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It is a good thing this guy was not into LBs - He might have killed more!
Pattaya's flesh-pots can really screw up your head!
HOOKED ON A HOOKER
By JAMIE PYATT and RICHARD WHITE for the Sun
PSYCHO cabbie Derrick Bird played the proudly smiling dad at his son's wedding - as he hid a violent obsession with a Thai prostitute less than half his age.
The ex-nuke plant worker looked every inch the respectable father while secretly lavishing thousands on the 22-year-old he fell for on holiday.
Dad-of-two Bird, who shot 12 people dead and wounded 11 in Wednesday's Cumbria gun rampage, is feared to have flipped over money worries - fuelled by the cost of his lust for the pretty hooker.
The last straw for the tax-dodging taxi driver was a massive bill from the Inland Revenue - and the fear of a prison sentence.
Pal Mark Cooper, 45, said: "He was worried sick that he was going to jail."
Brooding Bird, 52, armed with a shotgun and hunting rifle, set out from his home in the Lake District hamlet of Rowrah to murder all those he held grudges against en route to committing suicide.
He had already claimed his first victim - his twin David.
Bird was seething that his brother got £25,000 in their dad's will while he was left nothing.
The maniac blasted him in the face as he slept.
Next came the family's lawyer - who he accused of stitching him up over his cancer-stricken mum's will.
Solicitor Kevin Commons, 60, was gunned down in his driveway.
Then Bird, who was separated, headed for the taxi rank where he worked in the seaside town of Whitehaven - to blast fellow cabbies for taking the mickey out of his love for the hooker.
Two had regularly joined him on twice-a-year trips to Thailand's fleshpots. The group was nicknamed The Bad Boys.
Chris Bulmer, 45, owned one of the trio's favourite haunts at Pattaya Beach - Spicy Girls A Go-Go.
He told how Bird became besotted with one of the girls - and simmered with rage if he was unable to bed her.
She became so terrified of him she quit and fled.
Chris, who now works in a New York factory, said: "He loved the women. He slept with a few of my girls upstairs and soon got a taste for it. He came in with a pal seven years ago and came back regularly until 2005. But in the end he would only want to see one young lady in particular. She was about 22 and pretty. He became obsessed.He loved her and whenever he came back he would immediately find her, compensate the bar and take her away. She was his. And that was how he saw it. We heard he was sending things to her from the UK. It was something I always warned my customers about. These are working girls and they are not interested in relationships".
"He would get very angry if he couldn't see his girl. He could be so quiet and mild mannered - then just flip.
"I knew a fair bit about him and when I heard a cabbie had gone berserk with a gun in Cumbria I stared at the telly. His picture came up and I recognised him instantly. I felt sick."
He told how Bird not only sent the young hooker a fortune from Britain, but bombarded her with messages promising to return to Thailand so they could be together.
Chris, a dad of one, said: "It sends a chill down my spine thinking about what he has done. I know the girls will all be talking about it too - the scary Englishman who killed a dozen people."
As well as his sex holidays, Bird would go on scuba trips with fellow members of Solway Sub Aqua Club, which is based in Egremont - scene of two murders during his horrific gun spree.
Shocked diver Gary Kennett, 57, said: "The holidays we took with the rest of the group were just for scuba diving. But Derrick and a couple of the other taxi drivers would go to Thailand. Derrick and I had talked about the tax problem - he was quite open about it. He said he was having some trouble but that he'd got his solicitor and an accountant on to it and it was all going to be OK."
The Revenue is thought to have been chasing Bird for more than £100,000 he owed. He could have afforded to pay it, according to friends. The former Sellafield worker had £60,000 in the bank, the mortgage on his cottage was paid off - and there was no outstanding loan on his Citroen Picasso cab. Apart from his holidays, he also lived simply.
But he was notoriously tight-fisted. A fellow taxi driver said: "He came to me wanting to know what life was like in prison, how tough it was and whether he thought he'd be able to handle it. He came to me because he knew I had previously been inside for violence. It was a side of Birdy I had never seen before. I was taken aback. I told him he wasn't going to jail, but it was eating away at him."
Bird's son Graeme, 28, is believed to have known nothing of his dad's secret life when he tied the knot with bride Vicky 20 months ago. Beside him in a happy snap of the big day his father stands beaming - as Bird's own mum Mary, now said to be in her 90s, looks on.
When Bird's roadworker dad Joseph died in 1998 aged 81 it was Mary who was left the bulk of his £200,000 estate.
The will has been seen by The Sun. It gives a clue to Bird's resentment. If she had died first, he, David and older brother Brian would have inherited a third each. Last night Mary was in hospital - devastated at one of her twins being murdered and the other shooting himself dead in a wood after turning mass killer.
A relative said: "I don't think it's ill health but the stress of what has happened."
Cumbria Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said of Bird's motives for the bloodbath, which claimed the lives of three others who worked at Sellafield: "There are a number of lines of investigation, clearly including his finances. If there is any information people have about his financial transactions, it may help."
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