Student cooked pizza and gamed online after stabbing housemate 30 times in a 'cold-blooded execution'

From the Newshound archive · first published 12 October 2026 · last updated 14 October 2026.

Zack Coughlan, 23, lay in wait for his UWE Bristol housemate Jamie Collins, 21, in the garden of their shared home in Filton, South Gloucestershire, delivering 30 stab wounds in what prosecutors described as a 'carefully planned and cold-blooded execution'. Coughlan had dressed in black, wearing a mask and gloves, and after the attack cycled off on Collins' own bike before abandoning it, purchasing a change of clothes and disposing of his bloodstained outfit in a pond. He was back at the house by around 9pm, where he heated up a pizza and joined friends for online gaming before ringing 999 eight hours after the killing, claiming to the operator that he had only just found his friend's body.

When Coughlan showed responding officers CCTV footage from the property, they initially treated him as a witness rather than a suspect.

The two men had previously clashed over rent — Collins disputed the amount Coughlan was charging him as landlord.

Coughlan admits killing Collins but denies murder; he told police he had just arrived home and found the back gate open.