“As a family we have had to explain repeatedly to people what has happened,” said the relatives of Jamie Collins, whose sudden, brutal death at the hands of his university housemate has now led to a sudden change of plea in court.
Zack Coughlan, 23, admitted to murdering 21-year-old Jamie Collins during proceedings at Bristol Crown Court. Coughlan had initially denied the murder charge, though he admitted to the killing while attempting to claim he acted out of fear that his housemate would kill him. The trial shifted dramatically on Tuesday after Mr Justice Linden delivered a legal ruling determining that Coughlan’s partial defence of manslaughter by reason of loss of control could not be put to the jury.
Coughlan Stabs Collins in Planned Execution
The fatal attack occurred shortly before 6 p.m. on April 8 of this year. Collins, a final-year robotics student at the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol, was cycling home to the shared property on Cleve Road in Filton, South Gloucestershire. Coughlan, dressed in black and wearing gloves, lay in wait in an alleyway near the garden of the £300,000 three-bedroom house they owned and shared together.
Prosecuting counsel Adam Vaitilingam KC described the assault to the jury as a carefully planned and cold-blooded execution. Collins was stabbed more than 30 times. Rather than seeking emergency medical assistance, Coughlan left his dying housemate in the alleyway for hours. He then rode away on Collins’s bike, dumped it at a nearby retail park, purchased a replacement set of clothes, and discarded his bloodstained garments in a pond inside carrier bags weighed down with bricks.
Returning to the house around 9 p.m., Coughlan placed a frozen pizza in the oven and spent time playing video games online with friends. It was not until approximately 2 a.m.—roughly eight hours after the attack—that Coughlan finally dialed 999 to claim he had just discovered his housemate’s body in the rear garden. He even showed attending police officers CCTV footage he had installed himself, staging the discovery while police initially treated him merely as a witness.
Forensic Unraveling and Changing Stories
Investigators quickly dismantled Coughlan’s facade. Analysis of his mobile phone aligned with his movements captured on CCTV following the murder, and his DNA was recovered from bloodstained clothing retrieved from the pond. Investigators also found Coughlan’s blood on the victim’s bicycle, which he attempted to explain away by claiming he had sustained hand injuries from climbing a tree.
Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Edgeworth of the major crime investigation team noted that the entire incident pointed toward a meticulously planned homicide. While Coughlan attempted to sow discord by alleging that Collins held increasingly extreme political views and had spoken about killing him, investigators found no coherent motive beyond a local dispute regarding rent. Edgeworth emphasized that Coughlan prioritized protecting himself above all else, feigning shock and maintaining falsehoods to friends and police alike in the days following the crime.
UWE Bristol Posthumously Awards Degree to Collins
Both men were weeks away from completing their engineering and robotics degrees. Following the tragedy, the University of the West of England posthumously awarded Collins a 2:1 degree in July after he accumulated sufficient points during his studies, which his relatives accepted on his behalf. UWE Bristol vice-chancellor Steve West described Collins as a natural engineer, a valued member of the robotics community, and a dedicated student.
In a statement issued following the verdict, Collins’s family shared the profound weight of their loss. They noted that every repetition of the events to inquiring individuals reinforces the pain of such a sudden and senseless loss. They expressed sickness that Coughlan had pretended to assist Jamie while being the architect of his demise. Describing him as a sensitive, caring young man with a fierce passion for equality and unapologetic inclusivity, his family stated that his engineering potential and legacy would endure.
Coughlan, of Cleve Road, Filton, is scheduled to return to Bristol Crown Court on Wednesday morning to be formally sentenced for murder.
