Detectives investigate potential £250,000 fraud against crossbow murder victim

DETECTIVES are still investigating a potential £250,000 fraud committed against retired lecturer Gerald Corrigan before he was fatally shot with a crossbow.

The jury in the trial heard evidence about Richard Wyn Lewis, described in court as a “con artist”, who allegedly took £250,000 from the pensioner and his partner Marie Bailey.

Mr Lewis remains under investigation for alleged fraud offences, along with two other people.

Ms Bailey, 64, told the court the alleged conman had been friends with Mr Corrigan for at least five years, and in 2018 the couple transferred £50,000 to him for the purchase of land, which it later emerged he had not bought.

They also made payments totalling £200,000 in cash to Mr Lewis, for work he said would be carried out on Mr Corrigan’s mother’s house, as well as £7,000 for a horse, which was supposed to be brought over from Ireland but never was.

Summing up the case, judge Mrs Justice Jefford said: “By the end, they had run out of money.”

About two years before Mr Corrigan’s death, the court heard, the couple allowed Mr Lewis to grow some cannabis plants in an outbuilding on their property, because Ms Bailey believed the drug helped with her MS.

Mr Corrigan was said to be “very angry” when he discovered a largescale cannabis farm, with fans and heaters, had been installed, and he told Mr Lewis to remove it.

When Mr Corrigan was shot, he told his partner to “call Wyn”, and Ms Bailey initially went to stay with Mr Lewis.

She said he told her not to tell police about the money they had given him.

The prosecution alleged Whall was connected to Mr Lewis, who has previous convictions for obtaining money by deception and producing cannabis.

In his evidence, Whall said of Mr Lewis: “He is a con artist. He preys on the elderly.”

In the week starting May 24, about two weeks after Mr Corrigan died in hospital, Whall made repeated trips to Mr Lewis’ house, sometimes in the middle of the night, and placed a tracker on a car being driven by Mr Lewis.

On May 31, police were called to Mr Lewis’s Anglesey home, and Whall and co-defendant Gavin Jones, convicted by the jury of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, were arrested.

Whall told police they went there because Jones had loaned Mr Lewis £12,000 which had not been returned, while Jones said he was owed £2,000 for work he had done.

In evidence not heard by the jury, the court was told a handmade garotte was discovered in Whall’s car after his arrest, and his internet history showed he had bought piano wire online and googled “central nervous system neck injury”.

In his closing speech, Peter Rouch QC, prosecuting, said: “What we do know is, this incident between the three of them revolved around money, money that they, Gavin Jones and Terence Whall, wanted from Wyn Lewis.

“Wyn Lewis, the man who had apparently conned Marie Bailey and Gerald Corrigan out of a large sum of money.”