Decades on – and still no answers to killings
CARDIFF has a fascinating past, but it is also one lined with tragedy and bloodshed. Some of the most highprofile murders in Wales have been carried out in the capital over the years, with cases stretching back decades.
Hundreds of the country’s most violent killers have been caught and brought to justice. Many will even die behind bars after being given life sentences with significant minimum terms.
However, those responsible for some of the city’s most shocking killings remain unknown decades on.
Despite extensive police inquiries, including searches for murder weapons and the questioning of hundreds of people, there have been a number of cases where a killer is yet to be found. Families desperate for the truth about what happened to their loved ones have been left without answers.
In some cases, suspects have been identified and wrongly charged with murder, spending years in jail for crimes that they didn’t commit. In the most tragic instances, innocent people have even been executed after being mistakenly linked with killings.
And devastatingly for many families, there are cases where their loved ones’ suspected killers are never brought to justice, with the top suspects linked with some murders dying before charges can be brought against them. These are the murders that shook Cardiff and are still yet to be solved decades on.
■ Joyce Cox
Joyce Cox was just days short of her fifth birthday when she was sexually assaulted and murdered on September 28, 1939. The schoolgirl from Whitchurch had been walking home from school for lunch with her sevenyear-old brother Dennis, when he lost track of her and she suddenly disappeared.
Her “huddled” body was later found on a railway embankment near Coryton station, having been strangled and sexually assaulted, with her underclothing removed. Near Joyce’s body was found a copy of the previous Wednesday’s Western Mail which had a quotation written on it in pencil, as well as a tobacco pouch, a gas mask, and the victim’s underwear.
It was believed that Joyce had died only a few hours after her disappearance. An examination of the body by Dr JM Webster from the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory (Midland Region) revealed the child “had been outraged” and strangled. Her cause of death was said to have been “due to shock”.
More than 1,000 people were questioned in connection with Joyce’s murder, while a questionnaire was issued to pupils at Whitchurch Infants’ School. However, no ground was made in the search for her killer.
Joyce’s cousin Terry Phillips said that her brother Dennis had carried unbearable guilt over what happened in 1939 throughout his life, with the murder having a “devastating effect” on the family. He said: “Dennis never forgave himself for letting Joyce out of his sight as they walked home. He never came to terms with it and died [in 2007].”
In a devastating development, in 2017, police undertaking a cold case review of the murder concluded that the prime suspect in the case had died decades earlier. Speaking at the time, Mr Phillips said: “Together with other members of my family I have been shocked to learn that the police now conclude that the primary suspect died as long ago as the 1950s.”
■ Lily Volpert
On March 6, 1952, pawnbroker Lily Volpert was found by a neighbour lying on a heavily-bloodstained floor behind the counter of her general store on Bute Street. Her throat had been slit with a razor.
The 41-year-old had helped manage the business for around 25 years and had inherited it from her father after his death a couple of years earlier. She lived at the adjacent property with her sister and niece.
After the discovery was made, it was said that vital evidence may have been destroyed as police attempted to check whether Ms Volpert was alive or not. The motive behind the killing was determined as robbery, with more than £100 of takings missing from the shop.
A man was arrested, with the main witness at the subsequent trial, Harold Cover, coming forward claiming that he had seen Somali sailor Mahmood Mattan leaving Volpert’s store on the night of the murder. Mr Mattan, 28, was later wrongly hanged at Cardiff Prison for the crime, making him the last innocent man to be hanged in Wales.
Mattan’s conviction was quashed posthumously in 1998 after the Court of Appeal ruled the conviction was unsafe and his surviving family were awarded £725,000 compensation. Since then South Wales Police have reviewed the case but have not arrested anyone else in connection with the crime.
The case of Mahmood Mattan even inspired a novel, The Fortune Men, by Nadifa Mohamed. The book this week won Wales Book of the Year Award 2022.
■ Phillip Saunders
On the evening of October 12, 1987, newsagent Philip Saunders closed up his kiosk in Cardiff Central bus station and headed to The Albert pub in St Mary Street for a pint. Leaving the pub just after 11pm, he drove back home to Anstee Court in Canton, taking with him his £500 takings for the day.
After arriving back home, he parked up and headed into his garden. However, unbeknown to him, his killer was already there, waiting for him to return home to rob him of his earnings.
The 52-year-old was viciously battered with a spade, and was later discovered with significant injuries by a neighbour who had heard his body drop to the floor. Phillip died in hospital five days later, when his life support machine was turned off.
Following his death, a colleague reported that the kiosk-owner had reported an attempted break-in at his house only the week before, the second within a month. Two years previously he had been the victim of a similar attack, again outside his home.
Police were quick to label the attack as an attempted robbery gone wrong, suggesting the killer had likely injured his victim to avoid being identified. However, in the absence of any arrests, police soon upped the scale of their inquiries, with as many as 75 detectives working on the case.
A month later, three men, Michael O’Brien, Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood, were reported to the police and were later wrongly charged with robbery and murder after being questioned. At the trial, Mr O’Brien and Mr Sherwood denied the crimes, but Mr Hall unexpectedly pleaded guilty to both, despite the trio only attempting to steal a car on the night in question.
Based on Mr Hall’s “confession”, all three men served a total of 11 years behind bars.
But during a Court of Appeal hearing in December 1999, it was revealed that Mr Hall had a history of telling
lies and it emerged that investigators had shown a “systematic disregard” of the rules governing interrogation, forcing statements from some witnesses.
Mr O’Brien and Mr Sherwood have since been awarded damages for their false imprisonment, but both have struggled, with the latter suffering a stroke because of the prolonged drug addiction he developed during his decade inside, leaving him with impaired speech and limited mobility.
No other person has been arrested in connection with the killing, with what really happened to Phillip still not known nearly 35 years on.
Nora Wilfred
In December 1972, Nora Wilfred’s partially clothed body was found dumped on wasteland off a lane near Herbert Street.
The mother-of-four had been stabbed more than 20 times in what was described as a “frenzied attack”.
Nora, from Risca, had recently turned to prostitution and had travelled into Cardiff on the night of her murder looking for business in the Docks area. During the night, she was attacked and despite putting up a struggle, was later found dead. When her body was found, the fur coat, leather boots and handbag she was wearing were all missing.
Police launched a investigation following her murder, taking more than a thousand statements and visiting hundreds of homes in the first six months. They also examined 51 cars and 32 people’s clothing in a search for answers.
However, the local community were reportedly reluctant to come forward with information. The murder took place on the day of Wales playing New Zealand in a rugby international at Cardiff Arms Park, which threw up more problems for the force. As a result, 50 years on from her brutal murder, the answer as to who killed Nora Wilfred remains unknown.
Mabel Harper
In 1943, Mabel Harper was walking home after missing the last bus when she was brutally murdered at the side of Western Avenue, one of Cardiff’s busiest roads. The 53-year-old had been visiting her sister at her house in Gelligaer Gardens in Cathays and was walking home to Aubrey Avenue near Victoria Park in pitch black due to the wartime blackout.
At around 11pm, less than a mile into her walk, Mrs Harper was the victim of a brutal attack. It was early the next morning on August 13 when her body was discovered on a grass verge next to the road by workers heading to start their morning shift at a local factory.
The devoted mum was found with her clothing torn to shreds and her ankles tied together with her stockings while strips of her clothes had been used to tie her hands behind her back and had been tied around her mouth. Her facial injures were so bad that her dentures had smashed, while there were indications of a struggle.
Describing the scene, the front page of the South Wales Echo reported: “The body was found over a large patch of blood, which had soaked into the ground, and it is believed that Mrs Harper’s body had lain there all night. There were signs of a furious struggle, and police officers found hooks and eyes, buttons and an ear-ring.”
As part of the murder investigation soldiers on late pass on the night were interviewed, fingertip searches were carried out in the area, and appeals were made across different parts of the UK. The case made headlines across the country from Liverpool to Dundee.
Police believed there was a witness to the murder and appealed for a man seen standing on the kerb in Western Avenue opposite the grass verge at the same time as the killing to come forward. It was thought that he had stood and watched the murder transpire.
Another man of interest was also encouraged to come forward having been seen on a nearby bridge that night, around 100 yards from where the body was discovered. However, despite interviewing people across Cardiff and others parts of the UK as part of their intensive investigations, there were no reports that either of these men was ever found.
A month after the murder, police had admitted they had hit a “dead end” with their investigations. Over the past eight decades, the case has been looked at by South Wales Police’s review unit but noone has ever been arrested.
Jean Chalinder
It has been 60 years since newlywed Jean Chalinder was found dead in a field in the north of city. The 32-year-old’s body was discovered in a two-foot ditch alongside a field on Llwyn-y-Grant Farm, near Llanedeyrn Road in Penylan.
Jean, who had only been married to her husband Tony for three months before her death, had set off from her home five days before she was found, saying that she was going blackberry picking. It appears she cycled to Peggy
Giles fields on the farm, a favourite blackberry picking spot at the time, but would never return home.
Her body was discovered entangled in brambles by another blackberry picker on September 20, 1956. Jean had suffered extensive head injuries before being left in the ditch, with a plastic bag and the blackberries she had picked scattered nearby.
Scotland Yard detectives were sent to Cardiff after being called in to assist with the investigation into Jean’s murder. Police dogs were brought in while a foot-by-foot search to comb the surrounding area and hedges was ordered to try to find a heavy, sharp instrument.
Despite a search, police couldn’t find the murder weapon.
Later stages of the investigation moved to a stretch of the Rhymney river, but this also didn’t lead to anything, and the case remains unsolved.
Harold Fisher
In April 1972, Harold Fisher was stabbed to death outside Havana Bakery. It is believed that the 52-year-old was robbed before he was murdered. Despite police inquiries, the case remains unsolved half a century on.