Guns are 'intoxicating': Salford killer Kiaran Stapleton is 'fascinated' by pistols, court hears in murder trial
A Salford man on trial for murder, after Indian student Anuj Bidve was shot dead on Boxing Day last year, claims he is intoxicated by guns.
Kiaran Stapleton, 21, of Ordsall, had a copy of notorious criminal Noel ‘Razor’ Smith’s autobiography and said it was ‘a laugh’ to read in prison.
The jury at Manchester Crown Court were told how the book was an attempt to ‘inflate his reputation’ with other inmates.
In a note left in Stapleton’s cell, he wrote: "As I've said before I do like a gun. I find them fascinating.
"There is something strangely intoxicating about the way a good pistol fits into a human hand. I can appreciate the weight and power of a decent shooter in the same way that a craftsman gets a kick out of handling the tools of his trade.
"Don't get me wrong, I don't have the desire to w**k over them. It is just I find them aesthetically pleasing.
"I suppose there are no end of ologists will frown at my penchant for firearms and swear that it makes me a mother-fixated bed wetting psycho with a small penis."
He signed off: "Kiaran Psycho Stapleton."
Dr Adrian West, a clinical psychologist who interviewed Stapleton, discussed Stapleton’s motives for writing the note.
"He said to me that he intended to read it to people in education because he thought this was a laugh," he said.
"I think it is possible that he intended that it be read to an audience whom he could reasonably assume would have been aware of why he had been remanded into prison and in deliberately choosing the paragraph that glorifies handguns he was also making a considered choice to inflate his reputation as someone who had killed with a handgun."
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Dr West said Mr Bidve’s shooting – which Stapleton admits to on the grounds of diminished responsibility – was carried out because in the community ‘that act would be a means of enhancing [Stapleton’s] reputation’.