were fervent members of The Salvation Army, well liked and respected within the community, and the family home was a terraced house on Priestman Avenue, Consett. Albert Senior worked for the Consett Iron Company, and was described by police officer Sergeant David Blackie as "the epitome of a northern patriarch, a strict, clean-living man who did his best to bring up his children straight and true through the good times and bad." Dryden was a solitary child with a very active imagination, often given to flights of fancy. He did not enjoy schooling and was not academic—IQ tests taken during adulthood would show that his intelligence was well below average. He developed an early interest in weapons and firearms, and purchased his first handgun aged 11, this was the unlicensed World War I Webley Mk VI revolver, which he later used to murder Collinson. Dryden paid 10 shillings (50 pence) for the gun—stolen by a schoolfriend from his father—and a single bullet. The lack of ammunition combined with the scarcity of, and difficulty obtaining, the correct cartridges would lead Dryden to manufacture his own ammunition. When Dryden murdered Collinson, he was using cartridges converted from .410 bore shotgun shells, loaded with heavier than usual cast lead bullets which Dryden called his "manstoppers". Murder During negotiations in front of a range of television and newspaper reporters, Dryden shot Collinson in the chest at point blank range. As the assembled reporters, council staff and three unarmed police officers—Sgt Colin Campbell, PC Stephen Campbell and PC Ian Kirkup of Durham Constabulary—fled for cover, Dryden climbed over the property's fence and shot Collinson again as he lay in a ditch where he had fallen. Dryden then opened fire on the fleeing group, hitting PC Campbell in the thigh and BBC Look North reporter Tony Belmont in the arm. Seeing a police vehicle—carrying Superintendent Stan Hegarty and Inspector Geoff Young—approaching, Dryden shot at the vehicle, forcing it to reverse away at speed. He then reloaded and walked back to where the demolition vehicles were parked, firing twice into an excavator, twice into a low loader and once into a car. Dryden then returned to where Collinson lay and shot him again in the lower face and chest. The incident was captured on camera and transmitted on the BBC's regional news programme Look North. The footage shows Collinson asking the camera crew to take a shot