A CONVICTED sex attacker with a grudge against two probation officers has been locked up indefinitely after threatening to kill them.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard how police had been called to a public house in Commercial Road on June 16 this year after John Collins was spotted at the bar with a hunting knife.

When quizzed later about the 17cm blade, Collins told officers: “It’ll do the job; you don’t have to stab people repeatedly with that piece of equipment. Once in the chest – game over.

“I want so badly to kill these people; I’m like a kid who wants a toy for Christmas. It won’t go out of my head. I’ve had total intent to do it for years. When I got out of prison it had been festering inside me.

“It’s a hatred problem. When you hate it destroys you. I’ve hated those people so much. Maybe it’s an obsession; there’s the truth.”

Prosecutor Stuart Ellacott said 62-year-old Collins had failed to notify the police that he had left his Bristol home and gone to Bournemouth “for a short holiday”.

“The following day he said he intended to travel to London and kill Rob Hutt and Jacqueline Owens who were responsible for his recall to prison on his last sentence.

“He thought he had been set up by them and had purchased the knife. Details of train times to London were found in a notebook.”

The court heard how the probation officers’ work addresses had also been recorded.

Collins was jailed for 14 years at London’s Central Criminal Court in 1994 for sex offences and released from prison in January last year.

He admitted two counts of making threats to kill, possessing an offensive weapon and failing to comply with the sex offenders’ register.

In his defence, the court was told that Collins accepted he had “a personality disorder and not much empathy for human beings”.

But “his bark was worse than his bite” and he hadn’t been intending to carry out his threats.

Imposing an indeterminate sentence for public protection, Judge Christopher Leigh QC told Collins: “Making a threat to kill is always a serious office but it’s particularly serious when it is made against a probation officer.

“I’ve spent a lifetime working in the criminal courts; I cannot think of a more serious case of its sort. In my view you are a dangerous man.”

Collins will not be considered for release by the parole board until he has served five years behind bars.