Born 5 minutes apart, one twin was outgoing and successful. The other was a shabby loser driven to kill by gnawing jealousy

They were different in almost every way.

hysically - one short and overweight, the other tall and lean. Temperamentally - one brooding and introverted, the other open and outgoing. 

Financially? Well, their respective homes tell their own tale - one lived in a shabby, pebble-dashed terrace strewn with rubbish and a rusting satellite dish, the other in a beautiful barn conversion with its own land.

Worlds apart: Derrick Bird (left) was brooding and introverted while twin brother David was open and outgoingTwin brothers who had nothing in common, it seems, apart from the same name; the same blood.

The conflict - the difference - between rival siblings is an eternal theme, of course, with its origins in the story of Cain and Abel and popularised down the ages in film and literature. Might this also be the story of Derrick and David Bird?
A festering resentment - on Derrick's part at least - over money and entitlement which turned to jealousy and blind rage when he entered David's whitewashed house some time before dawn on Wednesday and slaughtered him in his bed.
The news was broken to their elderly mother Mary later that afternoon by her eldest son Brian. Her two 'youngest boys' were now dead, he told her; both shot; but one a killer, and one the victim of his murderous spree.I asked Brian how his mum was and he replied, 'I would be lying if I said she was all right",' said a neighbour. How could she be; how could any mother?
The 'boys' grew up in the Cumbrian area of Ennerdale. Their father Joe worked as a council roadman; his wife a school dinner lady.
The brothers (Derrick younger by five minutes than David) attended Ehenside School in nearby Cleator Moor; their parents decided not to split them up and so they remained in the same class until they left at the age of 16.


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