David Copeland: The London Nail Bomber Who Terrorised the Capital for 13 Days
In the spring of 1999 London spent almost two weeks waiting for the next bang. Over three consecutive weekends a holdall stuffed with nails went off in Brixton, then Brick Lane, then inside a packed Soho pub. Three people were killed, around 140 were hurt and several survivors lost limbs or eyes.
Everyone assumed it was an organised far-right cell. It turned out to be one 22-year-old engineering worker from Hampshire with a bedroom full of swastikas, a stack of extremist pamphlets and a plan to start a race war on his own. This is the story of David Copeland, the London Nail Bomber, how he was caught and why he's still behind bars more than a quarter of a century later.
Quick Answers
Who's David Copeland? A British neo-Nazi who carried out the 1999 London nail bombings. He's sometimes misremembered as Dennis Copeland.
When were the bombings? 17 April 1999 in Brixton, 24 April in Brick Lane and 30 April at the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho.
How many people died? Three, all in Soho: Andrea Dykes, who was four months pregnant, Nik Moore and John Light.
What was his sentence? Six life sentences in June 2000, with a minimum term of 50 years set in 2007.
Where is he now? Serving his sentence in a high-security prison. He won't be eligible for parole until around 2049, when he'll be 73.
Who Was David Copeland?
David John Copeland was born in May 1976 and grew up in a comfortable, middle-class home in the Home Counties. There was nothing in his background that screamed future terrorist. He wasn't from a broken home, he wasn't poor and he didn't have a criminal record.
What he did have was a deep sense of being an outsider. People who knew him described a withdrawn, awkward loner who was often teased. The World Socialist Web Site's trial coverage noted he was openly racist by his early teens, though he wasn't politically active at that stage. After leaving school he drifted further into himself.
By 1999 he was living in Fleet in Hampshire and working on the Jubilee Line extension in Bermondsey, a job his dad had helped him get. To his workmates he was just the shy lad who kept himself to himself. Behind closed doors he was reading The Turner Diaries, the American neo-Nazi novel that's inspired more than one bomber, and building up a hatred of black people, Asian people and gay men.
From the BNP to the National Socialist Movement
Copeland joined the British National Party in 1997. Searchlight magazine, the anti-fascist publication that spent years tracking him and his contacts, reports that he was photographed standing next to BNP leader John Tyndall at a meeting in Stratford that September. It turned into a scuffle with anti-fascist protesters, and in the chaos Tyndall fell over and hit his head.
Tyndall was the grand old man of the British far right by then. Born in south London in 1934, he'd spent his whole adult life in extremist politics. In the early 1960s he was deputy commander of Spearhead, a uniformed paramilitary group set up by the neo-Nazi Colin Jordan, and he served several months in prison for his part in it. He went on to lead the National Front in the 1970s, a stint that ended with the party losing its deposit in all 303 seats it fought at the 1979 general election.
After the National Front tore itself apart, Tyndall founded the BNP in 1982 and ran it for 17 years. He was locked up again in 1986, this time for a year, for inciting racial hatred. His grip on the party finally slipped in 1999, the same year as Copeland's bombings, when Nick Griffin beat him in a leadership election. Tyndall was later charged with inciting racial hatred once more, but he died of a heart attack at his home in Sussex in July 2005, two days before his trial was due to start at Leeds Crown Court.
Here's the chilling bit. Even Tyndall's BNP, with all its history, wasn't extreme enough for Copeland. He soon moved over to the National Socialist Movement, a tiny, hardline outfit founded by the neo-Nazi ideologue David Myatt. Copeland joined in early 1999 and within weeks he'd been named the group's Southern Regional Organiser.
Through the NSM he got hold of Myatt's writings on Aryan revolution, which openly advocated terror bombings and assassinations. He also found bomb-making instructions online. When the BBC's Panorama later tracked Myatt down and asked whether he felt any guilt, he said that was a matter between him and God.
The Plan: Start a Race War
Copeland's idea was brutally simple. If he could bomb Britain's black, Asian and gay communities, he reckoned they'd hit back, white Britons would retaliate and the whole country would tip into a racial war. In his head, a far-right government would then sweep to power and set him free as a hero.
He built his bombs in his bedroom using a length of pipe packed with powder from big fireworks, a timer made from an alarm clock and around 3kg of nails poured into a sports holdall around the device. The nails were the point. He wanted to maim as many people as possible.
He picked his targets carefully. Brixton was the heart of black London. Brick Lane was the centre of the city's Bangladeshi community. And Soho's Old Compton Street was the best-known gay street in the country.
Bomb One: Brixton, 17 April 1999
On a busy Saturday afternoon Copeland left his first holdall outside the Iceland supermarket on Electric Avenue, right by Brixton's market and a crowded bus stop.
This is where a bit of luck came in. Market traders thought the bag looked suspicious and one of them moved it around the corner onto the top of a bin. That shift almost certainly saved lives. When it went off early in the evening it still did horrendous damage, but far fewer people were standing right next to it.
The scene in Brixton as people help the injured on 17 April 1999. Police guard the cordon outside the Iceland store on Electric Avenue.
Local history blog Past Tense put the number in hospital that night at 48. The Court of Appeal later recorded that two people lost an eye and that a toddler under two years old ended up with a nail embedded in his skull. Witnesses described people lying in the street unable to get up, with nails sticking out of their bodies.
Bomb Two: Brick Lane, 24 April 1999
A week later Copeland headed for the East End. Brick Lane had already seen more than its share of racist violence, from the murder of Altab Ali in 1978 to years of National Front marches. Copeland wanted to add to that list.
He made a basic mistake, though. He thought Brick Lane's famous street market ran on Saturdays, but it's a Sunday market. So when he turned up on the Saturday the streets were nowhere near as busy as he'd hoped.
He dumped the bag between two parked vans on Hanbury Street, just off Brick Lane. A passer-by spotted it and, assuming someone had lost it, took it to Brick Lane police station. The station was shut. So he popped the bag in the boot of his car, where it exploded shortly afterwards. Around 13 people were hurt, mostly with cuts and perforated eardrums. Considering what could have happened, it was a near miss.
The Manhunt and the NASA CCTV
By now the Metropolitan Police had one of the biggest investigations in its history on its hands. Several far-right groups, including a cell calling itself the White Wolves, rang in claiming responsibility, which muddied the waters even further.
The breakthrough came from grainy CCTV footage of a man carrying a sports bag near the Brixton blast. The footage was so poor that it was reportedly sent to NASA for enhancement. The cleaned-up image of a young white man in a baseball cap was splashed across the front pages on Friday 30 April.
Two people recognised him almost at once. One was a Jubilee Line workmate, who rang the police with Copeland's name and a phone number. The other was a Searchlight informant codenamed Arthur, who'd seen Copeland at far-right meetings and spotted his face on a newspaper rack in a local shop. Searchlight passed his name to Special Branch, but it was already too late to stop what came next.
Bomb Three: The Admiral Duncan, 30 April 1999
When Copeland saw his own face on the front of the Evening Standard he panicked. Rather than go to ground, he went home to Fleet, picked up a bomb he'd just finished and headed back into London, booking into a cheap hotel in Victoria. The Court of Appeal noted that he brought the third attack forward because he feared he was about to be arrested.
Dazed survivors outside the smoke-filled Admiral Duncan moments after the blast. Survivors are helped on the pavement among the debris on Old Compton Street. A man helps an injured drinker slumped against a lamp post outside the pub. Police and injured drinkers in the smoke outside the Admiral Duncan. A police officer and a passer-by help a badly injured victim on Old Compton Street.
That Friday evening he walked into the Admiral Duncan on Old Compton Street, a much-loved gay pub that was packed with people starting the bank holiday weekend. He left the holdall by the bar and walked out. Some drinkers noticed the unattended bag. Before anyone could deal with it, it exploded.
Three people were killed. Andrea Dykes, 27, was four months pregnant and had come to the pub with her husband Julian and friends to celebrate. Julian was badly injured. John Light (32) and Nik Moore (31) were part of the same group of friends. Westminster Extra reported that more than 100 people were injured in Soho, with several needing amputations.
Arrested the Same Night
While Soho was still reeling, officers working through their list of names from the CCTV appeal knocked on Copeland's door in Fleet. He was only around tenth on that list, so he wasn't yet seen as the prime suspect.
That changed the moment they saw his room. It was decked out like a Nazi shrine, with swastika flags on the walls, and there was bomb-making kit and a partly made device under the bed. Copeland didn't put up a fight. He admitted all three bombings straight away.
In interview he made no secret of his motives. He called himself a Nazi, said he'd wanted to spark a race war and claimed he'd planned to shoot Tony Blair. He also told officers he expected a far-right government to free him within a few years. The only regret he expressed was for Andrea Dykes and her unborn child.
The Trial at the Old Bailey
Copeland went on trial at the Old Bailey in June 2000, the same court that had been bombed by the IRA's Price sisters back in 1973. He admitted manslaughter but denied murder, arguing that he'd had diminished responsibility because of mental illness.
The psychiatric evidence was a mess. A team of psychiatrists examined him after his arrest and they couldn't agree. Broadmoor's experts diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, with grandiose, religious and persecutory delusions. The prosecution's psychiatrist thought it was a personality disorder that didn't stop him knowing exactly what he was doing.
The prosecution's case was that this was a man who'd spent months planning, researching and building devices, then picked targets for political reasons. The jury agreed. On 30 June 2000 he was convicted of three murders and three counts of causing explosions likely to endanger life, and given six life sentences.
Why He Got a 50-Year Minimum Term
At first the trial judge recommended Copeland serve at least 30 years. That figure was never confirmed by the Home Secretary, and in 2007 the case came back before Mr Justice Burton at the High Court to set a proper tariff.
In his 2007 minimum term judgment Burton accepted that Copeland had a serious mental illness. But he ruled the case was of exceptional gravity, pointing to the multiple murders, the planning, the sadistic use of nails and the ideological motive. That made a whole life order the starting point. The only thing in Copeland's favour was his age, so the judge set the minimum at 50 years, minus the time he'd spent on remand.
Copeland appealed. In 2011 the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, threw it out. The Court of Appeal said his schizophrenia didn't reduce his culpability, because he "knew exactly what he intended to do".
Was He Really a Lone Wolf?
Police and prosecutors framed Copeland as a lone wolf driven by his own twisted fantasies, and in the narrow sense that's true. Nobody else planted the bombs and nobody else was charged.
Searchlight has always pushed back on that label, though. Its argument is that Copeland didn't invent his ideas in a vacuum. He was radicalised by groups that openly preached terror, and he'd been given the reading list and the strategy by men who never faced court. It's a debate that's only got louder since, with lone attackers from Norway to New Zealand following a similar path. It's also a reminder that people can be pulled back out of that world, as musician Daryl Davis showed with more than 200 Klansmen.
Compare that to the case of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who really did work almost entirely alone for nearly two decades. Copeland lasted 13 days.
Where Is David Copeland Now?
Copeland is still serving his sentence and is currently held at HMP Frankland in County Durham. Prison hasn't mellowed him much. In 2014, while at Belmarsh, he attacked another inmate with a weapon made from razor blades fixed to a toothbrush handle. He later pleaded guilty to wounding with intent and got another three years.
His story was retold in the 2021 Netflix documentary Nail Bomber: Manhunt, which leaned heavily on interviews with the detectives, journalists and survivors involved. He won't be considered for parole until around 2049, when he'll be in his seventies, and even then there's no guarantee he'll ever walk free.
How the Victims Are Remembered
The Admiral Duncan was rebuilt and reopened, and it's still trading on Old Compton Street today, a few doors from the spot where so many lives changed for good.
Every year on 30 April people gather in Soho to remember them. For the 20th anniversary in 2019 somewhere between 800 and 1,000 people walked behind the victims' families, survivors and emergency service workers to a service at St Anne's Gardens on Wardour Street. The organiser, Mark Healey of the 17-24-30 National Hate Crime Awareness group, named his campaign after the dates of the three bombings.
Copeland wanted to tear London's communities apart. Instead Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho ended up standing together, and a quarter of a century on they're still marking those three April weekends side by side.
Suggested Reading
If you want to go deeper into the case and the far-right networks around it, these are worth a look.
Mr Evil: The Secret Life of Racist Bomber and Killer David Copeland by Graeme McLagan and Nick Lowles. Written by the Panorama team who investigated the case, it's the most detailed account of Copeland's life, radicalisation and the hunt to catch him.
White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18 by Nick Lowles. A gripping look at the violent neo-Nazi underworld of 1990s Britain that Copeland was drawn into.
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Sources
25 years on: The hunt for the London nailbomber, Searchlight
John Tyndall, EBSCO Research Starters
R v David James Copeland [2007] EWHC 368 (QB), The National Archives, Find Case Law
R v Copeland [2011] EWCA Crim 1711, The National Archives, Find Case Law
London nail bomber convicted, World Socialist Web Site
Today in London's Nazi history: David Copeland bombs Brixton, 1999, Past Tense
Admiral Duncan survivors mark 20 years since Soho pub bombing, Westminster Extra
Where is David Copeland now?, The Review Geek
