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COLD CASE THAT WILL CHILL YOU TO THE BONE
A new drama how Wale's worst serial killer almost got away with it - until he was snared by an appearance on TV's Bullseye...
Luke Evans may have played all manner of roles in his varied career, but he admits he’s a ‘sucker’ for a true story. So when The Hobbit star was approached to play the lead in forthcoming ITV drama The Pembrokeshire Murders he jumped at the chance. ‘It’s not just any true story – it’s a shocking true story about the worst serial killer Wales has ever seen,’ says Luke, who was born in South Wales himself.
The three-part drama sees Luke play Detective Superintendent Steve Wilkins, who in 2006 led a review of two brutal unsolved double murder cases from two decades earlier – the murders of siblings Richard and Helen Thomas at their farmhouse in Wales in 1985, and those of Peter and Gwenda Dixon, whose bodies were found by the Pembrokeshire coastal path four years later. All four had been shot, and Mrs Dixon, who was on holiday with her husband at the time, had been sexually assaulted.
Using pioneering forensic methods, Wilkins and his team found microscopic DNA samples that potentially linked the murders to a string of burglaries from the 80s and 90s. The perpetrator of those robberies was a man named John Cooper, who had already been imprisoned for the crimes – but if Wilkins was right, he was also a serial killer. What followed was a race against time to prove his guilt, which was sealed in part by, of all things, Cooper’s 1989 appearance on ITV game show Bullseye just a month before his second killing spree.
After a chance chat with a pub landlord, who mentioned that Cooper had been on the darts-themed show, Wilkins unearthed the footage that revealed Cooper not only closely resembled an artist’s impression of the possible killer from witness reports, but also that he had detailed knowledge of the West Wales coast where the latter two victims were killed.
It’s just one of what Luke, 41, calls ‘mind-boggling’ twists and turns in the case that hooked him from the moment he was sent the script. ‘I started Googling the case – I think I might have been too young for it to have had an impact on me when it happened. But when I read the script and realised there were no fictional embellishments, it’s as true to the facts as it possibly can be, it was a roller-coaster ride,’ he says.
‘Many times during the story it feels like the whole thing is going to go cold once again, because the forensic evidence was minimal, the budget was running out and people were losing faith. So it’s the real story of a team of people who were determined to find the truth and get the man who committed these crimes, and the time and effort and sacrifice they put in.’
As part of his research he met the real Steve Wilkins, who he describes as a ‘charming’ human being. ‘Once you meet Steve, you understand how his team worked all those hours,’ he says. ‘He’s a great leader and kept their spirits alive when they were losing hope they’d ever find this killer.
‘What drew me to the storyline was that it isn’t just about finding the killer, it’s about this man and the sacrifices he made. You forget that detectives and police officers are putting themselves in danger and sacrificing time with their own families. So it really raised the importance of how grateful we are that they do it.’ It’s a sentiment echoed by Keith Allen, who plays the arrogant John Cooper with chilling aplomb. ‘People say detection is 99 per cent forensics. It’s not about fast cars and rugby-tackling people, it’s actually sitting in a room, in a very boring environment, and just working and working,’ he says. ‘I think it’s worth these programmes being made, just to show how much effort, commitment and belief these people have.’
Keith, 67, ‘watched and rewatched’ the episode of Bullseye Cooper appeared on, and in a testament to modern technology a digitally deaged image of him was superimposed on the archive footage of Cooper – then aged 44 – for the drama. ‘You can see he’s not a very nice person. He’s not on that show to enjoy himself, he’s there to impose himself on his playing partner. He’s so selfcentred, the whole thing is about him,’ says Keith.
‘He was a very good darts player, the captain of the pub team. But he only scored 1 on Bullseye, probably the most damning score possible, and you can see the fury in his eyes. I’ve often wondered whether, if he’d scored
‘It’s as true to the facts as it possibly can be’
180 and won top prize, that couple might still be alive today.’
Cooper’s appearance on the game show led to him being christened ‘The Bullseye Killer’ by the media, which was later used in the title of the 2013 book written by Steve Wilkins and ITV news journalist Jonathan Hill in the wake of Cooper’s 2011 conviction for all four murders, for which he was given a whole life sentence.
It is this book that series writer Nick Stevens describes as a ‘gripping launch pad’ for his drama. ‘One of the things I discovered in the book was that when detectives interviewed Cooper, whenever he felt under threat he would implicate his son Andrew as the murderer. The disgust Steve felt at this repellent strategy came across strongly in the book, as it would to any parent. And it gave me a real fire to find Andrew and tell his story.’
Tracking down Cooper’s son wasn’t easy, but he was eventually persuaded to give his side of the tale. ‘That enriched the eventual drama,’ says Nick. ‘He saw this as a chance to tell his side of the story and – maybe revenge is too strong a word – settle a score with his absent father.’
In his court testimony, Andrew told how he had left home at 15 because his father was a ‘violent, loud, aggressive’ man. ‘It’s a powerful backbone to that aspect of the tale,’ adds Luke Evans. ‘Not just the fact Cooper brutally murdered people, but also what he did in his own home to his wife and son. It makes my skin crawl what Andrew went through. It’s really powerful stuff.’
Powerful too is the depiction of how advances in forensics meant the difference between justice and a killer going free. ‘Steve Wilkins knew many exhibits from the original investigations into the murders were still in storage and he hoped at least one of them would yield a DNA hit; the “Golden Nugget” that would unite killer and victims,’ explains Nick.
He found it in the form of a minuscule speck of blood on a pair of shorts that Cooper, who often wore secondhand clothes, had taken from the belongings of Gwenda Dixon after he killed her. ‘He was obviously selfconscious that they were women’s shorts so he got his wife Pat, a seamstress, to alter them,’ says Nick. ‘But he didn’t know a speck of Peter Dixon’s blood was hidden in the process and preserved for 20-odd years so a forensics team could find it.’
It’s a reminder that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. ‘You couldn’t make it up,’ says Nick. ■