Obsessed gunman wrote step-by-step story of a massacre

A man obsessed with guns wrote a "truly horrific" four-page essay depicting a massacre in his home town in which he shot dead shoppers and police officers, a court heard yesterday.

Jason Curtis, 28, of Llandrindod Wells, Powys, wrote the essay after police withdrew his firearms licence in 1994. In it he listed officers by name and gave step-by-step details of the revenge he planned to take on those he blamed for taking away his beloved guns and fire-arms certificate.

The judge, Mr Justice Mance, who considered psychiatric reports on Curtis before jailing him yesterday for four-and- a-half years for 10 fire- arms and drug-possession offences, described the document as "a truly horrific piece of writing".

As extracts from the chilling essay were read to Caernarvon Crown Court, it was clear the sights of Curtis's guns were trained on mass murder in the streets of his sleepy country town.

It began: "It was a warm sunny morning on the 8th July, and the people in Llandrindod Wells went on there [sic] normal merry way, either to school, shops or work, no one would have guest [sic] of the holocoust [sic] to come ... "

The imagined killing spree begins at the police station. Graphic descriptions follow, named officers meeting their deaths as bullets shattered their skulls and flooded the floor with blood.

Curtis, who had been allowed to keep 14 firearms, wrote about how he would wear camouflage trousers and commando boots, and use a Beretta 9mm pistol and a .38 revolver for "hunting the enemy".

He described the large quantity of ammunition he planned to carry, down to the last bullet. He wrote about going into an hypnotic trance when he thought of the senior officer who had revoked his firearms certificate.

"Not a thought past [sic] through his mind, until his minds eye pictured his hate against one man, this man had taken the only thing that matterd [sic] to him away, one only thing that had kept him sane and on the edge, his firearms," he wrote.

The threat was made more potent because Curtis had continued to be around weapons for two years after he was ordered to dispose of his personal arsenal.

Until January, he was the armourer for the local Abbey Cwmhir shooting club. He imported gun components and made ammunition.

In his account, Curtis shoots two more constables before kicking open the door.

"Raising the pistol, he began to fire, pumping round after round into the chest area, the momentum of the tenth bullet [sending the officer] crashing through the plate glass window and onto the pavement below. Jason leaned out of the window, smiled and left the police station."

Out on the street, Curtis reloads and crosses the road.

"A car screeched behind him, the bumper nudging his leg. Jason turned to the driver. Levelling the pistol he fired twice... a deathly silence stretched across the bewildered shoppers ... Mass panic had now broken out as people trampled each other to get out of the range of fire."

In police interviews, Curtis had insisted that he had no intention of carrying out the threat - he said that he had merely written about the dream because it was so vivid and it had shocked him.