Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Admiral Duncan nail bomb attack, which left three dead and scores of others injured when a nail bomb ripped through the pub located in heart of London's Soho.
The bomb, planted by 22-year-old engineer David Copeland, killed 27-year-old Andrea Dykes, who was four months pregnant, Nik Moore, 31, and John Light, 32. The three friends were drinking in the pub with Andrea’s husband, Julian, and John’s partner, Gary Partridge, before a trip to see the musical Mamma Mia.
Julian was so seriously injured that he wasn’t informed of the death of his wife and friends until three weeks after the attack. Gary suffered serious burns, and it was thirteen days before he was told that his partner John had died.
Many of the others caught in the Admiral Duncan blast were seriously injured, with four of them having to have limbs amputated.
The Admiral Duncan on Old Compton Street – which was allegedly chosen by Copeland because it was the first gay pub from an alphabetical list – reopened nine weeks later, at the same minute that the bomb had exploded, at 6.37pm. The pub was rebuilt exactly as it was, apart from the addition of a specially sculpted light with three flickering candles and 86 twinkling bulbs that acts as a memorial to the dead and injured.
It was the third and last attack in a 13-day bombing campaign committed by Copeland, a neo-Nazi and former BNP member who believed in a master race.
In the fortnight before the Admiral Duncan explosion, he also targeted the black community in Brixton, South London, with a nail bomb that injured 50, and the south Asian community in Brick Lane, East London, with another nail bomb attack in which 13 people were injured.
At his Old Bailey trial the following year, the jury rejected Copeland’s defence of diminished responsibility on the grounds that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was found guilty of three counts of murder and three counts of causing explosions in order to endanger life, receiving six life sentences.
It was originally recommended that he serve a minimum of 30 years in custody before he could be considered for parole. In 2007, however, a High Court judge increased his minimum tariff to at least 50 years, owing to the case being of “exceptional gravity.”
Today, victims of the Admiral Duncan will be remembered with a two-minute silence at St Anne’s Gardens in Soho, commencing at 6.37pm. The Gardens will stay open until 7.30pm for those wishing to pay their respects.