Bizarre tale of minister who went from ‘Good Emyr’ to ‘Bad Emyr’
REVEREND JAILED AFTER MUTILATING MALE CORPSES
ONE of the most disturbing criminal cases in North Wales is to be revisited in a special S4C programme.
The bizarre case of the Rev Emyr Owen, originally from Blaenau Ffestiniog, made national headlines when he was arrested and charged just before Christmas 1984.
The clergyman was found to have severed the private parts of men from the bodies after they had been laid out in the chapel of rest.
The minister of Bethel Chapel in Tywyn, he was later sentenced to four years in prison after admitting abusing and mutilating a human body awaiting burial, and writing an anonymous letter.
He was caught after police in North Wales carried out an investigation into the anonymous letters, including one which threatened to kill a woman’s fouryear-old granddaughter.
The shocking case is featured in the programme Y Parchedig Emyr Ddrwg (The Rev Bad Emyr) on Wednesday, February 2, at 9pm on S4C.
Producer Gwion Tegid, of Felinhelibased Docshed, said: “What’s new in the programme is the way we handle the case. Possibly a little more sympathetic than previous programmes about the same subject.
“Our aim is to try to find out why Emyr Owen did what he did.
“We look at the cause and his upbringing through a modern lens and lift a mirror to the less tolerant chapel society of Wales of the last century.”
The hour-long programme is structured in a series of dramatic interpretations, lengthy interviews with retired police officers, people who knew Owen and assessments of his offending by psychiatrists and legal experts.
Owen was arrested after a painstaking investigation led by Det Const Gwyn Roberts of Dolgellau police station.
He had been tasked to investigate the sending of anonymous letters to various people during the autumn of 1984.
Author and broadcaster Eigra Lewis Roberts said she received such a letter.
“It was what we would call a poison pen letter and you could feel the poison in it. My mother was alive at the time and she was unnerved by it,” she said.
Gwyn Roberts said that the writing on the letters was indicative of someone who had been educated in the 1930s and had a distinctive way of forming the letter ‘t ‘
But after examining the handwriting of thousands of people in the Tywyn and Blaenau Ffestiniog areas, he drew a blank in finding the culprit until a farmer
showed him a Bible which had been signed by Emyr Owen.
The writing, he said, matched that of the clergyman and he went to call on him.
The official police record reveals his reply to the caution was “May the good Lord strike me dead, I have never written such letters.”
But under questioning he crumbled and replied: “I wrote all those letters. I can’t tell you why. I was ill at the time.”
During a search of the house, police found various items not usually found in a clerics home.
He found handcuffs, dental extractors
and ropes as well as photographic images of mutilated male corpses. which Owen admitted to having carried out.
During the subsequent interview Owen said: “I’d be glad to get it off my mind. It’s quite simple really.
“Something came over me. The whole thing is like a nightmare. It’s as though its been a bad dream.”
When sentenced, the only explanation he could offer for the bizarre mutilations was that his personality was split between a good Emyr and “Emyr Ddrwg” (bad Emyr).
Emyr Ddrwg was responsible for the letters and mutilation he added.
Historian Ruth Blunden said: “He was ashamed and repressed and that combined with his religion drove him mad.”
Legal experts said there had been no such case before the British courts and that mutiliating a corpse is an “offence not known to law”.
Dr Hayley Roberts, of Bangor University, said that this was drawn to the judge’s attention, but he had rejected the point and Owen had then pleaded guilty.
She believes if Owen had denied the offences, there was a good chance of him being acquitted.
The minister, who moved to Tywyn in 1976 and covered several chapels in the area, had been chaplain to the High Sheriff in 1982.
Journalist Eifion Glyn said Owen was highly respected in the community in Tywyn.
“People who I knew well were embarrassed by what he had done and shut the door on me when I asked about him,” he said.
After his release from prison, Owen joined a church congregation in Colwyn Bay, where he again began a letter writing campaign before being thrown out. He died in Llandudno in 2001 aged 78.
Y Parchedig Emyr Ddrwg (The Rev Bad Emyr) will be broadcast today, Wednesday, February 2 at 9pm on S4C. English subtitles available.