Law&Crime Sidebar - ‘Evil’ Teen Who Slaughtered Young Girls at Taylor Swift Dance Lesson Learns Fate

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Axel Rudakubana, now 18, admitted to killing three young girls in Southport, England last year. The girls were taking part in a Taylor Swift-themed dance event when Rudakubana went on a stabbing spree. Now some in the UK are crying foul over the killer’s punishment. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the horrifying case with former FBI and CIA agent Tracy Walder.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get a FREE title history report AND a 30-day free trial of Triple Lock Protection TODAY by going to https://www.hometitlelock.com/sidebar and using promo code SIDEBAR HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. It was at least the most extreme, shocking, and exceptionally serious crime. It's one of the most brutal crimes we've ever talked about here on Sidebar. A teenager will likely spend the rest of his life in a UK prison after he viciously stabbed three little girls to death during a Taylor Swift themed dance class. The judge told the emotional people in the courtroom during his sentencing that it was the acts of brave adults and children that kept the slaughter from being even worse. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime,

I'm Jesse Weber. Axel Ruta Cabana, now 18 years old, was just 17 when he took a taxi to a shopping center in Southport, north of Liverpool, with a large kitchen knife in tow. And police say he went into a dance studio where 26 young girls were taking part in a dance class inspired by pop icon Taylor Swift. And that is when Rudy Cabana went on a frenzied and brutal rampage on July 29th, 2024, stabbing children. Three girls died. Seven-year-old LC dot Stamcom, six-year-old BB King, and nine-year-old Alice de Silva Agiar lost their lives. Eight other children were injured, two adults who tried to intervene in the attack. They had grave wounds, and this attack only stopped when other children were able to get

outside and alert people to what was going on. Now, Rudy Cabana entered a guilty plea on what was supposed to be his first day of trial. He was convicted of three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder, possession of a knife in a public place, he was also convicted of production of a biological toxin, which we're going to get into in a moment. But this is a savage, savage crime. And I'll have to talk about the details of this and whether or not this could have been prevented in any way. So to talk more about what is truly a horrific case, I want to bring back in, friend of the show, former CIA and FBI agent Tracy Walder, News Nation contributor.

Tracy, thank you so much for coming on. This is just an unimaginable, unspeakable crime. How do you even prevent something like this? How do you even grasp something like this? You know, the idea that somebody would go into a dance studio with children and commit a crime, I don't know what the answer is. Well, thank you so much for having me, Jesse. And, you know, I guess as a mom of a nine-year-old who I just dropped off at a dance studio,

last night, I think this is something that touches a lot of people. It's obviously devastating. Some of these girls were stabbed over 100 times by Ruta Cabana. One of the interesting things about him and about this case, quite frankly, is really how British law enforcement the system failed. He had been in and out of prisons, out of facilities for minors, multiple times, three times, own parents had actually called on him. A teacher had called on him. A classmate had called on him. He brought knives to school, hockey sticks to school, and had tried to attack others in the past. However,

because of his age, they kept not keeping him in detention. And that's incredibly frustrating. I am going to get more into his past in a minute than what he was looking at because I think that's, you talk about red flags. There seem to be some apparent red flags. But going back to this, so we have Sir Julian Goose, a British high court judge in Liverpool, sentenced to Rudy Cabana on Thursday. And according to the judge, he had to be removed from the courtroom because he wouldn't stop yelling about feeling sick while the lawyers were speaking. During this sentence hearing, Axel Rudi Cabana was determined to disrupt the proceedings so that he would not have to face the victims of his crimes and justice. I was required to have him removed from court, not because that is what he wanted, but he was preventing the hearing from being held in the normal way.

Accordingly, I passed sentence in his voluntary absence, whilst his counsel, both leading and junior and solicitor are present in court. Judge Goose said Rudy Cabana had been checked by medical specialist before he came to court. It was found to be fit to attend, but he was removed so things could proceed. He then went over the facts of the case and just the, horrific injuries that these girls suffered. It was of such extreme violence of the utmost and exceptionally high seriousness

that is difficult to comprehend why it was done. I'm sure that Rudy Cabana had a settled and determined intention to carry out these offenses and that had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child, all 26 of them, as well as any adults who got in his way. It was only because, some managed to escape that prevented many more from being murdered.

Yeah, just a really disturbing case here. Look, the stories we cover on Sidebar show that the world can be quite scary, and it's true. And for those of you thinking, you know, how do I even go about protecting myself from all that's out there? Well, I'll tell you what, if you think about protecting your home, I mean, what property is more important than protecting that? I didn't even know this, but apparently talking about crimes, home title fraud is rampant right now.

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at no out-of-pocket cost to you. So to protect your home, you go to home tidal lock.com slash sidebar. Make sure to use promo code sidebar because you get a 30-day free trial of their triple lock protection and a free title history report to make sure you aren't already a victim. The sheer number of stab wounds that we're talking about here that these little girls had. It's, it's, it's, again, unbelievable. Seven-year-old Elsie had 85 sharp force injuries, according to the medical examiner. Six-year-old Beebe, the youngest victim, had more than a hundred. When the police arrived at about 12 noon, they found him standing over the body of BB King and still holding the knife. It was Beebe who had suffered at least 122 separate

knife wounds. He was arrested, taken into custody. And whilst Rudy Cabana did not say anything in his police interviews, he did make unsolicited comments which are deeply disturbing, including, quote, I'm glad to see those kids are dead. It makes me happy, close quote. And quote, it's a good thing those children are dead, close quote. Alice had multiple stab wounds as well, but she was able to get out of there, but she collapsed outside. According to the prosecution, two window cleaners who were nearby heard the commotion, rushed to

the scene to help. One of them did CPR on Alice, but again, as I mentioned, she died later that night at the hospital. You know, Tracy, talk to me about what it's like as a member of law enforcement to respond to a crime scene like this, to investigate a crime like this. It's really unconscionable, quite frankly, Jesse. I think seeing children in this state is not something that anyone can ever recover from even law enforcement. I would imagine that they are they did receive mental health counseling and those kinds of things, rightly so after they processed a scene like this. Also, the savage nature that you mentioned, stabbing is obviously a very brutal, brutal crime. There is a lot of blood associated with that. And so to see that

coupled with the young age of these children is obviously very shocking and not something that they will forget. And by the way, the evidence against him was, you know, like a mountain of evidence right? Even I believe he had essentially confessed to what he did, right? Yes, it's my understanding that he did confess to what he did. There was forensic evidence that was found on him. And as you mentioned before, he did enter a guilty plea ultimately. So it does sound like there was a mountain of evidence, but there was other evidence as well that was recovered that I do find disturbing. Oh, we're going to talk about that in a second. But yeah, there was video evidence as well, kind of tracking.

what his movements were. But I will tell you this, because Rudy Cabana was 17 when he committed this crime, UK law prevented Judge Goose from sentencing him to what's called a whole life order, so basically life in prison. Instead, Rudy Cabana was sentenced to 52 years. And at that point, it'll be up to a parole board to decide if he should be released, but court officials expressed doubt that Rudy Cabana would ever be released, considering what he did. Now, this attack has spurred conversations about bringing back the death penalty, not surprisingly. I mean, this was abolished in the United Kingdom back in 1998, but you know, you have to say if there's ever a crime that might warrant it, this might be it. So what do we know about Axel, Rudy Cabana? Well, this is

where Tracy and I were talking about. Tracy, I want you to stand by for this because, and hear all of this, because I am curious if more could have been done to prevent this. So according to the New York Times, he is a British citizen who was born in Wales. His parents are reportedly originally from Wanda. Now, the murders sparked anti-immigration riots around the UK as disinformation spread about Ruta Cabana. And there are calls for a public inquiry into how this could have happened and why the judge called Ruda Kavana's obsession with violence and genocide, why that didn't raise serious red flag sooner. What am I talking about? Well, according to U.K. court officials, at ages 13 and 14, Ruda Kabanah was referred three times to a British counterterrorism program

called prevent. That's because of his online activity. Officials say in 2019, the team was researching school shootings during class. Then in 2021, he was found to be uploading images of Libyan dictator Myanmar al-Kaddafi to his Instagram account. And then he was referred again for researching the London Bridge terror attack. The New York Times reports that each of those referrals was eventually dropped because Rudy Cabana didn't, quote, meet the threshold for intervention. And while Rudy Cabana didn't seem to adhere to any specific ideology, the content found on his computer showed he had this fixation on violence. The New York Times reported that material on the teen's computer, quote, included a history of Nazi Germany, reports on violence

in modern Sri Lanka, documents about war in Chechnya, a book on clan cleansing in Somalia, academic reports on the Rwandan genocide, and a paper on punishments used on enslaved people on 18th century British plantations. But it appears that at least one of Ruta Cabanus family members, they were worried that the teen might be planning to do something awful. Police release video from outside Ruda Cabanah's home, showing his father speaking with a taxi driver, asking the driver not to take his son anywhere

because he was afraid of what he might do. And at the end of the clip, you can see Ruta Cabana get out of the backseat of the taxi. Tracy, talk to me about what this history tells you about this person, whether these red flags should have been assigned to stop him, or is it limited? You know, particularly if you're dealing with a teen who might be researching these things, you know, arguably it could be for school or an interest. It's a very difficult job trying to predict the future.

But at the same point, there seemed to be red flags. I mean, I also found the al-Qaeda manual and rice in, you know, on him as well, which is, in my opinion, incredibly disturbing. When I was at the CIA, I actually worked with the British white a bit in counterterrorism and those kinds of things. One thing I will say, although they are very staunch allies of ours and we should respect the relationship that we have with them, their criminal justice system, in my opinion, is deeply, deeply flawed. And I feel that a lot of individuals in Britain feel the same way about it. Their punishments do not necessarily match the crime and it's very, very difficult to prosecute individuals under certain sets of charges, particularly

minors. They are very protective of minors, and rightly so we need to be. But to a certain extent, things like this in the United States, in my opinion, would qualify someone for any kind of mental health holds, particularly children. But in the United Kingdom, they don't meet that threshold. In my opinion, Ruda Cabana was a ticking time bomb. There is no question. to the point that his family obviously felt that he was as well. But again, as you mentioned, he did not meet that threshold to basically be involuntarily committed, if you will, indefinitely. And so that is what is problematic here in the U.S. If we had a student mentioning anything about a school shooting or researching anything about a school shooting, they would be probably removed from school, expelled, all those kinds of things, maybe even prosecuted.

but that's not the case in the UK. If you're profiling him and you're trying to determine why is he looking at this particular imagery, this particular content, is there a through line? In my opinion, yes. But the problem is, like I said, in the UK, there is a profile that can be developed and there's no question that this person will ultimately culminate themselves in something incredibly violent. but I don't know that there are measures put in place to deter this individual and to ultimately stop this individual in the U.K. I just don't see that. You mentioned something else that the ricin. So it seems, I think a fair argument would be that Rudicabana was planning violence beyond

just the attack at the dance school because we told you that he was convicted also of producing a biological toxin. That is because investigators found ricin, this deadly chemical under his bed. By the way, officials say there's enough rice in there to kill, I think, 12,000 people. That might be a fair estimate. How hard is it to make ricin, Tracy? This is actually right out my alley. I did toxins and poisons at the CIA in the counterterrorism center.

It's actually extremely easy. You can get all the material online. There's no question how easy it is. What's upsetting to me is I actually have a medal from the British government from stopping a ricin attack in their country about 20 years. ago and to see that this is happening again is very, very upsetting and frustrating to me to see that there hasn't been this deterrent put in place in terms of being able to buy the sheer volume of castor beans that he would have needed to do this, although you really don't

need a lot to be completely honest with you. It's very upsetting to see that there's not stop gaps in place because they were almost victims of a truly horrendous attack. So I have to have to be honest. And I know I'm being difficult on them right now. It's just very frustrating to see this as someone who worked this and stopped an attack for the country. Well, first of all, you know, as always, thank you for the incredible service that you have done. It's, you know, incredible to be thinking about that. And it's scary to think about what we're talking because as horrific as this crime is, it could have been exponentially worse. You know, I'll mention this also. So investigators, they also found that Rudy

Cabana had downloaded a PDF titled Military Studies in the Jihad against the tyrants, the al-Qaeda training manual. So the question is, why wasn't he charged with terrorism? Well, according to the chief constable of Miracide police, since Rudy Cabana didn't seem to ascribe to any one particular ideology, the case technically didn't qualify. But the prime minister said during a news conference that this horrific attack shows that the definitions of the UK's anti-terror laws needs to change. He also noted that we also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety. They were fixated on that extreme violence seemingly for its own

sake. Do you agree with him, Tracy? I could not agree with him more, to be completely honest with you. As I said before, at the CIA, we would almost get frustrated and the Brits would get frustrated, quite frankly, if a terrorist was in their country because they knew we couldn't do anything about it. And they would wait for them, you know, to leave their country. So when you have your own intelligence service and your own law enforcement frustrated with the lack of laws in your country, with the lack of strength, I guess, of laws in your country, clearly defining these things and being able to prosecute them properly, your country has a real problem. And I, look, our country is certainly not perfect, but I do think we have some really strong

laws, quite frankly, governing terrorism and being able to prosecute terrorism. them. The UK, in my opinion, does not. And I'm very glad to see that the prime minister recognizes that. I just hope that they make it a priority. I do too. I do too because it's you know, I don't even know how to make sense of this. I don't know how the family make sense of this. Our hearts and our prayers and our thoughts are with them. Because, you know, look, this two-hour dance class had been billed as a Taylor Swift yoga and dance workshop that aimed the girl six to eleven. I don't know how it gets more innocent than that. But after the attack, Taylor Swift wrote in an Instagram story this. The loss of life and innocence and the

horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families at first responders, these were just little kids at a dance class. I'm at a complete loss for how to even convey my sympathies to these families. But I'll tell you what, Swift met with survivors of the attack and their families. King Charles visited the site of the disaster as well and the prince and princess of Wales, William and Kate, they met with the families of the victims. And I know that the prime minister also said that the entire country, their thoughts and prayers are with them as well. Just a really, really horrible case. And hopefully, this guy never, ever, ever steps out of prison. Tracy Walder, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And again, thanks so much for all that you do.

Thank you for having me. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. Spotify.