The father of Thomas Hamilton, the man who shot and killed 16 children and their teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane, yesterday described him as a monster.
As more details emerged about the 43-year-old man who slaughtered the children on Wednesday, Thomas Watt said: 'I can't live with this. I can't take it. I brought this monster into the world.' Watt, 65, last saw his son when he was 18 months old when he walked out on Hamilton's mother.
He remarried and had four more children, but said: 'How do I tell my two daughters and my two sons that this man is their half brother?' The balding, bespectacled Hamilton made people uneasy with his fascination for guns, for taking photographs of boys and running boys' groups.
His neighbours in a shabby Stirling neighbourhood said the former hardware store worker had lived alone in a two-bedroom house for the past eight years.
'He was a deep, cautious man. He kept well into himself,' neighbour Grace Ogilvie said.
Boys told parents how he made them undress, and to many he seemed a 'weirdo' and unsavoury. But no one could pin anything down.