Student admits murder of housemate found stabbed 30 times in ‘cold-blooded execution’

A university student has pleaded guilty to murder after lying in wait for his housemate to return home before stabbing him 30 times in a “carefully planned and cold-blooded execution”.

Zack Coughlan, 23, had denied murdering James Collins, 21, in the garden of their home in Filton, South Gloucestershire, after dressing all in black and wearing gloves to ambush his housemate.

However, he changed his plea to guilty following a legal ruling by the trial judge on Tuesday.

Bristol Crown Court heard Mr Collins was stabbed repeatedly and Coughlan left him dying in the alleyway as he cycled away on his housemate’s bike.

Mr Justice Linden ruled Coughlan’s partial defence of manslaughter by reason of loss of control could not be left to the jury to consider as part of their deliberations on the murder charge.

Mr Linden told the jury: “You will have just heard that the defendant has changed his plea to the indictment to guilty.

“That means that he now admits the charge of murder.”

He added: “I would like, on behalf of us all, to thank you for the service that you have given in this case.”

Coughlan, of Cleve Road, Filton, is set to be sentenced on Wednesday morning.

Mr Collins was attacked shortly before 6pm on 8 April this year after cycling home from the UWE Bristol where he was studying robotics alongside his killer.

Adam Vaitilingam KC, prosecuting, told the jury: “This was a carefully planned and cold-blooded execution.”

Coughlan dumped the bike at a nearby retail park, bought a change of clothes and threw his bloodstained clothing in a pond, in carrier bags weighed down with bricks.

He returned to the house they shared in Cleve Road at about 9pm, put a pizza in the oven and did some online gaming with friends. At around 2am, Coughlan dialled 999 claiming he had just found Mr Collins’s body in the rear garden.

The attack was caught on CCTV installed at the house they shared, which Coughlan showed the attending police officers who initially treated him as a witness.

The defendant’s blood had been found on Mr Collins’s bike, and analysis of his mobile phone matched the killer’s movements afterwards captured on CCTV.

He also had injuries to his hands, and he told people who saw him bleeding that he had been climbing trees and had fallen and hurt himself.

After the murder, Coughlan told a university friend he wanted to hold a memorial for his housemate.

Coughlan and Mr Collins, originally from Swansea, were both final year students and lived together in a £300,000 three-bedroomed house owned by the defendant.

The defendant is half Danish and grew up with his family in Cork, Ireland, before moving to Bristol to study robotics at the age of 19.

In a statement released after Mr Collins’s death, his family said: “Our Jamie was a bright, kind, gentle and unassuming young man with his whole life ahead of him.

“He was looking forward to finishing his uni journey and planning to come home to us in Swansea in just a few weeks’ time.

“We know he was heading for a hugely successful future following his engineering and robotics degree.”