Murder suspect died many years ago
POLICE undertaking a “cold case” review of the unsolved murder of a four-year-old girl in Cardiff in 1939 have said the primary suspect died decades ago.
Joyce Cox was sexually assaulted and killed when she was days short of her fifth birthday.
She disappeared when her older brother Dennis, seven, lost track of her as they walked home from school for lunch.
Her body was found on a railway embankment near Coryton station, in a northern suburb of Cardiff.
Joyce’s cousin Terry Phillips, who wasn’t born at the time of the murder and is now 73, has spent years researching the background to the case.
Two years ago he came up against a major stumbling block when the Metropolitan Police, which had been drafted in to help with the original inquiry, said it was not prepared to release crucial documents relating to the case until 2040.
Now, however, South Wales Police is undertaking a review of the documentation generated by the former Glamorganshire Constabulary in the aftermath of the murder.
In a letter to Mr Phillips, Chief Constable Peter Vaughan’s staff officer Chief Inspector Mark Kavanagh said: “The original case papers appear to be largely intact.”
Mr Phillips has passed over data gleaned from his own research, as well as information handed down within his family in the nearly 80 years since the murder. Now, however, police sources have told ITV Wales that they are able to say for certain that the prime suspect from the time has died.
Hundreds of searchers scoured the district after the child failed to return home from school on Thursday, September 28,1939.
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.”