Serial killer unmasked 30 years after teens died
Nathan Bevan looks at how DNA finally led cold-case detectives to Wales’ very first documented serial killer – the Saturday Night Strangler
HEAVY rain lashed down on Port Talbot’s Goytre Cemetery, thunder cracked and streaks of lightning split the sky.
Twilight had finally fallen on a long day of digging and a team of detectives and forensic experts hunched around the newly-made hole in the ground as a dirt-covered coffin was slowly brought to the surface.
As ominous flashes from above lit the scene, one man looked at the other and muttered: “Looks like he doesn’t want to come up.”
More like something from a ghoulish horror movie, this was actually the real-life moment in May 2002 when Wales’ very first documented serial killer – the Saturday Night Strangler – was finally unmasked, bringing to a close one of the longest-running murder hunts in this country’s history.
Of course, way back in September 1973, no-one had even heard of the phrase “serial killer” – least of all 16-year-old factory worker friends Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd, who’d left the Top Rank nightclub in Swansea where they’d been dancing to the likes of Bowie’s Life on Mars and David Essex’s Rock On to hitch a lift home.
They’d never reach their destination, however.
Instead, their bodies were found the next morning, raped, strangled, and dumped in Llandarcy woodland, sparking a massive police manhunt and leaving a community cowering in fear as to when or where the killer might strike again.
Some 150 detectives worked flatout on the case but, with no mobile phones, no internet and no computers, the investigation soon became swamped in a sea of paperwork as officers struggled to keep tabs on thousands of leads.
The two girls had been seen getting a lift home in a white Austin 1100, so more than 10,000 drivers had to be visited and questioned.
Port Talbot steelworks alone employed 13,000 men and all were viewed as possible suspects.
Construction of the M4 was also under way, meaning hundreds of itinerant workers needed to be considered.
The annual Neath fair had also been on at the time, bringing lots of strangers into the area, any of whom could have been responsible for the two girls’ deaths.
And Britain back then – floundering in a state of emergency, crippled by an energy crisis and restricted to a three-day working week – was hardly rich with the kind of resources required to enable such backbreaking, round-the-clock inquiries.
Consequently, come mid-1974, the murder team was quietly wound down and boxes upon boxes of evidence and admin shelved.
“Much of it went into storage at Sandfields police station in Port Talbot where, because of the damp conditions, it turned to mush,” said Dr Colin Dark, of Chepstow-based Forensic Science Services, who came to the case in 1990.
“It got very mouldy and mice had also nibbled away many index cards.
“Luckily, I anticipated the sort of developments that might happen in DNA research and asked for the girls’ underwear to be stored at our labs in Chepstow.
“The key to cold-case work is hav-
ing material left to work with, you see.”
That decision turned out to be vital as, in 1998, a scientific breakthrough would once again throw light on the case.
The arrival of an ultra-sensitive testing system meant that the killer’s genetic fingerprint, previously jumbled up with his victims’, could be isolated from the ageing samples available.
“Finally, in 2000, we could start searching the national DNA database of about 1.7 million different people’s profiles,” added Dr Dark.
“There was a chance that, had he been arrested or charged since 1995, our killer could be on it.”
He wasn’t, but that was enough for Operation Magnum, the reinvestigation of the Llandarcy murders, to be officially opened.
Headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Paul Bethell and colleagues Phil Rees and Geraint Bale – both near retirement age – the team assembled in a run-down police station in the village of Pontardawe.
Inheriting the massive archive of case material, they knew that their only shot at success was to go out and swab the most likely suspects.
Yet they had 35,000 persons of interest and only 500 swabs.
Also, three decades having passed, there was the added difficulty that some might have moved house, emigrated or even died – while certain addresses might have long ceased to exist.
But, with the help of a psychological profiler, the team slowly whittled down the 35,000 names and, eight months later, arrived at a figure of 500.
Painstaking passport, driving licence and criminal record checks followed, leading to 353 men, one as far away as New Zealand, being tested.
Nevertheless, although all elected to co-operate, none matched.
Among the 147 not checked was suspect number 200, a nightclub bouncer from Port Talbot called Joseph Kappen, who’d initially been quizzed at the time of the deaths but somehow slid under the radar – despite driving the same model of car spotted on the night in question.
When detectives knocked on his door, his ex-wife Christine appeared – only to deliver the revelation that Kappen had died of lung cancer 12 years previously.
A literal dead end.
But Bethell and his boys were not yet done with the late doorman, who was known to some on the force as a habitual petty criminal with a violent temper.
Another 1973 cold case, where a Briton Ferry teenager was found murdered near the disused Tonmawr colliery, was to provide a much-needed lead.
Fifteen-year-old hitchhiker Sandra Newton had been raped, choked to death with her own skirt and left in a culvert under a road.
From the swabs taken from her, it could now be proven that the man responsible had also killed Geraldine and Pauline.
The remoteness of the area in which she was discovered also suggested her assailant had a strong local knowledge.
It was one of Dr Dark’s workmates who would then provide the masterstroke which crucially saw the net tighten further – what if a relative or child of the killer was on the national database?
It wouldn’t hand them an exact match, but they would certainly have 50% of the DNA – and, now able to harness the power of computer technology, they could dismiss thousands of potential suspects with just a key stroke.
Of the closely related genetic profiles which remained, one would jump out of the screen at them – that of habitual car thief Paul Kappen.
Although only seven years old at the time of the Llandarcy murders, that unusual surname could mean only one thing – he was Joe Kappen’s son.
And, by persuading Kappen Snr’s ex-wife and her daughter to volunteer swabs of their DNA, decades of clutching at straws were finally brought to an end.
Over the phone from Chepstow, Dr Dark would give DCI Bethell the news he never thought he’d hear – the Saturday Night Strangler had been caught, albeit from beyond the grave.
On Christmas Eve 2001, two years after that cold case was reopened, DI Bethell applied to Home Secretary David Blunkett to exhume Paul Kappen’s dad and, six months later, on a sodden hillside cemetery in south Wales, justice was finally served.
DNA taken from the body’s femur and teeth proved a full match.
“After all those years of questions, suppositions and heartache for the girls’ families, we’d got our man at last,” said Dr Dark.
Luckily, I anticipated the sort of developments that might happen in DNA research and asked for the girls’ underwear to be stored at our labs in Chepstow
DR COLIN DARK