POLICE FILES TO BE KEPT SECRET UNTIL 2040

POLICE files on the murder of Welsh schoolgirl Joyce Cox will remain under lock and key until more than a century after her death. The four-year-old was found dead in Cardiff in 1939 having been strangled and sexually assaulted.

The murder took place within weeks of the beginning of World War II and days before Joyce’s fifth birthday. She was last seen alive by her seven-year-old brother Dennis on September 28 as they walked home from school but he lost sight of her.

Hundreds of searchers took to the streets of Whitchurch, where Joyce lived and was last seen, to look for her.

Her body was found in an embankment near Coryton railway station on September 29.

Despite an investigation launched by Glamorgan Constabulary which saw more than 1,000 people being interviewed no-one was ever charged with

Joyce’s murder. A cold case review by South Wales Police in 2017 revealed the prime suspect in the case was likely to have died in the 1950s.

At the time of the investigation the Metropolitan Police in London often helped other forces in the investigation of serious crimes. Joyce’s cousin Terry Phillips, who was not alive at the time of her death, established the Met holds documents relating to Joyce’s murder.

When he asked for access an official of the force decided to slap an order on the file, saying it had to be kept secret for 100 years after the events concerned – until January 2040.

A decision letter sent to Mr Phillips says: “A named subject who was a suspect is described derogatorily and should not be associated with these matters. As an unsolved murder, with potential of reinvestigation at any indeterminate stage, practice to close for 100 years is invoked.

“However unlikely – indeed remote – it may be that this case is re-opened, we have to afford for that possibility. Putting information into the public domain will include naming specific persons who may yet be identified.

“These persons who may be living may have been witnesses and/or interviewees and who were not prosecuted and who therefore must be regarded as innocent parties. Persons will have given witness statements in the expectation that their information would not become public knowledge.”

Speaking in 2015, Mr Phillips said: “I don’t accept the reason for refusing to release the documents. This smacks of a cover-up to me. As a result of this decision, which I am appealing against, I wouldn’t get access to the file until I was 96, even if I lived that long.”