Harrowing murders recalled as Crimewatch comes to an end
It was the show that gave criminals, rather than the viewers, nightmares – but now, after 33 years, Crimewatch UK is being axed. Here, Cathy Owen looks back at some high-profile Welsh crimes that have featured on the programme...
Russell murders
Hammer attack survivor Josie Russell appeared on the show several times after the brutal murders of her mum and sister. Lin, Megan and their dog, Lucy, were tied up and killed as they walked home from school, but despite appalling head injuries, Josie survived and went on to make an excellent recovery.
Josie and her father, Shaun, who moved to Dyfrryn Nantlle, Gwynedd, after the horrific crime, talked about their experience for a special 30th anniversary episode of Crimewatch in 2014.
On the first anniversary of the murders, a reconstruction of the attack on the Russells was shown on the BBC crime-fighting programme, and shortly afterwards Michael Stone, pictured, from Gillingham, Kent, was arrested after a tip-off from a psychiatrist.
He was convicted of the murders in October 1998.
It was one of the most high-profile of more than 5,000 appeals that have featured on the programme.
Josie and her father agreed to appear on the anniversary edition to show how they survived the years after the spotlight shifted elsewhere. In the moving film, Shaun was seen at the grave of Lynn and Megan, which is about 10 miles from where they live.
Pembrokeshire coastal path murders
The brutal double murder of husband and wife Peter and Gwenda Dixon as they walked on the Pembrokeshire coastal path in the summer of 1989 was a particularly shocking crime.
The holidaymakers were blasted to death at close quarters with a shotgun and their bodies hidden close to a sheer cliff concealed by a screen of branches interwoven with ferns and other foliage.
Mrs Dixon appeared to have been sexually assaulted, and Mr Dixon had been forced to reveal his bank card pin.
A record number of viewers contacted Crimewatch after a reconstruction was shown, while detectives took almost 4,000 statements.
Twenty years after the murders, a cold case review using the latest DNA advances linked former labourer John Cooper, pictured, and he was found guilty in 2011 after a trial at Swansea Crown Court.
He was also convicted of another double murder that appeared on the programme. Cooper killed millionaire farmer Richard Thomas, 58, and his sister, Helen, 56, at their Scoveston Manor home near Milford Haven on December 22, 1985.
The murders were heavily featured on Crimewatch and thousands of people, including some across Europe, were interviewed but for years the crimes remained unsolved.
The Dixon murders in particular led to speculative theories the IRA may have killed the couple for stumbling over an arms cache or that a drug-smuggling gang might have been responsible.
Vampire killing
Depraved Mathew Hardman stabbed 90-yearold Mabel Leyshon to death in a horrific “vampire killing” in November 2001, in Llanfairpwll, Anglesey.
He performed a gruesome ritual, cutting her heart out, placing it on a silver platter and then drinking her blood.
Hardman, pictured, who had been Mabel’s paperboy, also placed pokers in the shape of a cross in front of her body. He was just 17. A Crimewatch appeal revealed the ritualistic aspects of the death and the killer was immediately dubbed The Vampire Murderer.
More than 200 people got in touch with Crimewatch. The name of Mathew Hardman – who had been questioned in October 2001 for asking a foreign exchange student to bite his neck – was mentioned.
When his home was searched, police officers found magazines and books about vampires, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and several occult internet sites bookmarked on his computer in a bid to find out how to become immortal.
They also found a kitchen knife, which bore traces of Mrs Leyshon’s blood.
Murders of Harry and Megan Tooze
The double murders of the elderly couple, pictured, at their remote farmhouse remains one of Wales’ most notorious unsolved crimes. Their daughter Cheryl’s boyfriend, Jonathan Jones, was convicted of the murders and jailed for life in 1995, but his conviction was quashed a year later.
Despite several appearances on the show, a full review in 2000, a second review in 2005 and another following the conviction of John Cooper in 2011 for murdering four people in Pembrokeshire in the 1980s, the case remains unsolved.
A special report on the murders of Mandy Power, her daughters, Katie, 10, and Emily, eight, and mother Doris Dawson, 80, appeared on the show in 1999.
They had all been bludgeoned to death in their Clydach home by a killer who set fire to the house in a bid to cover up the crime.
The murder weapon – a four-footlong metal pole – was found nearby.
There were several new leads as a result of the Crimewatch reconstruction.
In 2001, David Morris, 38, of Craig Cefn Parc, pictured, was arrested and in 2006 he was found guilty of the murders.
Disappearance of Trevaline Evans
She left a note on her shop in 1990 that read “Back in two minutes” – and was never heard from again. The case of Trevaline Evans, pictured, was featured twice on the show with no success.
Despite the efforts of her family and the police there remain few clues. Even a banana skin, discovered in the rubbish bin in her shop, proved useless as its age could not be determined.
The most promising lead has always been a “well-dressed” man seen with Mrs Evans in the days leading up to her disappearance and on the day itself.
Discovery of human remains in a Welsh forest
One of the most recent appeals was the mystery surrounding a Welsh murder after human remains were discovered by campers.
In November last year, two brothers were camping in a forest in Conwy ahead of the motor sport event Wales Rally GB when they made a gruesome discovery.