The man who led the police response to the double murder of two teenage boys in South Bristol said the biggest challenge in the investigation was the emotional toll that began as soon as it became apparent that ‘two beautiful boys had been cut down for nothing’.
Five people, including four teenagers, with the youngest just 15, have been convicted of the double murder of Max Dixon and Mason Rist, after a jury decided they were all equally culpable for the knife wounds which took the lives of the two youngsters.
The court had been told the defendants were ‘a five-a-side team’, driven into Knowle West by Antony Snook, 45, with the four armed teenagers ‘hunting down’ Max and Mason ‘like a pack. For Det Supt Gary Haskins, the convictions are the result of a ten-month long investigation that began when police were first called to Ilminster Avenue in Knowle West late on the last Saturday evening of January, and the end of a gruelling, often traumatic month-long court case.
“I’m humbled by both Max’s and Mason’s families,” said Det Supt Haskins. “They’ve been at court every day. They’ve witnessed things at court that no parents should ever see. Their courage, their love for each other, their love for their lost sons, is just overwhelming. Every day I go and meet them after court and I draw a breath before I go into them, such is, you know, what I take from that family, the strength I take,” he added.
The murders of Max and Mason back in late January shocked the country and stunned the community in Knowle West, and across the city in the days and weeks afterwards. Bristol is tragically no stranger to knife crime, and teenage boys losing their lives in quick and brutal ways. But the deaths of Max and Mason took the shock far beyond South Bristol. It was two boys, best friends, stabbed to death together, seconds after leaving Mason’s home to walk to their local takeaway, in an apparently motiveless attack.
And at the centre of it were two families, and an entire community, left grieving their sudden loss. “No parents should ever see what they’ve seen, and yet they so respectfully were driving us to continue the investigation,” added Det Supt Haskins.
“I always say this, that I wish that they never had to meet me. If they wouldn’t have met me, their sons would still be here. And I’m humbled by their response to what’s taken place, and that of the city, I want to say that. This is an investigation that’s brought the city, sadly, together.
“I’ve been at sporting events where the boys were remembered and seen the whole stadium stand up and applaud. It’s hugely significant for this city and the way in which they’ve come together, to bring justice to those two boys,” he added.
Police officers who happened to be nearby found Mason, 15, lying in the middle of the road outside his house having suffered two deep stab wounds, and his best friend Max, 16, collapsed down the side of a house just down the road, having suffered a single stab wound to the side.
Police began to treat them on the scene before paramedics arrived. Both were rushed to hospital – Mason to the Bristol Children’s Hospital and Max to Southmead. Medics there battled to save them, but just around 1am that night, just an hour and a half later, first Mason, then Max, were declared dead.
They had both suffered massive blood loss from being stabbed by what the court later heard were ‘fearsome’ weapons.
By the time Max and Mason were losing their fight to survive in hospital, police had already made the first of more than 15 arrests, and it was a key one. Within four minutes, officers had identified a car seen speeding off from the scene, tracked it to Antony Snook’s address in Hartcliffe, and arrested him as he returned from taking his dog from a late night walk.
His arrest happened so quickly after the attack that the two boys – at that point – were still alive and in hospital. They stopped the police van taking him to the custody suite at Keynsham police station to rearrest him on suspicion of murder, when the news came through that Mason had died, en route.
From Snook, police were able to piece together the identities of the four teenagers who CCTV showed had leapt from his car in Ilminster Avenue, confronted Max and Mason on the pavement, chased them back down the road, caught up with them and inflicted the fatal stab wounds. From the time the four jumped out of Antony Snook’s car to the moment they jumped back in, having committed two murders, was just 32 or 33 seconds.
The speed, the brutality and the weapons used shocked even seasoned police detectives like Gary Haskins, a veteran of many of Avon and Somerset’s most horrific murders over the years. “This is an investigation I’ll never forget, ever,” he said. “I’ll never forget any of my families because each family should never get to meet me. But, you know, I’m a parent – this is two beautiful boys cut down for nothing. ‘Cut down’ are awful words to use, but they were attacked with swords for no reason whatsoever.
“Thirty two seconds to kill two children,” he said. “This is an investigation that’s pulled on me as much as any other I’ve dealt with. Shocked is the right word. There are no other words to put the context of what happened to those two boys. It’s horrific,” he added.
CCTV and doorbell cameras in Ilminster Avenue – including one from Mason’s own house – filmed the attack, and they revealed to police the size of the weapons used. Two were recovered, and were in court, safely inside huge perspex tubes, and the images of the massive black blades, with serrated edges, were occasionally called upon in the court case.
Det Supt Haskins agreed it is inadequate to call them knives. “They’re not knives,” he said. “One of them is a sword. One of them is only designed to cause significant harm. There is no positive from taking that weapon onto the street. And one of them is a machete-type knife. They were the two we recovered, we’ve not recovered others, or at least one, knife.
“There are no places in society for those weapons. You can’t purchase them. We can’t second-guess where they got them from. In all of my years of police service, one of those weapons is the most horrific weapon I’ve ever seen,” he added.
The investigative side of the case was, in many ways, the easier bit for Det Supt Haskins and his team – the pulling together of all the CCTV, the collating of the phone records, hampered because all four of the youngsters involved smashed up or disposed of their phones and they’ve never been found, the detective work to establish who was in the car, who ran where when they burst out of it, ‘armed to the teeth’, and ‘hunted down’ Max and Mason. The harder part was dealing with the emotions – this was a case of children killing children.
“I think the emotional challenge is the biggest thing,” said Det Supt Haskins. “This is two beautiful children that lost their lives for no reason whatsoever, going about their business being children and boys and friends.
“So, the emotional impact on the constabulary as detectives…we’re sort of used to trying to put the pieces together, but for me, it was the magnitude of the investigation that these two children that lost their lives for nothing,” he added.