling part of his land for housing. But milkman Bill Currie, 57, said that while David lived in a large house he was not "rolling in money" and was "not all that well off".

The secret gift is revealed in a November 1997 codicil to Joseph Bird's will known as a "hotchpotch clause" which states that on his death, David's share would be reduced by that amount.

Derrick Bird is thought to have feared that David and his close friend, family solicitor Kevin Commons, were conspiring to redraft his mother's will to ignore the stipulation that the £25,000 gift should be deducted.