Jennifer and Stephen Chapple: Man told 999 'I’ve stabbed them'

Jennifer and Stephen Chapple died from multiple stab wounds

A chilling recording has been played in court of a former soldier telling a 999 operator he "went round with a knife" and stabbed his neighbours.

Collin Reeves, 35, admits the manslaughter of Stephen and Jennifer Chapple but denies their murder.

Mr Reeves claims he was suffering an abnormality of mental functioning at the time of the killings.

The call was made minutes after he attacked the couple with a ceremonial dagger in Somerset, on 21 November.

Mrs Chapple, 33, suffered six stab wounds to her upper chest and shoulder, causing fatal injuries to a major blood vessel and her heart.

Her 36-year-old husband was found close to the rear door and had also suffered six stab wounds, as well as three other minor injuries.

The 999 call was played to jurors at Bristol Crown Court.

It was claimed Mr Reeves appeared to have been struggling with his mental health when he returned from Afghanistan

At one point the operator mistook Mr Reeves, of Norton Fitzwarren, for the injured party, asking him whether he was harmed, before he told her: "I went round with a knife, I've stabbed both of them."

Asked whether the couple was awake when he left, he replied: "No, I think they were sort of drifting.

"He was lying on the floor, she was lying on the sofa."

When officers arrived at the scene, the couple's children were still asleep upstairs.

Mr Reeves, who had been working as a lorry driver, had been involved in a long-running dispute with the couple over designated parking on the new-build housing development.

Ten days before the killings, Mr Reeves allegedly verbally abused Mrs Chapple outside her house following an earlier exchange between the victim and Mr Reeves's wife Kayley Reeves.

Mr Reeves had been involved in a long-running dispute with the couple over parking spaces, the court heard

The court previously heard Mr Reeves had "bottled up his feelings" about the war in Afghanistan.

His mother, Lynn Reeves, said that her son was a "closed book" who "never shares his emotions".

He served in the Army between 2002 and 2017, including a tour in Afghanistan, but never spoke about what he saw there, she said.

Ms Reeves wept as she attended court in person to give evidence earlier, describing how she found Mr Reeves "white as a ghost" on the night he killed his neighbours.

She said she had been phoned by an "hysterical" Kayley Reeves saying "they're dead".

"He just didn't look like Collin," she told the court.

"He was just standing, he just looked right through us as if he wasn't there and said 'I had to protect my family'," she said.

The trial continues.