Colin Reeves: trial of man accused of murdering neighbours shown footage of parking row months before stabbing

Jurors have heard a recording of a former soldier accused of murdering his neighbours telling a 999 operator: “I went round with a knife, I’ve stabbed both of them.”

Footage from months prior to the stabbings of Colin Reeves confronting his neighbour over parking has also been shown to the jury.

Ex-commando Reeves is on trial at Bristol Crown Court where he denies the murder of Jennifer Chapple, 33, and her 36-year-old teacher husband Stephen on 21 November last year.

Reeves claims he was suffering an abnormality of mental functioning at the time of the killings and has admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He had been involved in a long-running dispute with the couple over designated parking on the new-build housing development.

Footage shows parking row

In footage captured on 15 May, Reeves approaches Mrs Chapple in her car and tells her “you can’t park here” as she positions herself near a gravelled area outside his home.

“You don’t own the road,” Mrs Chapple tells him, before he moves around to the front of the vehicle and continues confronting her.

Jurors also heard a recording of a 999 call made by Reeves minutes after he went to the couple’s house on 21 November, in it he told an operator: “I went round with a knife, I’ve stabbed both of them.”

Asked whether the couple were awake when he left, he replied: “No, I think they were sort of drifting.

“He was lying on the floor, she was lying on the sofa.”

When officers arrived at the scene, the couple’s children were still asleep upstairs at the home in Norton Fitzwarren, near Taunton in Somerset.

Ten days prior, Reeves allegedly verbally abused Mrs Chapple outside her house following an earlier exchange between her and Reeves’s wife Kayley Reeves.

Mum says son was ‘white as a ghost’

His mother Lynn Reeves said in a filmed police interview played earlier to jurors that her son is a “closed book” who “never shares his emotions”.

He served in the Army between 2002 and 2017, including in Afghanistan, but never spoke about what he saw there, she said.

It was claimed that Reeves appeared to have been struggling with his mental health since he returned from Afghanistan.

Lynn Reeves wept as she attended court in person to give live evidence on Friday.

She said she had been phoned by an “hysterical” Kayley Reeves, the defendant’s wife, saying “they’re dead”.

“He was white as a ghost, he was just white and he just didn’t look like Collin. He was just standing, he just looked right through us as if he wasn’t there and said ‘I had to protect my family’,” she said.

The trial continues.