THE 19-year-old American man who is behind bars for killing Nicola Furlong was once the darling of his community.

From a musical Christian family, Hinds’ talent was discovered when he was a boy and before long he was in high demand in his native Memphis, Tennessee.

Known as the boy ‘with the hands of an angel’, the keyboard player – who only graduated from Central High School Memphis last year – was starting to impress the right people, and had made a name for himself as one of the finest young keyboard players in town.

In May of of last year was in Japan touring with the Asian R&B star Ai, living the dream, performing with his brother Claude Hinds III and hanging around with a confident Californian dancer, named James Blackston. Blackston was with him when met Nicola (21) and her friend after a concert on May 23.

Known as Richard ‘Lil Suity’ Hinds on his My Space account, Hinds told friends before he left for Japan that he had turned to prayer, asking that the trip would go well. During his trial he called on his fellow Christians, the Furlongs, to believe his last minute, spontaneous outburst of regret that Nicola had died during “rough sex”.

In the gritty Tennessee suburb where he was raised, there is complete bafflement among friends and neighbours of his family this week that this one-time child prodigy with the world at his feet was beginning a prison sentence for murder.

Here was a man who had no previous convictions, who was after committing a most heinous act in a faraway land.

Locals told members of the Irish press that Hinds was from a good, hard working, Christian family, describing Hinds as a “brilliant musician”.

David Gillard, a pastor at a Memphis church who also knew Hinds, says his reputation in the locality was “flawless”.

“You might try, but I guarantee you won’t find anyone around here with a bad thing to say about him. He was one of the nicest young men I ever met. Very quiet, and there were never any issues with him. When he played music, the whole room stopped to listen. He had the hands of an angel.

“The whole city is praying for him and his beautiful family. We cannot believe what has happened.”

Some speculate that it was this naïve, immature aspect of his personality that played a part in the horrific events of May last year. Les Smith, a senior reporter with Fox News in Memphis who has been covering the case from the start, is one of them.

“We thoroughly checked Richard Hinds out and there was nothing in his past that would indicate he was capable of doing something like this. There was no juvenile record, not even a sealed one or anything like that. The school says he was a good kid and never caused any trouble.

“The thing that has bothered us most is his relationship with Blackston, who was older than Hinds and had more experience socially. It’s absolutely no excuse for what he did but you could say he got in with the wrong crowd in Japan.

“He had never been overseas in his life. That must have been a big culture shock for him, but he was living the dream and was probably thinking the world was his oyster. Unfortunately, he forgot to take his morals and ethics along with him.”