CONFESSED murderer Erskine Durrant (Buck) Burrows attempted to slaughter Police Commissioner George Duckett's family when he began to spray bullets through the kitchen window of the mortally wounded man's North Shore, Devonshire home, the recently declassified Scotland Yard murder log of the investigation reveals.

Burrows shot Duckett outside his home, Bleak House, on the night of September 9, 1972 after disabling a security light outside the Commissioner's kitchen door ? luring him outside and directly into the line of fire.

He fired one shot into the Commissioner's back with his small calibre .22 revolver ? a shot that tore through both of Duckett's lungs, his heart and aorta. Duckett managed to stumble back into his house and close the door behind him before collapsing and dying, haemorrhaging blood from his mouth and his nose.

"After shooting Mr. Duckett his assailant went to the back of the house, got onto the low roof of the water tank and fired five shots through the kitchen window," said Scotland Yard Detective Chief Superintendent William Wright in his first full report on the Duckett killing, submitted to then Bermuda Police Commissioner L.M. (Nobby) Clark on February 11, 1973 .

"From the direction of two of the bullets, which struck a metal tray during flight, it would appear as though the assassin was either trying to hit Mr. Duckett again as he lay on the floor or else was firing at Mrs. Duckett, who was at her husband's side.

"The remaining three bullets, however, were deliberately fired in the direction of Mrs. Duckett and her daughter Marcia as they stood in the archway of the kitchen whilst she was attempting to telephone for assistance. Two of the bullets struck the wood panelling whilst the third one struck Marcia in the chest."

It was later discovered the killer had cut the telephone wires leading to the house as well as disabling the Police radio in the Commissioner's official car parked outside Bleak House.

Detective Chief Superintendent Wright and fellow Scotland Yard murder investigator Detective Sergeant Basil Haddrell arrived in Bermuda on September 11 and worked with the Bermuda Police on the Duckett killing and a series of subsequent violent crimes that rocked Bermuda's placidity in the early 1970s.

In the shocking and bizarre resolution to the Commissioner's murder, Police Headquarters' trusty and one-time Duckett confidante Erskine (Buck) Burrows was arrested and charged with killing the Commissioner in 1973 following a politically-motivated murder and robbery spree that left five people dead including then Governor Sir Richard Sharples.

Burrows had frequently worked as a handyman for the Commissioner at Bleak House, knew his habits and the lay-out of the house and property. Following the murder, Burrows had actually been detailed by newly-appointed Commissioner Clark to clean up the blood-stained Bleak House kitchen where Duckett died.

Burrrows also attended the Commissioner's September 14 burial at the Military Cemetery in Prospect which overlooks Bleak House. Veteran officers remember him standing by the Police Vault for some 20 minutes, head bowed, paying his respects to the man he murdered.

Members of the small militant wing of the Black Beret Cadre (BBC), revolutionaries inspired by the Black Power movement in the US, had met and recruited Burrows when he spent a short stint at the old Casemates prison in the early 1970s for a series of break-ins he almost certainly did not commit.

It is believed Burrows' hatred for the rogue police officers who had beaten a false confession out of him for the break-ins resulted in him drifting into the Cadre's orbit. The Cadre's extremists recognised Burrows' value to them as a spy and at Police Headquarters once he was released from prison ? Duckett, aware Burrows had likely been framed, had offered him his position back.

Later, the Cadre focused his anti-authoritarian rage and moulded him into a once-removed assassin using indoctrination techniques that were standard in counter-culture para-military cells at the time (for instance, playing on Burrows' ego by always referring to him as "Commander-in-Chief of all Anti-Colonial Forces in Bermuda").

Burrows' grief over the Duckett killing (he considered the Commissioner a friend and something of a father figure) is believed to have led to his conversion to Christianity following his arrest. He provided a written confession to prosecutors during his Supreme Court trial for killing the Police Commissioner in 1975.

"I, Erskine Durrant Burrows, being of sound mind and body, wish to reveal and make known the following truths," he wrote. "First of all, I wish to reveal the truth that I, Erskine Durrant Burrows, was the person who shot and killed Mr. George Duckett at his home Bleak House on the night as stated by the prosecution. I shot him in the back. I am also the person who fired other bullets through the kitchen window, one of which wounded his daughter, Marcia Duckett.

"I wish to state again that what I have written and revealed is all true: it is the truth.

"I wish to reveal also that I cut the telephone wires beforehand. I also cut the wires to Mr. Duckett's car radio beforehand.

"I came on foot and left on foot. I was alone. No one else was with me.

" . . . Finally I wish to reveal that I have made all the revelations of my own free will. No one has forced or pressured me into doing so. I also add my signature willingly and of my own free will. Signed: Erskine Durrant Burrows."

Burrows also admitted his role in the March 1973 murders of Governor Sir Richard Sharples and his Aide-De-Camp Captain Hugh Sayers and was convicted of murdering supermarket executives Victor Rego and Mark Doe during the armed robbery of the Shopping Centre on Victoria Street in April, 1973.

At the time of his arrest Burrows was described by then-Governor Sir Edwin Leather as "this tragic young man", saying he and, to a lesser degree, career criminal Larry Tacklyn (tried for collaborating with Burrows in the Government House and Supermarket killings) were puppets manipulated by hard-core elements within the militant Black Beret Cadre.

"What I am convinced happened is that, at that moment of time, and probably quite accidentally, the small ring of BBC leaders still meeting together . . . suddenly realised that fate had put a new weapon in their hands in the form of these easily impressed and not very bright young criminals," said Sir Edwin.

"They played on them, influenced them, almost certainly inspired some of the violent acts that followed and very probably planned them."