A woman who lived with Nottingham triple killer Valdo Calocane years before his brutal attacks believes he put “small animal bones” in the bath of their flat.
Further details have emerged at the inquiry into Calocane’s June 13, 2023 killings about an incident involving “violence against an animal” that was briefly referred to weeks ago.
A senior officer previously said he was not sure that the woman’s evidence would have added “any more value” to the investigation into Calocane – who brutally killed University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and grandad Ian Coates in the early hours of June 13, 2023.
The inquiry led by Her Honour Deborah Taylor is now in its seventh week of examining failings in the run-up to the attacks and the response to them.
Someone who lived with Valdo Calocane in shared accommodation whilst attending Pembrokeshire College, where she believed Calocane was a cleaner, contacted Nottinghamshire Police after the June 13 attacks.
The woman said she believed Calocane had a history of mental illness dating back to 2013 and described an incident involving “violence and an animal”.
Further details about this incident were presented at the inquiry’s hearing on Monday (April 13) when the full witness statement from this woman was presented.
The statement says: “I did not personally witness the incident involving an animal. I had moved out of the property the day before but returned the next day to collect the rest of my belongings.
“When I arrived, another housemate, Jake, asked whether I had been at the house during the previous night.
“I told him that I had not been there. Jake told me that he had heard someone going in and out of my room during the night.
“He also said that the following morning he had found that the bath in the bathroom was full of soil. When he began clearing the soil out of the bath, he told me that he had found bones, which he said appeared to be the spine of a small animal.
“I observed mud on the floor in the hallway and in my bedroom.
“At the time the housemates discussed it among ourselves and some people assumed it may have been Valdo because of other behaviour we had observed, although I did not witness who was responsible.”
Nottinghamshire Police never questioned this woman and a police log said this was because the woman lived in Wales.
When previously asked why this woman was never interviewed by Nottinghamshire Police, former Detective Superintendent Leigh Sanders previously told the inquiry: “My view on that would be how does that add any more value over and above the information subsequently obtained in the medical records and the updates from families in relation to more recent mental health from 2020?”
The witness statement shown at Monday’s hearing detailed other strange behaviour from Calocane during his time in Wales, including frequent “screaming” noises coming from his room and him “standing in the dark” in the garden on multiple occasions.
Calocane also became angry when a flatmate asked about missing food and would only speak to his flatmates “through the gap” of his bedroom door, the inquiry was told.
Karim Khalil KC, the leading counsel in the prosecution of Calocane, gave evidence to the inquiry on Monday and when asked about Nottinghamshire Police’s failure to take a statement from the Wales witness, he said: “It would have been helpful to take it.”
The inquiry continues.