Nicholas Prosper: Teenager who murdered his family will not be given whole-life order after appeal dismissed | UK News

A teenager who murdered his family will not be given a whole-life order after a bid to increase his sentence was dismissed at the Court of Appeal.

Nicholas Prosper, 19, from Luton, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 49 years after he pleaded guilty to the murder of his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and his siblings, Kyle Prosper, 16, and 13-year-old Giselle Prosper at Luton Crown Court in February.

During his sentencing in April, the judge said the words “heartless and brutal” were insufficient to describe the horror of the last moments suffered by his victims.

Their bodies were found at their flat in the town in September last year.

The 19-year-old was also sentenced for weapons offences, having plotted a mass shooting at his former primary school.

The Solicitor General referred Prosper’s sentence to the Court of Appeal in April, with barristers telling a hearing in London that a whole-life term was a “just punishment” for the “exceptional” crimes.

Barristers for Prosper, who is due to be released in his late 60s at the earliest, said the sentence “cannot be said to be unduly lenient”.

Read more:
How mother of triple killer foiled her son’s school shooting plot

In a ruling, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Wall, said that Prosper’s sentence was “itself a very severe sentence for a 19-year-old”.

She said: “These were undoubtedly offences of the utmost gravity, with multiple features incorporating disturbing, recurrent themes around school shootings.”

She continued: “Had the offender been 21 or over at the time of the offending, a whole-life order would undoubtedly have been made.”

The 19-year-old planned to carry out a mass shooting at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, where Prosper and his siblings had been pupils, he admitted to police.

The court heard his aim was to be known as “the world’s most famous school shooter of the 21st century”.

Police believe he killed his family when his mother found a shotgun he had bought using a fake certificate and confronted him.

His scheme was eventually foiled by officers who spotted him in the street immediately after the murders and arrested him.

The loaded shotgun was found hidden in bushes nearby, along with more than 30 cartridges.

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