A teenager accused of planning to blow up a school to mark the tenth anniversary of the Columbine massacre once warned a girl that she should obey, without question, any text message warning her to stay away from classes on a particular day.
Matthew Swift, now 18, was infatuated with the girl, a fellow pupil at Audenshaw High School in Greater Manchester, and wrote lyrical passages about his unrequited love for her in his journal.
The female friend, who cannot be named, told the jury at Manchester Crown Court that Mr Swift was a “quite funny, nice and caring person” but was prone to “ranting”. He would rail against the school, employing violent language, but she did not take these episodes seriously.
Recalling one conversation, she told the jury: “He was saying he hated the school and wished he had never come here. He wanted to torch it. His words were always quite violent. He wanted to burn it down and break windows and stuff like that.”
She added that her friend, whom she known since they were children, could be “quite funny” but that sometimes he could be bad tempered and “say stuff I didn’t really take to mean much — throwaway things”.
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Mr Swift and Ross McKnight, 16, who live in the same street in Denton, Greater Manchester, are said to be disaffected loners who idolised two young killers who murdered 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School, in Colorado, on April 20, 1999.
They each deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.
In his opening address Peter Wright, QC, for the prosecution, told the jury that Mr Swift was at one time besotted with the girl, who already had a boyfriend, and would walk with her to college. He wrote about his unrequited romantic longings in his journals in florid terms.
The witness said that on one occasion when he appeared “really down and upset” he told her that if he ever sent her a text message not to come to college that day to obey it and not to question it.
When she asked him what he meant, he simply said he was in a bad mood and to “just leave it”.
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She said that Mr Swift excelled at some subjects such as art and design but reacted badly to criticism. She said he would become angry when he did badly.
“He would say he hates the school and hates certain teachers,” she said. “He would get pent up and you would leave him [alone] for a while. He would get a bit shouty and look a bit angry but he never got violent.”
The witness also recalled the day when college pupils were shown a documentary film about the Columbine massacre. She said his reaction was markedly different from hers.
She said she felt the Columbine killers were evil but “he didn’t think that way”.
“We did not talk about it that much because we had such a difference of opinion. We left it,” she said.
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She also recalled that Mr Swift told her he had some books about the school killings and also a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, which contains “recipes” for explosives. He was also interested when he heard that English students at the sixth-form college had been reading Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, she said.
The trial continues.