Born in Greenwich, Jake Lewis Fahri is the son of Mustafa Fahri, a Turkish heating engineer, and Shirley Bevis, an English receptionist. He has a younger sister, Molly.

They moved to a 1930s terraced house on a quiet residential street in Lee 10 years ago, a few years before Fahri was due to start at Crown Woods School in Eltham.

Even as a boy, Fahri had a reputation as a bully. Twice he targeted Jimmy Mizen's brother, Harry; in 2001 he punched the boy before robbing him of his pocket money, and two years later punched and kicked him, earning him a harassment warning from police.

Fahri hung around with the wrong crowd. He adopted the clothes, patois and mannerisms associated with rap music and recorded an amateur CD, called Dirrty Money Vol 1, under his rap name, Dirrty Detz. He smoked large amounts of super-strength skunk cannabis and peddled the drug on the streets.

His attempts to prove his mettle on the streets always saw him target those weaker than himself. On one occasion he attacked a schoolgirl because she had had the temerity to go to his home to demand he pay the £20 he owed her. Fahri was humiliated when his mother fetched her purse to pay off Ellis Harrington. Fahri hunted her down, spat in her face, then punched and kicked her to the ground. He was convicted of assault and fined £50.

While still of school age, he was twice convicted of street robbery - one offence committed while on bail and involving a knife - and was found guilty of burglary. However, he was never sentenced to a young offenders’ unit, instead receiving supervision orders and referrals.

In class he was difficult to control and was eventually expelled for bullying. In the playground he had his friends film him on their mobile phones when he went "happy slapping", delivering his trademark attack of kicking the legs out from under his victims.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder, Fahri could not resist playing out the drama as if a fugitive gangster. Friends were told he had got in some “bovver” after he “f***ed up”. His “trusted brothers” were sent to see what was happening at the scene.

But a moment of reality dawned when his mother telephoned to say his sister had heard that there had been a murder at the bakery.

Before handing himself in to police he used a false name and paid £89 in cash for a 20-minute stay at a Holiday Inn in Greenwich to say goodbye to his girlfriend.

To Fahri, even his court appearance at the Old Bailey was some bizarre proof that he was, at last, a “player” or a gangster. After giving evidence at the murder trial, he could not resist the temptation of winking at his girlfriend, Tanya Pham, sitting in the public gallery.

Instead of exhibiting remorse at targeting Jimmy – a schoolboy described by one witness as appearing an “awkward, tall teenager” in the bakery – Fahri saw it as another chapter in his pretend world of being a gangster.

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