NEW COLD CASE CLUE
The death of Carol Ann Stephens has remained unsolved for more than six decades. But a new investigation has uncovered chilling new details about the prime suspect in her disappearance,
IN 1959 six-year-old Carol Ann Stephens disappeared from the street outside her Cardiff home. Her tiny body was discovered weeks later in West Wales.
Her family were left devastated, her killer has never been found and it remains among the most notorious unsolved murders in Welsh history.
But now a team of former detectives and crime experts led by former Dyfed-Powys Police chief constable Jackie Roberts, who oversaw the investigation into the disappearance of murdered Welsh schoolgirl April Jones, has re-investigated the case and they have identified new information relating to a prime suspect in the case.
They have uncovered more details linking a travelling salesman, who had links to both the Cathays area of the capital and the area where the body was found, to the case that sparked a nationwide child safety campaign.
Six decades on from the murder that shocked the country they believe the clues are still out there.
For the Stephens family April 7, 1959, began just like any another Tuesday.
It was raining heavily in Cardiff and shortly after noon six-year-old Carol Stephens was sent from her home to the corner shop to buy cigarettes for her mother Mavis. When she returned home she couldn’t wait to run back outside “to play”.
But that was the last time her mother and stepfather Ken would see her alive.
Two weeks after Carol’s disappearance her body was discovered in Carmarthenshire – 60 miles away from her home in Malefant Street, Cathays.
But how did Carol, a young girl described as being “tall and plump with a fresh complexion and rosy cheeks with brown hair and steelrimmed glasses”, end up dead and so far away from her Cardiff home?
The family were known locally as friendly and hardworking and Carol Ann was a happy, lively girl.
Retired detective inspector Paul Bethell, who assisted Ms Roberts in the re-investigation for crime documentary Dark Land: Hunting the Killers, said: “She was described as a confident child. Someone that would have no qualms about talking to someone, even a stranger.
“She had been sent out by her mum to visit the local shop, not far from her home, to buy cigarettes and sweets. It was 1959, so sending your child to buy cigarettes would have been run-ofthe-mill.
“Carol Ann visited the local shop in Dogfield Street, bought the cigarettes and sweets, and returned home. She then hastily, according to her mum, said she was going out to play.
“Her mum was cooking dinner at the time and told her not to be long. But she felt she was over-anxious to get back out. Almost as if there had been a pre-arranged something that had prompted her to go back out.”
There was some evidence of what happened next from witnesses at the scene including her friend Kevin Northcott, who actually lived in the same house as Carol Ann.
He spoke to Carol Ann and she told him she was going for a ride in a car.
In 1959 there were very few cars and vehicles around, so this would have been a big deal for a child her age.
Mr Bethell explains: “At the time Kevin described how he saw Carol Ann approach a car that was parked around the corner, on the junction of Robert Street and Fairoak Road, near the Fairoak garage, and he saw Carol tapping on the door of the passenger side.
“He described an unknown male sitting in the vehicle who was either reading or writing on some papers.”
Intelligence at the time had witnesses who saw Carol Ann in a green saloon-type small car and an adult witness described seeing her get out of a green car not far from her home before the day she disappeared.
On that day in April Carol didn’t come back and by the middle of the afternoon her worried mother had phoned the police.
Detectives searched nearby woods, Cathays Cemetery and empty houses. They guarded Cardiff Central Station and watched passengers board the
Fishguard boat train for Ireland.
Then on April 22, two weeks after she was last seen, the search for Carol came to an end. Her 3ft 6in body was found in a small ravine near the hamlet of Horeb in Carmarthenshire.
She had been sexually assaulted and strangled before being dumped miles away from where she was taken.
Police interviewed more than 10,000 people, searched 3,000 vehicles, and took more than 1,100 statements but there were few clues to help detectives.
In the early days of the investigation detectives turned their attention to Carol’s father and Mrs Stephens’ first husband James Lynch, who moved to London following their divorce four years earlier.
Mr Lynch, who at the time was working as a bus driver and estranged from the family, went to a London police station after seeing an appeal in the newspaper urging him to come forward.
The 33-year-old was interviewed by Metropolitan Police but he hadn’t seen his daughter and was able to prove he was in London at the time of her disappearance.
Police turned their attention to the driver of the mysterious green car that had been seen parked up near Carol’s house. In the weeks leading up to her disappearance Carol had told her friends: “I have a new uncle who is taking me for lovely rides in his motor car.”
A “don’t get in cars with strangers” campaign started after the murder.
Police interviewed a neighbour who told them she had seen Carol get out of the car on April 1 or 2.
The neighbour said they thought it was strange the driver had dropped her off around the corner and not outside her house.
In April 1959 Mrs Stephens told the South Wales Echo: “When I made inquiries a neighbour told me about a strange man who was peering over the back garden wall at Carol’s bedroom on Monday night.”
Her friend and housemate, six-yearold Kevin, liked collecting number plates. It’s thought he nearly caught the man after collecting the number plates of all the cars in the area the day that Carol disappeared – but he didn’t take the number of a green car where a man in his 30s was sat waiting near Carol’s home.
The re-investigation team looked at newspaper reports from the time and looked at the link with the fact that Tuesdays at that time were markets days in Cardiff and the area where Carol Ann was taken was close to what would have been one of the main routes out of the city.
There were only about seven or eight houses in Horeb with a pub and a chapel and the only industry in the area was the brick works factory.
It was that factory that gave the team a potential lead in the documentary that is being shown on BBC Wales.
Geographic profiler Dr Samantha Lundrigan, who is part of the re-investigation team, said: “There is a lot geographically that is interesting about this case. There is the distance that Carol Ann was transported which is unusual because crimes are usually a lot more local.
“We have someone who knows the area of Cardiff where she was living and would have spent time identifying a suitable victim. It is someone who felt comfortable using his car as a portable base. It is risky to take a child all that way so it is someone who felt comfortable travelling long distances.
“It was also someone who must know the area of Horeb and would know that it is possible to dispose of a body in a particular area. It is somewhere only people with local knowledge would know that this is possible. I have never come across an offender who has just stumbled across somewhere.”
Spencer Hughes, a local historian in Horeb, helped the re-investigation team uncover their next lead.
He made them aware of a professional memoir in Welsh written by Dyfed-Powys Police detective superintendent Roy Davies.
It was read mainly by his family but
one section featured the murder of Carol Ann, which had been one of his first cases as an officer. The book was the only place he shared his true thoughts about the case and he talked about how he interviewed a suspect called Ronald Edward Murray.
Mr Davies said in the memoir: “This was the first murder case I worked on. Ronald Edward Murray lived with his wife in Llansamlet. From January 1951 to April 1952 he worked as a steeplejack and steel erector at the brick works in Horeb situated just yards from where her body was found.”
He was originally from Australia and came to Wales after World War II and he died in Penarth in 1973.
A former neighbour was traced by the re-investigation team who gave them some vital information.
He spoke to Ms Roberts on the phone and said: “Ron was living next door to us. Him and his wife, they both seemed like very, very nice people. He could make friends very easily, Ron could. He could lose them as well. He was a very charming man.
“He was charming to you in the beginning but you got a bit suspicious because he used to tell a lot of lies. He used to buy and sell sweets. I don’t think the car was his that he drove. I think he was probably using a company car.
“It wasn’t a very big car, possibly something like a Morris Minor. The police took it when the little girl was found.”
Murray claimed to have had an alibi for the day Carol Ann went missing.
His neighbour said: “What he said was he wasn’t feeling well. He was ill when he was in Cardiff. And he went home and he hit a dog with his car. So he picked the dog up and put the dog in his car and drove home because he wasn’t feeling well. When he got out of the car he said the dog ran away and he went to look for the dog.
“The only thing I can understand was that he was trying to account for his time. About 10 years later his wife died in the lounge next door. I did say to my wife at the time: ‘We’ll keep him at arm’s length.’ I said that it sounded fishy to me.”
The team looked into the death of Mrs Murray in her living room and found that the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death. But the circumstances were very strange.
The inquest heard Ronald Murray claimed he found his wife Della dead in the living room with an overpowering smell of gas. Murray then gave a convoluted explanation about the death of his wife.
At the inquest he said it was as a result of a trick he had been playing with his son that went horribly wrong.
He told the hearing the trick involved him turning the gas on the hob off and then he would ask his son to go and put the kettle on to make a cup of tea for his mum.
When the stove wouldn’t light Murray would laugh and tease his son about “not being man enough to make a cup of tea”.
Murray claimed the boy had tried to play the same trick on him but mistakenly left the gas on. As a result Della died – with all blame placed on her son.
Mr Davies had continued to watch Murray and when he heard about Della’s death he spoke to her relatives to find out what they think had happened.
In his memoir he said: “On hearing this story the people who came to know Murray well suspected he planned the whole thing to get rid of Della. Murray was that cunning a man.
“The inquest into Della’s death resulted in a verdict of accidental death but her brother still writes to me from time to time.
“He has no doubt who is responsible for the death of his sister or, for that matter, Carol Ann Stephens.”
As they reviewed all the information the re-investigation team uncovered some new evidence.
They were able to pin down Murray as working for Carson’s Chocolates in Bristol and the company gave their workers green Morris Minors.
One of the places they delivered chocolates to was the Cathays area of
Cardiff, where Carol Ann went missing.
The most chilling new information of all is a previously unseen document from his employment record where he asks his employers to give him more children’s lines of chocolates and sweets.
Former chief constable Ms Roberts said if the case was taking place in 2020 they would be putting what they had found forward to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Mr Bethell said: “You would add in to the pot the bizarre circumstances of the death of his wife – very suspicious death of his wife – and if it was today we would be looking at that investigation as it gives you a picture of him.
“In 1959 they called him the killer, they referred to him as the murderer, but we are in 1959. What we can say today is that he would be the prime suspect.”
A spokesman for South Wales Police said: “All historic murder cases remain under active consideration and will be subject of re-investigation as and when new information is received or when there are advances in forensic science.
“Cases are reviewed periodically and if information comes in from the public or other forces we act on it.”
■ Dark Land: Hunting the Killers is on BBC iPlayer