Former officer points to mistakes in police inquiry
O
N Easter Monday, 1972, drinking companions Isaac Hughes and James Arthur Waite were in the Rifleman’s Arms.
The two men, one a miner at Big Pit Colliery and the other a “wheeler-dealer”, had been there since the afternoon, eating and drinking with the rest of the locals.
As 11pm came around and the pub shut, the pair returned to Mr Hughes’ home,only metres away in Rifle Green, Blaenavon.
It was the last time they were seen alive.
Two days later, the pair were found dead in the living room, sparking a murder investigation which saw 8,000 people interviewed and a team of 70 detectives, crime squad officers and uniformed police working around the clock to find the person responsible.
Now, 47 years later, a detective involved in the case has voiced his fear that the murder may never be solved due to an alleged lack of communication within the police force.
Regulars at the Rifleman’s Arms, Isaac, 70, and Arthur, 50, were known to the town of Blaenavon for their charm.
At the time of their deaths, friends of the pair recounted how a stranger in the pub would often be treated to a pint by Arthur – known as a “happy-go-lucky man, always ready with a joke or witty remark and willing to play the clown”.
Isaac, or Ike, on the other hand was more reserved, known locally as a “deep character”, who had recently been living in a caravan before buying his house.
Together, a night drinking in the town for the pair would often end at the public house only metres away from Isaac’s home.
On the night of April 3, 1972, police officers on patrol had spent a number of hours in the area.
But, when the radios remained quiet, with no signs of trouble on the horizon, the team left by 10pm.
Speaking this week, a detective who worked on the inquiry, but who did not want to be identified, said: “At 11pm the older man couldn’t stand and couldn’t drink another mouthful, they said it was gurgling in his throat. So his friends walked him around to Rifle Green.
“This is where the problem started. They got to his place any time between quarter-past and half-past 11, by the time they stopped talking and left.”
The following day, Isaac’s brother, Bert, tried and failed to contact his brother.
By the time Wednesday came, he made the decision to fetch a ladder and climb through the bedroom window of the one-up, onedown house.
When he made his way to the living room he found his brother lying motionless on an old sofa, his friend sitting upright in an armchair nearby.
Both had been received blows to the head with a blunt instrument.
The Welsh detective said: “Arthur was sat in a wooden, oldtype Welsh armchair with open struts all the way round. He was just sat as if he was posed.
“Someone had walked behind him, the person was right handed, and battered him on this [the left side] of the head. He had hit him there, I would say, 15 times. There were no defensive marks on the hands in other words the first one had done the job – but he lost his temper 15 times.
“In the meantime Isaac had got up and tried to stop him. [He] had one blow on his temple, one blow which bled. He had been put to lie on an old settee... and had a cushion under his head.
“He had a bit of rag wrapped around the head as well to stop the bleeding.
“You look at that and that gives you the idea that they both knew the person. They had let him in, he had walked behind [Arthur], suddenly turned and hit him.
“He was the target, shall we say, whereas Isaac you could fob off and he would be gone.”
By the following day, police were asking every resident in Blaenavon to account for their movements on Monday night.
Speaking to our sister paper the Western Mail at the time, Detective Superintendent Val Shortridge described how house-to-house inquires were covering every home in the town, following his belief the killer lived locally.
Before long, soldiers had joined the search, using metal detectors to search ground in the Elgam housing estate.
Mr Shortridge told the newspaper: “We have not been able to determine a motive, but robbery has not been ruled out. There could be money missing, but we are not aware of it at this stage.
“We have good reason to believe it is a local case and feel it can be solved with the help of local people. We will persist in our inquiries until we have interviewed everyone in Blaenavon.”
However, even at this stage, vital information from the postmortem examination had not been taken into account, it has been claimed.
Speaking nearly 50 years after the murder, the detective, who had worked under Mr Shortridge, said: “Both men had been there [in the pub] from about 2pm on the Monday until about 11pm at night.
“They had eaten and they had drunk as much as they could so their systems would have been full. If they had been killed between 12 and 2am or 3am their systems would have been full – their bladders would have been full.
“At the post-mortem the pathologist pointed this out. The stomachs were empty, the bladders were empty. They were home by 12, they would have gone to sleep and got up the next morning. So, I thought, they were murdered around eight or nine o’clock the following morning.”
Despite the post-mortem findings, however, the time frame for the investigation was not altered.
As policeman spoke to every male aged 18 and over in the town, efforts were made to track their whereabouts in the early hours of Monday.
The detective said: “In the meantime the inquiry goes on, everyone was asked where they were at midnight. The powers that be wouldn’t accept the mindset that they had made a mistake.
“When it happened, they said it had happened after [the men] had been taken home.