The grudge that made one of Britain’s top plastic surgeons break into his rival’s £1m home and try to kill him

A plastic surgeon donned full camouflage gear before breaking into a ‘hated’ colleague’s home and knifing him in the culmination of feud dating back more than a decade.

As Jonathan Peter Brooks, 61, was convicted of the attempted murder of his former line manager Graeme Perks today, MailOnline can reveal how Brooks’ hatred of the renowned fellow plastic surgeon was rooted in a workplace dispute which began in 2011.

A former colleague of the pair told how the would-be killer had ‘continued to hold a grudge’ against Mr Perks, 65, after the pair fell out at the NHS hospital trust they worked at.

Julian Skoyles retired from Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in February but was clinical director when Brooks lodged a tribunal claim in 2015 seeking punitive damages of £5m – claiming he had been ‘persecuted’ for whistleblowing over patient safety concerns.

But the consultant anaesthetist said Brooks had a ‘strong personality’ which eventually resulted in him having ‘to leave the Trust because relationships (with colleagues) had deteriorated.’

Mr Skoyles added: ‘Graeme Perks was head of plastic surgery and therefore Brooks’ line manager and you could see how any perceived grievances (on Brooks’ part) would be aimed at him.’

Mr Skoyles said Brooks ‘continued to hold a grudge against Graeme’, adding that Mr Perks appeared to come to ‘personify’ for Brooks the wider issues the plastic surgeon had with the department.

Mr Skoyles added: ‘It was fairly unanimous amongst Graeme and his colleagues that they could not work with him.

‘I never had to work with Brooks in theatre or directly, but I can imagine it would be difficult to work with him.’

The case rumbled on through various hearings and appeals until Brooks was ordered to pay costs in their entirety in 2018.

But despite working his last shift for NUH in 2014, the £106,000-a-year surgeon remained on the payroll until disciplinary proceedings could be finalised. 

The attack took place just three days after the online hearing finally started in January 2021 as the country endured a third national coronavirus lockdown.

Desperate to ‘get him out of the way’, jurors heard Brooks cycled a mile from his family home armed with a jerry can full of a highly-flammable petrol mixture, which he spread around the lower staircase after smashing through Mr Perks’ conservatory.

But the father-of-four used the knife on Mr Perks after the victim heard a loud bang and ran naked downstairs to confront the intruder.

MailOnline can now reveal the ‘narcissistic’ medic had continually attempted to derail legal proceedings since the January 2021 attack, burning through three legal teams and causing the trial to be scheduled nine times before Brooks was eventually brought to justice.

Brooks sacked his latest legal team in February, then went on hunger strike and failed to attend proceedings at Leicester Crown Court. During the trial, which began last month, Brooks claimed it would be ‘inhumane’ to force him to attend court in his current condition.

Brooks now faces a potential life term when Mr Justice Pepperall sentences him in June. 

Brooks – who is now virtually bed bound – had previously vowed to a psychiatrist that he would starve himself to death if he was convicted.

Following the verdicts Nottinghamshire Police his afternoon released footage showing Brooks taking his bicycle out of his garage before leaving home. 

The footage, taken by a neighbour’s security camera, then showed Brooks returning home shortly after the attack and opening his garage to place the bicycle back inside. 

The surgeon, who goes by his middle name, had enjoyed stints working in New Zealand and Australia, but moved back to the UK so his children could benefit from a British education, neighbours said.

The family rented a red-brick home in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, before moving to the minster town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in 2008, after Brooks took a position in the burns unit at City Hospital, Nottingham.

But residents told MailOnline it was not long before the initially ‘pleasant’ Brooks began locking horns with neighbours over building works or boundary issues. One resident, who asked not to be named, said the consultant took exception to their Rowan tree which was growing beside the boundary between the two properties.

‘Peter got agitated about the possibility of (berries) falling into his garden and poisoning his children if they ate them. He told us he was going around the neighbours asking them to remove anything that was a threat.

‘He asked us to cut the tree down, so to keep the peace, we did.’

Next on Brooks’ hit list was an 80-year-old walnut tree at the end of the neighbour’s driveway.

‘Peter thought it might fall on his property. A tree surgeon had inspected it and said it was just growing at a slight angle, but I had it trimmed.

‘Then one day we came home from a shopping trip and found Peter instructing two tree surgeons beside the walnut tree. He had told them to cut it down.’

He said of Brooks’ ‘extraordinary’ attack on Mr Perks: ‘Everyone around here thinks it’s really sad. It’s truly strange – I didn’t think he would be capable of such a thing. But he’s destroyed his comfortable life and nearly killed another man.’

Another resident recalled ‘a man on the edge’ who, shortly before the attack on Mr Perks, was driven to a frenzy by the neighbours’ building works.

‘Peter was upset about some water coming off the work going on his land. He came over and hammered on our door. It was so hard he nearly came through.

 ‘He was a very strange man.

‘He very rarely used to speak to anyone. If you went out of your gate he’d turn his back. And the next time he’d say, ‘hello’. He was very odd.’

Brooks had a collection of vintage and modern motorcycles which he would rev on his driveway or ride up and down the street, and was said to have once become embroiled in a dispute with a neighbour over three inches of land on the boundary between their two homes.

But by 2015, Brooks had his sights firmly set on his colleagues. ‘Excluded’ from the wards the previous July after Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said colleagues were unable to work with him, Brooks went to a tribunal. 

He claimed Mr Perks, his line manager as head of the department of plastic, reconstructive and burns surgery, had negotiated a ‘job plan’ which left him working at the hospital just ‘60 per cent of the time’, which Brooks alleged allowed Mr Perks to ‘maximise his private sector income’.

The plastic surgeon claimed a ‘lack of adequate medical cover’ left him concerned about patient safety, and said he had been effectively suspended for whistleblowing, but ultimately lost his case, and with it a claim for £500,000 compensation.

But citing issues around patient care hand-overs as one area where working relationships had become strained at NUH, Mr Skoyles said that eventually the issues became such that ‘the team working within the burns unit just could not get on with him.’

The 65-year-old, from Nottingham, said it was ‘viewed as unsafe for (Brooks) to continue working within the Trust’.  He added that there had started to be ‘miscommunications’ and other issues between Brooks – who the employment tribunal heard liked to work ‘in isolation’ from his colleagues – and the other medics in the department.

Brooks was convicted of two counts of attempted murder, attempted arson with intent to endanger life, and having a bladed article. 

Jurors were told the discplinary proceedings against Brooks had been going on for 6 years and the hearing three days before the attack was the ‘final’ part of the process. 

Brooks, the court heard, had tried to get the hearing postponed a day before the alleged attack, a request which was refused. 

Ms Ayling told the jury: ‘One possible outcome of the hearing might have been his dismissal from the Nottingham University NHS Trust. ‘Statements from Graeme Perks formed part of the evidence in those proceedings.’

She said that Brooks was clearly ‘frustrated’ by the disciplinary proceedings and ‘made a conscious decision to take the law into his own hands.’

Ms Ayling told the jury: ‘His intention was, say the Crown, to break into Mr Perks house, set fire to it and if necessary, stab Mr Perks. In short, he intended to kill Mr Perks by either or both those means. The use of fire, or the use of a knife.’

The court, sitting in Loughborough, heard that a police sniffer dog indicated fuel had been splashed up the first five steps on the staircase of the home in Halam, Nottinghamshire, where Mr Perks, then 65, his wife Beverley and son Henry, 29, were sleeping.

‘The only exit point for those sleeping upstairs would have been the stairs’, the prosecutor said. ‘A fire raging downstairs and on the stairs would also have spread. The purpose must have been to kill those in the property and to make sure, stop them escaping down the staircase.’

Mr Perks was stabbed through the abdomen and was taken to hospital after being discovered by his wife and son, a Royal Engineer Commando who was home on leave. The court heard Mr Perks was left with his ‘guts sticking out’ and only survived thanks to ‘quick action and amazing surgical skill’.

A doctor who operated on the stab victim at Nottingham’s Queens Medical Centre and told the court the injury would have been fatal in 95 per cent of cases.

Brooks was arrested later that morning after being discovered asleep and bleeding from the hand on a bench in a communal garden in Southwell.

When interviewed under caution he gave no comment answers to every question.

Brooks was linked to the scene by a blood deposit in the conservatory and on a crowbar he had used to force entry.

His blood was also found on the handle of the knife used in the attack.

Detectives also used CCTV footage to ascertain that Brooks left his home shortly before the attack and returned after carrying it out. 

Inside his garage they also found his blood, a container of petrol in his bicycle pannier, matches and a lighter.

An earlier trial was halted in the summer of 2022 when Brooks developed medical complications from previous radiotherapy treatment.

In a ruling ahead of the trial, Mr Justice Pepperall said Brooks’ defence case ‘appears to accept having taken petrol, a crowbar, matches, a lighter and a knife to Mr Perks’ home’.

The judge added: ‘He admits breaking into the house and dousing petrol around the ground floor. He admits stabbing Mr Perks’.

The ruling also documented that Brooks’ case was that his mental health was ‘on the edge’ after years of deterioration.  It added: ‘He blames the sustained and deliberate use of disciplinary processes to drive him out of his NHS Trust or to make him insane so that he could be dismissed.’

In a subsequent ruling, the judge said it appeared that Brooks ‘had relatively little recollection of events’ at Mr Perks’ home but added that he did not challenge the prosecution’s case. 

A psychiatrist who examined Brooks last year in the build-up to the trial found he ‘showed features of a disordered personality with predominant narcissistic and dissocial traits along with paranoia.’

Rachael Dean from the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘Peter Brooks committed an act of extreme violence, attempting to murder a highly respected colleague. 

‘This was a planned, calculated attack, in which Brooks showed he was determined to kill his former boss.

‘Since committing these atrocious acts, Brooks has sought to evade responsibility by any means. Today, justice has caught up with him and he must now face the consequences of his criminal actions.

‘His victim was fortunate to escape with his life and his whole family were in danger from Brooks’s inexplicable actions.’

Detective Inspector Matt Scott, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: ‘This was a vicious and calculating attack that very nearly cost a wholly innocent man his life.

‘Our contention has always been that Brooks set off that morning with a very clear intention in mind – to fatally injure his victim.

‘I am pleased that – having heard all the available evidence – the trial jury agreed and hope that today’s verdict provides at least some degree of comfort to the victim and his family.

‘Over the last four years he and his family have been through an extremely distressing ordeal and I would like to thank them for the enormous courage and dignity they have shown throughout this process.’