PRIME SUSPECT LIKELY TO HAVE DIED IN THE 1950s

THE prime suspect in the murder of schoolgirl Joyce Cox went to their grave with their liberty after dying in the 1950s. The four-year-old victim was robbed of a lifetime and went to her grave without justice.

A cold case review was conducted by South Wales Police in 2017 into the murder of Joyce, who had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death in Cardiff in 1939. Her body was dumped on a railway embankment near Coryton railway station.

The Whitchurch Infants’ School pupil disappeared while walking home with her seven-year-old brother Dennis and was never to be seen alive again. It led to an outpouring of grief in the community with thousands lining the streets for her funeral.

Joyce’s cousin Terry Phillips wasn’t born at the time of the murder but has spent years researching the background to the case. In a letter written to Mr

Phillips, Chief Inspector Mark Kavanagh described the original case papers as “largely intact” but added due to the passage of time the documents were fragile.

But it was revealed the prime suspect in Joyce’s killing had died decades earlier. Speaking in 2017, 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.

“I was told that documentation relating to the case could not be published because of the possibility that it named a suspect who was still alive. The new information from the police suggests that isn’t the case. I have written to the National Archives asking the chief executive to look at the case for publication again.”

Contemporary newspaper accounts said that a copy of the Western Mail, a tobacco pouch, a gas mask and Joyce’s underwear were found close by her body. Hundreds of searchers had been scouring the district after it had been reported the child had not returned home from school on Thursday, September 28,1939.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Miles, of South Wales Police, said: “All historic murder cases, often referred to in the media as ‘cold cases’, are allocated to the specialist crime review unit and remain under active consideration and will be subject of re-investigation as and when new information is received or when there are advances in forensic science.

“Each case is reviewed periodically. If information comes in from the public or other forces we act on it. South Wales Police has had considerable success with cold case reviews, being one of the first forces in the country to set up a review team in 1999 to conduct cold case reviews.”