Cumbria shootings: The 44-mile drive which became a journey to depravity

Retracing the 44.3 miles Derrick Bird is believed to have driven on his murderous journey and stopping by each of the 18 places he is known to have fired a weapon, two things became clear today. The first is how the 52-year-old driver evaded police for so long, managing to kill nine men and three women. A taxi driver with more than two decades experience of west Cumbria's lanes, Bird took backroads, tracks and sidestreets, some close to his home, that only he could have known so well. The second inescapable horror about Bird's fatal journey is how it became more depraved as the minutes ticked by. It may have begun as an attempt to settle a dispute but it descended rapidly into something unreal; a drive across a serene countryside, piercing an otherwise tranquil day with potshots at people unlucky enough to be by the side of the road at the wrong time. What police believe was the first leg of Bird's journey was a short one. The drive from his home in Rowrah, a hamlet near the village of Frizington, to a nearby country home could not have taken more than five minutes. The view from High Trees House, where he is believed to have shot his twin brother, David, is picturesque. Couched on the side of a hill, the only sign of human activity are the rooftops of distant farmhouses. How early he arrived there is unclear. It is thought Bird may have pulled up in his grey Citroën Picasso before 10am, perhaps earlier. At noon, recalled Shirley, 58, who works at the reception of Dock Ray Meadow caravan park half a mile down the road, armed police arrived, asking for directions to the secluded house. "Sometimes you hear gunshots because it is a farming area," she said. "You wouldn't necessarily think anything of it. There is a moor up there where people sometimes shoot." From High Trees, Bird is believed to have headed to the home of his family solicitor, Kevin Commons. There is one sighting of Bird at Commons's house at 5am. Bird knew exactly where he was going. Mowbray Farm, the Commons's family home, is almost completely concealed behind trees on a road leading from the village. A derelict concrete track cuts through nettle bushes to where, today, a huddle of cars were parked in front of a cottage and farm outhouses. It was here, or nearby, that Commons, 60, was gunned down. His next victims – four miles away – were the colleagues Bird had worked with for 20 years. He drove past the village of Cleator Moor, and a cemetery, before the sea came into view, and he descended into the outskirts of Whitehaven, a port town and a hub for the area. He drove through the town with his gun hanging out of the window, possibly with the intent of settling a vendetta after quarrelling with fellow taxi drivers the night before. A colleague, Darren Rewcastle, was shot near the taxi rank on Duke Street, the main thoroughfare for the town dotted with beauty parlours and fast food shops shortly before 10.30am,. A second taxi driver, former soldier Don Reed, was shot in the back, but managed to crawl away on his hands and knees. Bird used his weapons in at least three other streets in Whitehaven, as he left the town in a south-westerly direction, towards the hilly village of St Bees. He had by then killed three people, all of whom he knew well. Police are still trying to stitch together the precise order in which Bird killed his next nine victims, and attempted to kill several more. But they know his route, and roughly at what time his victims fell to the ground. It is a journey of meadows and neat stone walls, yesterday basking in the same warm sunshine as they had 24 hours earlier. By then the message was beginning to spread through local villages that a gunman was on the loose, as people locked themselves indoors. But many were out enjoying an early June morning. Susan Hughes, 57, was carrying shopping bags up a hill in Egremont as Bird's car approached. Passers-by found her lying the street moments later, on the corner of Hagget End, her shopping still in her hands, around 11am. A mother of two, Hughes is not thought to have known Bird. His next murder was less than a minute's drive away, down the hill and by a bridge over a creak. Kenneth Fishburn, a retired Sellafield worker in his 60s, was shot on the bridge. Nearly everyone in Egremont will have known both victims. By midday today, the village shop had run out of flowers. Shooting as he drove, Bird headed inland, down a concealed lane that took him to Town End Farm, near the village of Wilton. It was here that he killed a couple, Jennifer Jackson, 66, and her husband James Jackson, who used to work for the ambulance service. Jennifer, a secretary at a local church, is thought to have left home to buy a newspaper. Her husband, 71, is believed to have been killed at a nearby location as he came looking for her. Isaac Dixon, a part-time mole catcher was standing a short distance away, near Carlton Wood, talking to a farmer, when he was shot. His body fell by a ditch near the side of a field. Known locally as Spike, he was in his 60s and lived alone in a flat down the road in Beckgreen. If that spate of killings – a quick succession of shots in and around Egremont – cannot be explained neither can the temporary lull that followed. It appears Bird put his guns by his side and drove south for seven miles until he reached a hotel by the side of the road, on the approach to Gosforth. Garry Purdham, 31, a farmer and local rugby player with two children, was mending a fence outside the Red Admiral hotel. Witnesses said they believe Bird may have beckoned the farmer to his window before shooting him dead, a method that may have been used in other shootings. Two shots rang out and Purdham collapsed. The killer was then seen exiting his car and firing another shot at Purdham as he lay on the ground. Jamie Clark, 23, an estate agent and possibly the youngest victim, is thought to have been shot next, as he crossed paths with Bird, who was headed into the seaside village of Seascale of some 1,800 people. Clark had been driving back from a viewing when he was fatally shot. By the time Bird meandered toward Seascale's seafront around 11.30am, news of his imminent arrival had spread. Lyn Edwards, 59, a volunteer at the Shackles Off Youth Project, had contacted her son Sam, 25, and both were urging people to leave the beach and hurry inside. When Lyn Edwards returned to her youth project, which is by a small railway underpass, she realised Bird must have passed by, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. "I came along here and saw the Land Rover with a man screaming inside and glass on the road and blood on the road," she said today, as contract workers swept the debris. The victim – a local landlord Harry Berger – was shot twice in the arm, but is thought to have survived the attack. Doctors and nurses from a nearby clinic tended to Berger, who was carried out of his car on a ladder from the volunteer fire station, a makeshift stretcher. He waited more than an hour for the ambulance to arrive, according to those who went to his aid. David Moore, 57, the village's fire watchman, became its emergency service. He walked around the corner, and up Drigg Road, along a steep incline, to see the two other local people who had been shot dead and left by the side of the road. The first was Michael Pike, 64, who was on his bicycle when he was shot. When Moore found him, placing a green tarpaulin over the body, he was still straddling the bicycle that leaned up against a wall. Moore walked another 100 metres before he came across the body of Jane Robinson, slumped on the pavement with her legs on the road. She had been delivering shopping leaflets when she was shot in the head. She was 66, and the last person to be killed by Bird. Like the first, she was a twin. She lived not far away with her sister, Barrie. Both were known to Leslie Temple, 77, one of the first to find Robinson's body after she was killed. He stood in his front garden today, recalling the moment. "I recognised her right away," he said. "I was upset because I recognised her and she was my friend." He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and added: "This was a war zone all the way through." The final leg of Bird's journey was not without incident. Others were shot but not killed as he drove inland, entering the Lake District. Rolling hills are replaced here by snaking curves and rugged peaks. He must have driven holidaymakers through the winding roads many times before, and known they end in thick woodland, where he would continue his last few hundred metres on foot. First he had to drive by two holiday camps, and a children's railway, that had been stopped in its tracks. He turned left, toward Boot. At the end of the road there is nowhere to turn.