A Bristol judge sentenced Zack Coughlan to life, with a minimum of 28 years, for murdering his housemate Jamie Collins.

A guilty plea to murder, entered after the evidence in a trial, is a conviction, and the life sentence with a 28-year minimum is the judgment on that plea. What the judge would not treat as proved is how far ahead the planning went. The police put the 999 call more than eight hours after the stabbing. The Guardian's clock, an attack shortly before 6 p.m. and a call around 2 a.m., matches that. The BBC's separate line that he waited another five hours fits the gap after he got home.

Avon and Somerset Police said Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, that Zack Coughlan, 23, was sentenced at Bristol Crown Court to life in prison and will serve at least 28 years for killing Jamie Collins on April 8. The police said he changed his plea to guilty in the middle of the trial on Tuesday, after the prosecution and defence evidence had been heard. The BBC and the Guardian reported the same life term, the same 28-year minimum and the same mid-trial plea. The police and the Guardian named the judge as Mr Justice Linden. The BBC called him Judge Justice Linden. Those are two ways of referring to the same judge. A guilty plea to murder is a conviction. The life term is the sentence on that plea.

Collins was 21, a final-year robotics student at the University of the West of England in Bristol, and he lived with Coughlan in a house on Cleve Road in Filton, the police and the BBC reported. The Guardian placed the house in Filton, South Gloucestershire, and said Coughlan owned it. The police said Mr Justice Linden found that Coughlan had ambushed Collins after waiting more than 20 minutes in an alleyway, killed him with a knife, fled, and tried to build a false alibi. Collins sustained about 30 knife wounds, and the injuries were described as unsurvivable, the police said. The BBC and the Guardian also reported 30 stab wounds. The police said Coughlan dressed in black and wore a mask, threw evidence away, and pretended to officers that he had found the body and did not know what had happened. The Guardian added gloves, and reported that he left Collins dying in the alley, cycled off on Collins's bike, dumped the bike at a retail park, bought a change of clothes, and put the bloodstained clothing in a pond in bags weighed down with bricks. The police said that when he did call, from Cleve Road, it was more than eight hours after the murder, and that in that time he ate a pizza and played online video games while Collins's body was at the bottom of the garden. The Guardian reported the attack was shortly before 6 p.m., that he got home about 9 p.m., put a pizza in the oven, gamed with friends, and dialed 999 around 2 a.m. saying he had just found the body. The BBC wrote both that he called police eight hours later and that he did not call 999 for another five hours. The eight-hour figure matches the police and the span from the Guardian's attack time to the 2 a.m. call. The five-hour figure matches the span from the 9 p.m. return to that call.

The police said Coughlan was arrested on April 12 after CCTV and other evidence pointed to him, and that at trial he admitted killing Collins but denied murder until Tuesday's plea. The Guardian reported he had claimed loss of self-control, that his blood was found on Collins's bike, that his phone matched the killer's movements, and that he told people the cuts on his hands came from falling out of a tree. The police said the prosecution told the jury there was significant pre-planning, including clothes bought a fortnight before the killing. Mr Justice Linden accepted there was significant pre-planning and that Coughlan had been thinking about killing Collins for some time, the police said, but the judge said he could not be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder had been planned for days or weeks. In mitigation, the court was told Coughlan had no previous convictions and that dumping the evidence in the pond was amateurish and haphazard, the police said. The judge said the location and number of the wounds showed an intent to kill. "He (Jamie) was caught totally unaware by you and was utterly defenceless," Mr Justice Linden said, as the police and the Guardian reported. He rejected Coughlan's evidence that Collins had threatened him, and he described Collins as a gentle soul, both outlets reported. The BBC reported the judge said, "I'm sure you were planning to kill Collins and had been for some time," and, "Your guilty plea came at a point in the trial when your conviction was inevitable." The police said the judge also said no one will know why Coughlan did it. Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Edgeworth told the BBC the motive was not clear: there was a dispute about rent, and the two held different political views, and neither explained the killing. She called it, in the BBC's account, a pre-planned, cold-blooded execution. The Guardian reported prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam KC told the jury, "This was a carefully planned and cold-blooded execution." On Wednesday, Edgeworth said Coughlan "repeatedly lied in order to protect himself and finally admitted his guilt yesterday after months of denial," the police reported.

The police said the 28-year minimum will be reduced by the time Coughlan spent on remand before he can be considered for release. Collins's family said in a statement the police published that he had two pieces of coursework left on his robotics degree, that he was weeks from coming home, and that his results were enough for a 2:1. The BBC reported his stepmother, Lisa Jane Collins, told the court the death had affected the family "in a deep, lasting and profound way," and, "From now on, we will always be the couple whose boy got murdered." The Guardian reported the family said they had been sickened that Coughlan pretended to help Jamie when he was the one who killed him. The Guardian also reported Coughlan is half Danish, grew up in Cork, Ireland, and moved to Bristol at 19 to study robotics. The life term is the sentence imposed after the guilty plea. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.