Burly body-building enthusiast Khalid Masood, 52, was born in Dartford in Kent on Christmas Day 1964. His mother Janet Ajao gave birth when she was just 17 years old and brought him up as Adrian Russell Ajao.
The married father-of-three spent years moving round the country - and the prison system - with a host of different identities, including Adrian Elms.
When Masood was two years old, his mother, now 69, married Philip Ajao in 1966 and they brought him up in a £300,000 house in the seaside town of Rye, East Sussex, and later upmarket Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
A childhood classmate of Masood described him as a popular pupil who "liked to party". He was also a keen schoolboy footballer.Then, two decades later, they moved to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where they lived with Masood’s half-brothers, Alex and Paul.
Paul lives in Banbury, Oxfordshire where he runs florist and fabric companies. Mrs Ajao now lives with Philip in the Welsh-speaking village of Trelech in rural Carmarthenshire where she sells textile goods that she sews.
Over the past five or six years, Masood, his wife, aged 39, and their young children, have been on the move. He lived for more than two years until 2013 in Luton, where Anjem Choudary, an influential preacher now in jail for terror offences, had been a regular and often mob-handed visitor.
From Luton, Masood and his family moved to Forest Gate in east London where neighbours said he frequented a mosque in nearby Leyton. At some stage Masood’s wife had moved to a new property on the site of the Olympic Village.
A property there was raided by police on Wednesday night.In the past year, Masood and his family moved to Birmingham to a block of flats at Quayside in Winson Green. It is not clear why they moved there, but that property was also raided by anti-terror police following the attack.
He was known to police and had several previous convictions across 20 years, although he had never been convicted of any terrorism offences. His first conviction was in November 1983 for criminal damage when he was 18.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: “He was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.”
In July 2000, aged 35, Masood snapped and slashed a man across the face with a knife after an argument that had "racial overtones". He was living in the quiet Sussex village of Northiam when in he attacked cafe owner Piers Mott in the face with a knife.
Hove Crown Court heard that the attack left Masood and his young family "ostracised" in the village. He had been in conflict with his victim before.
After leaving the Crown and Thistle in Northiam, near Rye in East Sussex, in which he argued with his victim, Masood lost his temper and slashed seat covers in Mott's car. When Mott arrived at his car, Masood waved the knife at him and caught his face, leaving him needing more than 20 stitches.
The court heard at the time that Masood had consumed four pints during the afternoon and had the knife because he was decorating his daughter's bedroom. Judge Charles Kemp sentenced Masood - then Elms - to two years in prison.
Three years later, and now out of jail, Masood was accused of stabbing a man in the nose in Eastbourne, leaving him needing cosmetic surgery. He was sent back to jail for another six months for possession of an offensive weapon.
By 2005 he was working in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, teaching workers at the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) in Jeddah, according to
The Sun, which says it obtained a copy of Masood's CV.
In the CV he is said to describe himself as “British”, “friendly and approachable” and a good listener and the document reportedly claims he had a economics degree. He apparently began in sales and was later promoted to manager at Aaron Chemicals in Bodiam, East Sussex.
In 2004 he is understood to have married a Muslim, Farzana Malik. It is unclear what became of their marriage and whether Masood converted to Islam at the time. In the same year,
The Sun reports, Masood’s CV claims he gained a TESOL certificate, allowing him to teach English to foreigners.
In spring 2009, Masood reportedly returned from Saudi Arabia to the UK. After a five-month gap, he is said to have joined a TEFL college in Luton as a “senior English teacher”.
Khalid Masood: Everything we know about the London attacker - Telegraph
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