How Taylor Swift Dance Class Knifeman Axel Rudakubana Hid Secret Obsession With Dictators and Genocidal Killers Before Murder Rampage
Axel Rudakubana was nursing a series of disturbing fixations before his knife bloodbath.
Jan. 21 2025, Published 9:52 a.m. ET
Taylor Swift dance class knifeman Axel Rudakubana hid a secret obsession with dictators and genocidal killers before his murder rampage which shocked Great Britain.
RadarOnline.com can reveal Rudakubana, who pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls in court yesterday, searched graphic material online to fuel his obsession with extreme violence in the months and years leading up to his attack at a dance school in Southport, near Liverpool, last July.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, lost their lives in the madman's July 29 attack.
He was expelled from school aged 13 for bringing in a knife and threatening an attack and two months later returned to the same school armed with a hockey stick seeking further violence.
Rudakubana, now 18, never returned to mainstream education, instead being assigned to specialist educational units which he reportedly rarely attended.
British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer joins locals leaving flowers near the scene of the knifeman's carnage on Hart Street in Southport.
A source said: "He became obsessed with wars, conflicts, genocides and the most appalling atrocities.
"Just as some children are fixated on football, they know all the players, all their stats, he was the same about genocidal killers and bloody dictators.
"If you wanted to know about the IRA's killing campaign or Colonel Gaddafi's brutal regime, Rudakubana could tell you all about it.
"He collected books and literature and read up on it obsessively. The nastier it was, the more interesting he found it.
"It's just chilling how he went from being an apparently normal Year 9 kid to becoming just uncontrollably evil."
Rudakubana edcuated himself on the IRA's killing campaign and Colonel Gaddafi's brutal regime as part of his obsession with extreme violence.
Those who worked with Rudakubana say it is no coincidence one of the acts of brutality which fascinated him was the 1994 genocide which prompted his parents to flee Rwanda.
As many as one million people – mostly from the Rudakubanas' minority Tutsi community – died in just over 100 days of violence that tore apart the east African nation.
According to Rwandan community members, his father, who would have been 18 at the time of the genocide, was a soldier in rebel Tutsi army the Rwanda Patriotic Front.
His mother, Laetitia Muzayire, only survived through being sheltered in a church by her family's Hutu neighbours, a sister later revealed.
However, an older sister was slaughtered.
Despite Axel's interest in the Rwandan genocide, sources who worked with him stressed it was "just one of many conflicts that he was fixated by".
"There was no ideology behind it, he just wanted to kill as many people as possible," one said.
Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time of his knife attack, admitted to stabbing and murdering three young girls at a Swift-themed dance class in Southport last summer, while also confessing to possessing terrorist material and manufacturing the deadly toxin ricin.
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The young girls were attending a Taylor Swift-themed summer workshop at a local dance school when Rudakubana struck.
On the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court, the now 18-year-old, wearing a blue face mask, refused to confirm his identity or stand for the judge.
Following a brief exchange with his lawyer, he quietly pleaded guilty to all charges.
Rudakubana eventually confessed to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.
He also confessed to attempting to murder eight other children, whose identities are protected by law, as well as the class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
