White supremacist hoarded arsenal of guns for 'race war'

A white supremacist who amassed an arsenal of guns, napalm and bomb-making equipment was planning a murderous campaign against ethnic minority communities, police believe.

David Tovey, 37, was found guilty yesterday of two charges of racially aggravated criminal damage. He had hoarded pipe bombs, a Second World War Sten sub-machine gun, two shotguns, a silenced pistol and dum-dum bullets at his home in Oxfordshire.

Tovey, described by one police officer as a cross between the racist nail-bomber David Copeland and the gunman and mass murderer Michael Ryan, had pleaded guilty to three explosives charges and six weapons charges at an earlier hearing at Oxford Crown Court.

Tovey's plans for a terror campaign were thwarted after a police investigation into graffiti that purported to celebrate the deaths of white people in the 11 September attacks on America. One slogan read: "4,000 white pigs died, a good start." Another said: "Die white trade centre scum." A jury agreed with the prosecution case that Tovey had written the messages in lavatory blocks near his home to stir up racial tension.

Officers went to Tovey's home in Carterton, near the Brize Norton air base, after a Jimi Hendrix CD, rented in his name from a local library, was found at one of the lavatories shortly after the graffiti was written. During a search of the house officers found a cabinet that Tovey had made with a false bottom to hide a stash of weapons.

Detective Sergeant Phil Murphy, a former military policeman, said he was shocked by the discovery. "It blew my mind. Because of my background, I knew exactly what I was looking at – which was what made it so frightening," he said.

The case against Tovey, who had no previous criminal convictions, only included sample charges to reflect the most serious offences. He also possessed numerous types of ammunition – thousands of rounds in total. Officers discovered Nato body armour, survival equipment, camouflage gear, CS gas and army issue material such as night-vision glasses.

Tovey, an amateur bodybuilder, had adapted many of the guns and arms himself. The Sten gun had been reactivated by fitting a new firing pin. He had soldered a new barrel on a Baikal pistol and created his own fitting for a silencer.

Police ballistic tests showed that the weapons and an adapted baton nightstick which fired a single shotgun cartridge were fully functional. Tovey had also made his own napalm-type explosive which would have stuck to victims on impact, causing severe burns.

The white supremacist hid his racism from his Chinese wife, Oi Yee Yip, whom he met while working at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in 1989. The couple ran a Chinese takeaway in Birmingham until they sold it in the early Nineties. They have lived apart since 1995.

In interviews with police, Tovey cited his wife's ethnicity, his love of music by Hendrix and the soul singer Sade, and the presence of two black lead actors in his favourite television programme, Red Dwarf, as evidence that he was not a racist.

But police found he had been using white supremacist and US survivalist websites on his computer. They also found a sketch he had made of a mosque in Swindon, with comments about "niggers all down Broad Street", and discovered he had been stalking black people and Asians in Swindon and Oxford, writing down their car registrations alongside references such as "nigger" and "Paki". Officers also found a letter, magazine and newspaper from the British National Party addressed to Tovey.

When asked why he had contacted the far-right party, Tovey told the court of his distaste for asylum-seekers. He said: "Lottery funds are used to finance asylum applications. I read the other day in the media that nine out of 10 claims are bogus. One of the other things is that whenever I see a real asylum-seeker, [he] has fled a war zone. I would not vacate my country."

Tovey, who lived alone in a former RAF house that had been owned by his parents, was a skilled carpenter but had stopped working after an accident.

Neighbours, who were evacuated from their homes after the discovery of the arms cache in February, described Tovey as a social misfit who styled himself as a former male model and washed his car in the driveway wearing only a thong.

David Field recalled that Tovey covered the front of his house in bright lights and was visited by a string of teenage girls. He complained after Tovey was seen firing an air rifle from his back window, trying to puncture Mr Field's water tank.

Mr Field said: "Now we know what he had in his house it is very scary. He could have snapped any of those times I spoke to him."

Judge Mowat adjourned sentencing for three weeks while a psychiatric report was prepared. Tovey was remanded in custody.

Detective Superintendent Steve Morrison said: "Tovey is a loner who could be living out some sort of white supremacist role, but is not identified with any traditional right-wing group. He was going to carry out a campaign with napalm and P4 explosives as well as having a range of weapons of armoury which is unprecedented. The consequences of his actions could have been massive."

Det Supt Morrison admitted that despite an intensive joint inquiry with the Army, they had not been able to establish where Tovey acquired his arsenal, a failure he described as "very worrying".

He added: "This is a time when the British Army could be going to war again and there are a whole host of possible explanations."