The Yom Kippur killer was on bail for alleged rape before his synagogue attack, it emerged last night.

Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, was under investigation by Greater Manchester Police over a sexual attack carried out this year and was due to appear in court.

It is believed unemployed Al-Shamie was also facing mounting debts and the collapse of his marriage, with his wife leaving the family home with their one-year-old son six months ago.

Residents said he was a loner who spent his days in pyjamas, bulking up by weightlifting in his garden and annoying neighbours by parking his battered Kia badly.

Al-Shamie was shot dead by armed police on Thursday after he killed a Jewish worshipper and seriously injured others during a rampage at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue.

The killer had criminal convictions for lesser offences not related to terror, but was not known to counter-terror agencies.

However, police are thought to be investigating whether he was responsible for a death threat sent to a Conservative MP in 2012 over his support for Israel.

The email to ex-MP John Howell from someone calling themselves ‘Jihad Alshamie’, said: ‘It is people like you who deserve to die.’

Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, was under investigation by Greater Manchester Police over a sexual attack carried out this year and was due to appear in court 

Al-Shamie travelled to Britain with his family as a young child and was granted UK citizenship in 2006, when he would have been around 16 

Mr Howell, who stood down as MP for Henley in 2024, said he did not know if it was the same person, but did not feel police took the threat seriously at the time.

Work is now under way to piece together the background of the Syrian-born attacker, who from the age of four grew up in the very community he attacked.

Footage from the scene of the blood-soaked knifeman clad in a fake bomb belt are a far cry from the cheerful home videos of his childhood posted online.

In the clips he is seen as a beaming, wide-eyed eight-year-old playing in the garden of their modest semi-detached home with his two younger brothers.

Another shows him at the Trafford Centre shopping mall, eyes wide as a magician performs a magic trick while a third shows him singing Christmas carols at his school nativity play.

In one grainy clip, the young boy gushes as he points out his crush on his school class photo, teased mercilessly by his laughing family.

His proud parents – a middle-class couple from Syria – capture the scenes on a shaky handheld camcorder.

There is no hint in this string of home videos that this smiling child, the eldest son of trauma surgeon Faraj Al-Shamie would one day turn into a killer.

The family are believed to have moved from Syria to the Crumpsall area in the early Nineties, and Al-Shamie attended the local school.

They first lived less than a mile from where Al-Shamie would carry out his violent rampage decades later.

Al-Shamie’s father, Faraj, who worked for non-governmental organisations in war zones, was said to have worked nearby at North Manchester General Hospital.

Former neighbour Brian Smith said how Al-Shamie, who used to play with his son when they were children, was addicted to computer games.

The 78-year-old said: ‘Jihad… would sit on the front step of the house playing on this little computer. He spent so much time staring at this tiny screen that his eyes would be twitching.

‘You’d see him screwing them up, it was like his eyes were flickering.

‘He would only have been around six then.’

The family is then believed to have moved to the attacker’s current home – a council house in a quiet cul-de-sac in Prestwich.

But it was not long before Al-Shamie’s parents were said to have divorced, with Faraj Al-Shamie moving to France and remarrying, leaving his ex-wife Formoz to raise the three boys alone.

Worshippers are seen peering out from the synagogue’s windows moments before Al-Shamie, pictured wearing a mock suicide belt, was shot dead by police 

A family friend said: ‘The three boys were so good growing up, they were all very studious.’

Although one brother became a pharmacist and the other is a software engineer, Al Shamie does not appear to have flourished.

He is believed to have worked in customer service at a store and also as a self-employed tutor teaching English and computer programming for £12 an hour.

But neighbours said he did not appear to work in recent years, and according to his baby’s birth certificate last November he was a ‘full-time father’.

Insolvency records also show that Al-Shamie was subject to a 12-month debt relief order taken out on September 5 last year.

Such orders, an alternative to personal bankruptcy, are for people who have savings or valuable items worth less than £2,000 in total and cannot repay their debts.

Heavy-set Al-Shamie was often seen lifting weights in his garage, and frustrated residents by parking his Kia car inconsiderately.

Following the attack, in which Al-Shamie used the car, a neighbour said: ‘I recognised his little car because he’d always park it badly outside ours.

‘I’d see him walking around in his pyjamas and slip-on sandals, carrying a shopping bag.

‘He was quite bulked up and used to keep his exercise weights in his garage. I’d see him there. He never seemed to speak to anyone around here.’

Fellow neighbour Geoff Haliwell said Al-Shamie had lived in the house with his wife and child, but she moved out this year.

Mr Halliwell, 72, who cleaned the family’s windows, said Al-Shamie switched between Western clothing and Islamic dress, adding: ‘He was always straightforward. He dressed normally, sometimes in traditional dress.

‘They moved in 20 years ago and they were always nice people. He was a smashing lad to talk to, and so was the mother and she was a nice lady.’

‘It has left everyone shocked, amazed, stunned,’ Mr Halliwell added. ‘I am just as shocked as everyone else, it came out of the blue.’

Forensic officers work at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue on Friday

Another neighbour said she used to see Al-Shamie lifting weights in the garden at the side of the house and helping his mother with the shopping.

‘I know most people around here but I don’t really know them,’ she said. ‘He had a little baby and a wife but I haven’t seen them for some time.

‘Sometimes he would be in traditional dress – a gown to the floor and a prayer cap, sometimes in pyjamas and flip-flops, and sometimes in jeans.’

Local resident Kate McLeish, 38, said Al-Shamie seemed to have become a ‘bit of a loner’ and she overheard him arguing and swearing at a woman on the phone in his car recently.

The car was ‘bashed up’ and he would go to the supermarket in his pyjamas and flip-flops, or wear a tracksuit and prayer cap, she said.

‘He didn’t come across as a friendly guy. One time he was on the speaker phone in his car and talking to a woman, I think. I don’t know what he was talking about but it wasn’t very nice.’

She said she always thought he was an ‘odd guy’, adding: ‘He was always scruffily dressed.

‘Pyjamas and the clothes you would wear at home watching the TV. He always wore flip-flops.

‘He kept himself to himself and did not speak with anyone. He had a scruffy car. I don’t think he worked, unless he was working from home.’

Alyssa Tsa, 46, who lives in the same street, said that when her son helped pick up leaves in the Al-Shamies’ garden, the family had delivered chocolates in return.

She added: ‘They seem so nice. The mother would say, “Hi, how are you today?” I would see him doing the gardening and exercising in the garden.

‘There was no sign of this horrible thing, he seemed to care for his family and protect them.’