A HAVERFORDWEST man who has, over the last five years, worked as extra in TV programmes – such as ‘​Casualty​’​ and ​’​Stella​’​ – has just landed his first lead role in a television docudrama about the ‘Gay Slayer’ serial killer Colin Ireland.

As he coolly told police that he had murdered five gay men – because he had taken the decision to be a serial killer one New Year’s Eve – Colin Ireland​ gave what he thought was a credible explanation for his campaign of brutality.

The former soldier became known as the ‘Gay Slayer’, reportedly posing as a homosexual to be taken to each of his victims’ homes, where he tortured and murdered them in the summer of 1993.

He also chillingly stayed with several of the bodies over night, possibly taking enjoyment in reliving the violence he had inflicted.

CBS Reality’s ‘​Voice of a Serial Killer​’​ programme, broadcast for the first time this week, focused on the case of the ‘​Gay Slayer​’​.

Carl Sykes, 38​, who was brought up on Baring Gould Way, and attended Tasker Milward School, now lives in Risca, Newport, told The Herald that he ​’honestly did not want to be an actor’.

“I never have”, he said.

Known back in the day by his school friends as a gentle giant, he is perhaps the last person people who know him in Pembrokeshire would expect to see on the screen portraying an evil murderer.

But the lead role – which he seems to have landed very much by accident – really challenged him, he said.

Carl went on to say: “I love being a supporting artist, and this role was suggested to me by my agent but I wasn’t aware at the time how involved it would be. It was fun to do but quite demanding, especially the lip-syncing with Ireland’s police interview.

“But I’m happy to step back and carry on being that guy you might recognise wandering around in ‘​Casualty​’​ from time to time!”

hen asked what he found most challenging about playing the role of the serial killer he said: “Listening to the recordings of Ireland’s police interviews.

“He is so cold and calculating – he actually read books on serial killers beforehand to see how he could kill and get away with it, whilst at the same time​,​ he tried to put the blame on his victims​.​

“At one point he says that if one of his victims hadn’t approached him, he’d have probably just gone home and nothing bad would have happened.

Dr David Holmes, a psychologist, tells the Voice of a Serial Killer programme: “He decided one New Year to make a resolution – I am going to be be a serial killer, that’s my new career, and set about it.

“It’s fairly complex as to whether Ireland was gay himself, which he protests he isn’t, and this was some kind of smokescreen ​… his way of engaging gay men then clearing his conscience.”

Dr Donna Youngs, directors of the International Centre for Investigative Psychology, said Ireland may have been picking up on the ‘vulnerabilities’ of gay men in the 1990s, who felt they had to be covert, and exploited it.

She said he was obsessed with being in control in the way he carried out the murders as well as throughout his police interviews.

She said: “He is proud, he thinks he has managed to achieve dominance and a freedom of expression of what he wanted to do to people in a way that very few others have the nerve to follow through on. He is proud, that’s why we get all the details we do in his confession.”

After confessing to all five murders, Ireland was given a whole-life tariff in 1993.

He died at the age of 57 from natural causes in the healthcare centre of Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire in 2012.