16-07-2025
Nicholas Prosper: Teenager who murdered his family will not be given whole-life order after appeal dismissed
A teenage killer who admitted murdering his mother and two siblings will not have his sentence increased to a whole life term, the Court of Appeal has decided.
Nicholas Prosper, 19, avoids being the first person aged 18 and 20 to be given a whole-life tariff, after rules were changed in 2022 to allow younger defendants aged 18 to 20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances.
No one in that age bracket has ever received that sentence.
Prosper was jailed in March for a minimum term of 49 years, less 188 days already spent in custody, after admitting killing his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and siblings Giselle Prosper, 13, and Kyle Prosper, 16, at their family flat in Luton, Bedfordshire, on 13 September 2023.
He also admitted weapons charges after plotting a mass shooting at his former primary school in the town.
In a two-day sentencing hearing in April, Mrs Justice Chema-Grub had said she would not impose a whole-life order because Prosper was stopped from carrying out the school shooting.
The judge had said a whole-life term could only be given to an 18 to 20-year-old if a court deemed "that the seriousness of the combination of offences is exceptionally high". She continued that while he was "indisputably a very dangerous young man", the risk to the public was met with a life sentence.
The Solicitor General referred his sentence to the Court of Appeal as "unduly lenient".
At Wednesday's Court of Appeal hearing Mr Little KC said the case "crosses the exceptionally high seriousness test," because two of Prosper's three victims were children, and that all three were murdered one after another knowing they were being killed by their relative.
Mr Little KC also said Prosper had intended to rape his sister Giselle and that his brother Kyle had pleaded with Prosper not to take his life.
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This was, Mr Little said, the "precursor to the long held intention" to kill primary school children aged four and five with the use of a firearm, an act the lawyer said was designed to get international notoriety and for others to match it and surpass it.
"The seriousness of the case passed the enhanced exceptionality requirement and just punishment required the imposition of a whole life order here.
"The Judge placed too much weight on what the offender did not do, rather on than what he did do and intended to do and what the ramification of this intended escalating level of mass killing would have been."
Mr David Bentley KC, representing Prosper, told the Court that the minimum term means Prosper will not be released after 49 years but be eligible for parole.
"A life sentence is a life sentence," said Mr Bentley KC, explaining that when Prosper is eligible for parole "he would be a pensioner."
Mr Bentley KC said Prosper's mass killing plans were not "thwarted," but rather that the teenager had chosen himself not to carry on with the plot, explaining that Prosper had had come out of the home after killing his family and dumped the bag containing the firearm when he realised the school shooting plan was, he quoted Prosper, "no longer a runner".
"It was his decision to stop. He stepped out on to the road and waved down a police car.
"That perhaps indicates that despite the horrors that had taken place in the flat, something had clearly changed in his mind and nothing further was going to happen. He had voluntarily separated himself from the weapons."
The Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Wall, said that Prosper's sentence was "itself a very severe sentence for a 19-year-old".
She said: "These were undoubtedly offences of the utmost gravity, with multiple features incorporating disturbing, recurrent themes around school shootings."
She continued: "Had the offender been 21 or over at the time of the offending, a whole-life order would undoubtedly have been made."
She added that the sentencing judge, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, was right to conclude that the "enhanced exceptionality test" of whether to pass a whole-life term on an 18-to-20-year-old was "not met on the facts".
She said: "Parliament chose to set what is already a very high threshold for a whole-life order for an adult, even higher for a young offender."
She concluded: "Appalling though these crimes were, we are not persuaded that anything less than a whole-life order was unduly lenient."
Prosper watched proceedings via a video link from HMP Belmarsh.
Whole-life orders are reserved for the most serious offences, with those handed the tariffs including Louis De Zoysa, who murdered Metropolitan Police Sergeant Matt Ratana in 2020, and Kyle Clifford, who murdered his ex-partner Louise Hunt, her sister Hannah Hunt and mother Carol Hunt last year.
