Plea and sentence
Zack Coughlan was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 28 years for murdering Jamie Collins, his fellow student and housemate. He was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court after changing his plea to guilty during his trial, on 20 October 2026. Time spent on remand is deducted from the minimum term.
Collins was 21 and in the final year of a robotics degree at the University of the West of England. He was killed at the house he shared with Coughlan in Filton, South Gloucestershire, on 8 April 2026.
The attack and investigation
Shortly before 6pm, Collins returned from the University of the West of England. Coughlan, dressed in black with a mask and gloves, had waited in an alleyway for more than 20 minutes before ambushing him in the garden of their home. Collins suffered approximately 30 knife wounds, described by the judge as unsurvivable, and was left in the alleyway behind the house.
Coughlan left on Collins’s bicycle, disposed of the bike and bloodstained clothing, then returned home. He ate pizza and played online games before contacting police more than eight hours after the murder. He claimed he had found Collins’s body and did not know what had happened. The judge described his account to police as a calculated lie.
Coughlan initially admitted killing Collins but denied murder, relying on a partial defence of loss of control. After the judge ruled that the defence could not be left to the jury, Coughlan changed his plea to guilty during the trial. Investigators used CCTV footage and mobile-phone evidence; Coughlan was arrested on 12 April 2026.
Planning, motive and the impact on Collins’s family
The judge accepted there had been a significant amount of pre-planning and that Coughlan had been thinking about killing Collins for some time. Evidence included Coughlan’s purchase of black clothing and online searches, including one about what a corpse looks like. However, the judge said he could not be sure beyond reasonable doubt that the murder had been planned days or weeks in advance.
Coughlan told the court that he feared Collins and relied on loss of control as a partial defence. The judge rejected his account that Collins had threatened him, describing Collins as a “gentle soul”. He said the precise reason for the killing may never be known; a dispute about rent and differing political views were discussed in the case but do not establish the motive.
In a victim impact statement, Collins’s family described Coughlan’s evidence as “excruciating” and “full of lies”. The judge said Collins’s friends had described him as exceptionally kind and considerate, and spoke of the lasting emotional harm caused to his family.