Ex-commando sentenced to 38 years in prison for murdering neighbors during a parking dispute

• A former commando is sentenced to at least 38 years in prison.
• He stabbed his neighbors to death over a parking dispute.
• Collin Reeves, 35, used the ceremonial dagger he was handed when he left the Army to murder Stephen and Jennifer Chapple.

A former commando is sentenced to at least 38 years in prison for stabbing his neighbors to death over a parking dispute.

On November 21, Collin Reeves, 35, used the ceremonial dagger he was handed when he left the Army to murder Stephen and Jennifer Chapple while their children slept upstairs.

He had been in a long-running legal battle with them about designated parking on a new house development in Norton Fitzwarren, Somerset, near Taunton.

On CCTV, Reeves, a former Royal Engineer, was seen jumping the fence dividing their back gardens and entering the Chapples’ back door. Mrs. Chapple can be heard screaming in despair as the ex-soldier stabs them both six times while shouting, ‘Die, you f***ers, die.’

Mrs. Chapple, 33, was unable to move off the sofa and protect herself, while her husband, 36, was discovered near to the door.

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Reeves contacted the cops to report what he’d done, but later denied murder, opting instead for a guilty plea to manslaughter based on diminished culpability.

He offered his identity as ‘Lance Corporal Reeves, sir’ and his service number at the police station before explaining, ‘I was simply doing my job – it was an operation.’

However, two forensic psychiatrists determined that he did not have psychosis or acute post-traumatic stress disorder, and that he just had mild to moderate depression.

Last Thursday, a jury in Bristol Crown Court found him guilty of murder. On Tuesday, Mr. Justice Garnham sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 38 years.

The killings, according to the judge, “ripped the heart out of two completely normal, decent families.”

‘You left on the floor bleeding to death, while their two children were sleeping above,’ he told Reeves.

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‘They are orphans as a result of your murderous behavior. Their parents put them to bed that night, and they would never see them again. You have caused enormous harm to those two innocent youngsters.’

At the same time, Mr. Justice Garnham observed, Reeves had caused immense harm to his own girls, who will now grow up without their father.

‘For a mother to lose a child is something that causes never-ending pain, knowing there will constantly be a darkness inside you, a light switched out that can never be replaced,’ said Mrs. Chapple’s mother, Ann Clayton, in a victim impact statement.

‘An effervescent, compassionate, lovely light in the world,’ she said of her daughter.

Lynn Reeves, Reeves’ mother, came up after the sentence was handed down to make her own speech, blaming her son’s conviction on the failures of the two psychiatrists who assessed him.

Before she was stopped by the judge, she stated that there should never have been a trial and that his manslaughter pleas should have been accepted.

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