Officer has worked on some of the country’s most notorious cases
ALEADING police detective who has investigated some of south Wales’ biggest cases has spoken of the “honour” it is to help the families of someone who has been killed.
Chief Superintendent Dorian Lloyd is retiring after a career with South Wales Police spanning 30 years and says the biggest change in fighting crime has been technology.
As a 20-year-old police officer, he was handed a paper pocket book, a truncheon and a pair of handcuffs.
“I can remember when the first computer arrived at the police station in Ferndale,” said the detective.
“It was locked in the inspector’s office and you had to sign a register if you wanted to use it for an hour.
“It is very different today. You can take a fingerprint machine out on the street with you, and we have facial recognition technology, and there is so much more partnership with other organisations because it is easier to communicate. With all the change though there is a lot more responsibility and accountability.”
His has been a distinguished career that saw him start as a probationer in the Rhondda, before quickly becoming the community constable for Penrhys and progressing to the role of detective constable within the CID.
After moving to Cardiff on promotion, he rose through the ranks in the city prior to spending many years as a detective chief inspector within the force’s major crime investigation team, where he led major and complex investigations.
He became the head of Serious & Organised Crime and also headed up South Wales Police’s Professional Standards Department, before returning to local policing as divisional commander.
During that time, he dealt with some of the worst crimes in South Wales, some of which have stuck in his mind. Particularly the tragic murder in Swansea of in 2009 of Kirsty Grabham.
Kirsty died in one of the worst ways imaginable. Battered and bruised, her mutilated body was put in a suitcase and thrown out a car by a man she had married just months earlier.
Kirsty, who met husband Paul in a massage parlour, disappeared after visiting a nightclub with friends. She was eventually found in a suitcase in woodland alongside the M4 close to Laleston, near Bridgend, on April 6, 2009, where Paul Grabham had thrown her from his car.
Dorian was the chief police officer in the case and described it as the most “harrowing” case he ever had to work on.
“For someone to have put the body of this young woman in a suitcase, it was horrendous, and for me to be able to help her family get justice, by getting the person who did that to her. That was a great honour,” he says.
“I don’t think there is any greater honour than being there for the families of someone who has been murdered by another.”
In 2011, Dorian was also the lead officer on the investigation into the deaths of four men at Gleision colliery , in Cilybebyll, near Pontardawe. Garry Jenkins, 39, David Powell, 50, Phillip Hill, 45, and Charles Breslin, 62, went to work, just like any other day.
The men were involved in an operation to link up with flooded old workings to create a second mine exit and to improve ventilation throughout the 100-year-old pit when disaster struck.
For the detective in charge of the investigation into their deaths, it was especially close to home.
“I went to school in nearby Ystradfellte, so I understood the people and the area well,” says Dorian. “It as a complex and unique investigation, that took several years. Again, it was a great honour to lead that investigation.”
The manager and owners of the pit were cleared of manslaughter. Dorian says once a case is taken to court it is taken out of the police’s hands.
The detective was also the lead investigator who helped bring justice for a man who was so badly beaten he choked to death on his own blood. Teenage friends Adam Smith and Richard Shanahan were locked up for a total of 35 years for the attack on 46-year-old Dickie Dyas.
At Cardiff Crown Court, Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said the attack on the 22-stone security worker during which one of the drunken pair “danced” on his face as they tried to get details of a bank account, had been sustained and vicious.
At the time, the chief superintendent said the success of the investigation was due to the “diligence of the investigation team and the considerable support we received from the community of Mountain Ash – particularly from the young people who live there”.
“I would like to thank all of those residents of Mountain Ash who came forward with valuable witness statements which, combined with the overwhelming forensic evidence, resulted in the guilty pleas from both Smith and Shanahan,” he said.
“Securing guilty pleas in a murder investigation is very unusual and it is as a result of the support and courage of many residents from Mountain Ash that we were able to achieve this result.”
The new chief superintendent taking over command of Mid Glamorgan – South Wales Police’s newly formed division created earlier this year which covers Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil – will be Stephen Jones.