CCTV footage showed a former soldier scaling his garden fence to enter his neighbours’ property, where he stabbed them to death with his ceremonial military dagger.
Former Major Collin Reeves is on trial at Bristol Crown Court, where he denies the murder of 33-year-old Jennifer Chapple and her 36-year-old teacher husband, Stephen, on November 21 last year.
Reeves claims he suffered from an abnormality of mental functioning at the time of the murders at Norton Fitzwarren, near Taunton in Somerset, and has admitted involuntary manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
Reeves is seen in the footage calmly climbing up and entering the house next door in Dragon Rise to kill the couple.
He is then seen closing the gate behind him and climbing over the fence to return home.
The video was shown to the jury and has now been released by Avon and Somerset Police.
Additional footage, which involved loud screams from the victims with Reeves yelling ‘die f*****s, die”, was shown to the jury but not made public.
Reeves had been involved in a long-running dispute with the couple over designated parking at the new-build housing development.
Just 10 days before the murders, on November 11 last year, Reeves allegedly verbally abused Ms. Chapple outside her home following an earlier exchange between the victim and Reeves’ wife, Kayley Reeves.
The police also released a video of this altercation.
The court heard that there were several flashpoints over the parking issue in the months leading up to the killings, but prosecutors said this was the “most significant.”
Reeves is seen breaking into Mrs. Chapple’s property when she arrives home and is heard accusing her of “fucking” and calling her a “sassy little bitch”.
Prosecutor Adam Feest said in an “angry and aggressive tone” that he also calls her a “fat b***h” and a “f**c***”.
He added: ‘You get a sense of the tone and the level and the nature of the relationship.’
The jury was also shown a clip of Reeves’ 999 call made minutes after the attack.
The operator at one point mistook him for the injured party, asking if he was hurt before he told her: ‘I went around with a knife, I stabbed them both.’
When asked if the couple were awake when he left, he replied: “No, I think they were adrift.”
“He was lying on the floor, she was lying on the couch.”
When officers arrived on scene, the couple’s children were still sleeping upstairs in the home.
Reeves’ mother, Lynn Reeves, said in a filmed police interview that the jury was shown earlier that her son is a “closed book” who “never shares his emotions.”
He served in the Army from 2002 to 2017, including in Afghanistan, but never spoke about what he saw there, he said.
It was claimed that Reeves appeared to have been struggling with his mental health since returning from Afghanistan.
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