How Erith-born Khalid Masood became Westminster terrorist

The inquest into the terror attack in which five people were murdered by Masood, 52, will conclude today.

Masood drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge on March 22 last year, killing American tourist Kurt Cochran, 54, retired window cleaner Leslie Rhodes, 75, Aysha Frade, 44, and Romanian tourist Andreea Cristea, 31.

He also stabbed police officer Keith Palmer to death.

Masood was born in Erith on December 25, 1964 with the name Adrian Russell Elms.

He grew up with his mother Janet Ajao, his stepfather and two stepbrothers.

Masood, who changed his name in 2005, went to secondary school in Lewisham until the age of 13 when the family moved to Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

It was there that he missed out on a place at the local grammar, unlike his step-siblings, and went to comprehensive Huntley Secondary School for Boys, a move he claimed was the start of a spiral of increasingly violent behaviour.

He first got in trouble with the police when he accepted a caution for shoplifting at 14 years old, and in the following years as an older teenager his mother feared he would kill someone when he went out drinking and looking for fights.

In 1998 he spat at a woman and punched her in the face, but it was from 2000 onwards that he started using weapons including knives, a cosh and a baton.

The most horrific outburst was in May 2003 when he drove a knife so hard into a man's face the end of the blade broke.

Masood, whom a former girlfriend described as "intelligent, powerful, persuasive and charming", was cleared of attempted murder and a raft of other charges on the grounds of self-defence.

He was convicted only of possession of an offensive weapon and was released after seven months behind bars.

Other than the period for the 2003 attack, he served a year for stabbing a man with a flick-knife outside a pub in July 2000.

During the first sentence he became interested in Islam, and this grew during his second period in jail.

Between 2012 and 2016 he accessed extremist material online and was linked with a number of terror suspects being investigated by MI5, including members of the banned group Al-Muhajiroun, but the security service said there was not enough information to justify investigating Masood himself further.

By the time of the Westminster attack in March 2017, he was struggling with debt and his plans to emigrate to a Muslim country, first Saudi Arabia and then Morocco, appeared to have fallen flat.

The 52-year-old, who was shot dead by a plainclothes police officer after his fatal rampage, believed he was "a genius" with a "special relationship" with God.