This British man slaughtered his family to preserve the innocence of a zombie video game character

British man Nicholas Prosper is facing 49 years behind bars after being convicted of the murder of his mother Juliana and siblings Giselle and Kyle. The reason for this carnage? He became obsessed with Clementine, the star of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game series.

In what has to be the most depressing and bizarre motive we’ve heard for a family annihilation in a hot minute, Prosper became romantically infatuated with the fictional 8-year-old and began to see her as a quasi-religious figure, saying “I am the chosen one; chosen by Clementine. I am guided as Christians are guided by Jesus Christ.”

His YouTube channel is now deleted, but clips survive in which he calmly explains that he watched his younger sister Giselle make “incorrect choices” regarding Clementine. This appears to boil down to making in-game decisions exposing Clementine to violence or killing people in front of her. His unwitting sister did this, not realizing the casual choices she was making in a video game sealed her gruesome real-life fate. For this, Prosper judged “that her face will be mutilated further than is necessary”.

Aside from this Prosper was notable on multiple forums, in which he made such disturbing remarks about child abuse, pedophilia, and necrophilia that he was banned from even the darkest gross-out forums for disturbing other users. It’s perhaps notable that even the pro-pedophile campaigners (no really, they exist) booted him out after they became concerned his creepiness was making them look bad.

Fuelled by his warped love for a fictional character and with a brain full of bad wiring Prosper forged a shotgun license certificate, purchased a gun online, and concocted a plan to brutally kill his family, head to his former primary school (aka his elementary school) and commit a Sandy Hook style child massacre, before turning the gun on himself to “join” Clementine.

Tragically he carried out the first part of his plan, leaving three people dead. Fortunately, he was stopped before he could carry out the second part, with neighbors alerting the police, and was arrested soon afterward.

In the face of overwhelming evidence, Prosper pleaded guilty, with a pre-trial psych report diagnosing him with autism and “psychopathic traits”, with a medical practitioner telling authorities he’d sinisterly whispered “I wish I had killed more” to her. The judge tossed the book at him, describing him as “intelligent, calculated and selfish” and described his mother as the”innocent victim of an ungrateful, unfeeling son whose only wish was to be famous through destroying the lives of young children.”

I’m no medical professional, but Prosper’s romantic obsession with a fictional preteen girl from a zombie game certainly indicates he wasn’t living in the same reality as the rest of us. That said, as someone who’s played and enjoyed all the Telltale The Walking Dead games I can’t help but feel like he’s completely missed the point of the games and has a warped vision of Clementine, who’s a kind, protective, and calm character even in the face of a brutal zombie apocalypse.

Whatever the case, Prosper won’t see the light of day until the late 2080s, so we say good riddance to this twisted monster and can only hope one day he develops enough to feel crushing remorse for the lives he ruined in the name of a video game character.