The quiet boy from a hard-working Christian family who became a triple killer: Valdo Calocane 'actively concealed' his psychosis from his parents as he became a 'ticking timebomb'
- Calocane, 32, killed two students and a school caretaker in Nottingham last June
- He has pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter, accepted by prosecutors
- READ MORE: Victim's father slams decision not to put him on trial for murder
He was brought up as a quiet modest boy in a hardworking Christian family – but Valdo Calocane hid the full extent of his mental breakdown from his family before knifing three innocent people to death in Nottingham last year.
Calocane, who killed students Grace O'Malley Kumar and Barnaby Webber and school caretaker Ian Coates in Nottingham, is a dual Guinea-Bissau/Portuguese national who had settled status in the UK through his Portuguese citizenship.
Nottingham Crown Court heard he had been sectioned four times in the three years leading up to the killings — including an incident during lockdown in which he followed a woman home and left her so terrified she leapt from a window to escape.
The heinous killings in June last year shocked locals, who said he had enjoyed a 'good upbringing' under his family, who hailed from West Africa and later moved to Europe.
He was born in Guinea-Bissau, his family moving to Madeira when he was a toddler and then on to Lisbon in Portugal when he was around eight.
![Valdo Calocane has pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter after he killed three people in Nottingham last summer](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/17/80367437-12997031-image-a-1_1706029273581.jpg)
Valdo Calocane has pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter after he killed three people in Nottingham last summer
![Calocane pictured in a student flat in 2022. A previous flat mate said he 'seemed like a normal guy'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80367439-12997031-Calocane_pictured_in_a_student_flat_in_2022_A_previous_flatmate_-a-32_1706052656631.jpg)
Calocane pictured in a student flat in 2022. A previous flat mate said he 'seemed like a normal guy'
![A court sketch of Calocane as he appeared in Nottingham Crown Court today to give his guilty pleas on charges of manslaughter](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80367435-12997031-A_court_sketch_of_Calocane_as_he_appeared_in_Nottingham_Crown_Co-a-33_1706052656632.jpg)
A court sketch of Calocane as he appeared in Nottingham Crown Court today to give his guilty pleas on charges of manslaughter
The killer's 55-year-old father moved to Pembrokeshire almost 20 years ago to work on construction at an oil refinery in Milford Haven.
His wife, Celeste, 43, followed with their three children in 2007, after he found a house and schools for the children.
Calocane was the oldest child, aged 16 at the time, and was soon noted as being somewhat quiet and withdrawn.
He did not sit A-levels because he didn't think he would achieve adequate grades, the court heard, and instead found menial work such as labouring or as a cleaner.
By 17, the Mail was told, Calocane had moved out of the family home – against his parents' wishes – and rented a flat with friends nearby.
He is believed to have moved to Birmingham – where he drifted between bedsits – before rediscovering education and 'studying well'.
After settling in Nottingham he enrolled at the University of Nottingham as a mature student on its mechanical engineering course, and graduated in 2022.
An online CV suggests he found work at a branch of fashion retailer Next during his studies.
A former housemate in Nottingham, who lived Calocane for much of 2020, said the killer 'seemed like a normal guy' back then - but admitted grappling with his mental health. 'I didn't know him too well but he didn't do drugs or drink much', the former student said.
'He said he heard and saw things that weren't there.
'I didn't talk to him much. When he wasn't at college he was at work, but he never told me where he worked.'
Around the same time Calocane is said to have struck up some sort of relationship with an OnlyFans model - the flat where she lived at the time was raided by police last summer.
But the model, a woman in her late 20s who grew up in Lincolnshire, denied ever knowing Calocane when contacted through her family.
Nottingham Crown Court heard that Calocane was assessed under the Mental Health Act in 2020 after the university sought to get him help for his mind following incidents in which he tried to break down doors in his student accommodation.
He was found to be psychotic but posing a low risk to others; but he was later detained under the Act and admitted to inpatient psychiatry services at Nottingham's Highbury Hospital for three weeks.
He was advised to take anti-psychotic medication for six to nine months, but less than a month later he was readmitted to hospital after he stopped taking his medication and forced his way into another room.
By May 2021 Calocane's parents were concerned about his mental health, but he was said to be 'actively concealing' his psychosis and had stopped taking his medication again, as suspected by his brother Elias.
![Barnaby Webber was stabbed to death](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80372757-12997031-Barnaby_Webber_was_stabbed_to_death-a-34_1706052656633.jpg)
![Grace O'Malley Kumar was killed alongside him](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80372759-12997031-Grace_O_Malley_Kumar_was_killed_alongside_him-a-35_1706052656633.jpg)
Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley Kumar (left and right) were stabbed to death by Calocane in June last year
![School caretaker Ian Coates was stabbed to death by Calocane, who then stole his van and used it to drive at others](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80372761-12997031-School_caretaker_Ian_Coates_was_stabbed_to_death_by_Calocane_who-a-36_1706052656634.jpg)
School caretaker Ian Coates was stabbed to death by Calocane, who then stole his van and used it to drive at others
![A CCTV image of Valdo Calocane on the day he carried out the brutal killings of three people in Nottingham in June 2023](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/01/23/23/80372765-12997031-A_CCTV_image_of_Valdo_Calocane_on_the_day_he_carried_out_the_bru-a-37_1706052656635.jpg)
A CCTV image of Valdo Calocane on the day he carried out the brutal killings of three people in Nottingham in June 2023
The court was told he failed to report voices that told him his family would die, and he disengaged from treatment having claimed the voices were the creation of the mental health services trying to help him.
He was then sectioned and remained in hospital until October 2021, after which he trapped a flatmate in their student kitchen, restraining him in a headlock; that lead to another assessment and, after an initial spell in the community, a further sectioning.
One of the students who shared the accommodation with Calocane told MailOnline: ‘Looking back, I think he was a ticking timebomb and he was going to explode some time.
'I feel lucky that I wasn’t in the blast zone, but (feel) so awful for those people who were.
Within a few months of the incident in the flat, he was caught attempting to break into the same ground-floor property – just a two minute walk from the spot where Barnaby and Grace fell.
The flatmate said: ‘We were visited by the complex security people who told us they had caught Valdo trying to break into our block on the ground floor and he appeared to have something under his jacket.’
Calocane’s former flatmates were warned by university accommodation officials to keep their door locked, but it is not clear what action, if any, was taken against Calocane at that point.
Thereafter, the court heard Calocane engaged on an intermittent basis with the community team, but gave them a false address
But just five weeks before the killings, the court heard Calocane attacked two colleagues at a warehouse he had found work, and was banned from the premises.
Calocane's parents remain in Haverfordwest. Around a year ago his father had a career change when he started work as a carer, while his mother works as an intensive care nurse in the town's Withybush Hospital.
Reverend Adrian Vaughan, minister at the church, said: 'His parents moved into the street where the church is, they are strong Christians and settled in well with us.
'When Valdo moved out of the family home he rented a place with friends. I would still see him in the town centre - he always greeted me and was polite.'
The minister praised the Calocanes for being hard workers, adding: 'They've never been on welfare for a single day since they came to this country.
'Valdo's mother is a degreed nurse in intensive care and his father is a carer out in the community.
'They are hard-working, gentle, honest people and their children have had a good upbringing.'