The Pembrokeshire Murders
Luke Evans plays a Welsh detective trying to solve two double murders that had remained unsolved for years…
MON TUE WED 11-13 January, 9pm ITV Drama
In the 1980s, two unsolved double murders cast a shadow over Dyfedpowys Police in Wales and made national headlines. This three-parter tells the true story of the hunt to find the cold-blooded killer – who had an unusual link to TV game show
Bullseye. Luke Evans stars as newly promoted DCS Steve Wilkins, who reopened both cases in 2005 and made it his mission to bring the culprit to justice. Also look out for Keith
Allen as serial killer
John Cooper.
On a warm June afternoon in 1989, tourists Peter and Gwenda Dixon were enjoying a walk along Pembrokeshire’s picturesque coastal path when they were shot dead.
The crime came four years after siblings Richard and Helen Thomas were killed in similar fashion nearby, yet the person responsible for the brutal murders was never identified.
As the years passed, the chances of finding the serial killer had all but dried up when DCS Steve Wilkins picked up the investigation in 2005, hoping to use new scientific methods to crack both of the notorious cold cases.
‘Steve was convinced a man called John Cooper was the killer,’ says Luke Evans, who plays the detective. ‘Cooper was in prison for burglaries, but he was due to be released and Steve was certain he’d kill again, so he knew he needed to crack the case fast.’
This new three-part drama, which is stripped across the week, follows the detective and his team as they desperately search for new DNA and forensic evidence to convict Cooper (Keith Allen).
‘There were times when people were doubting him, as they spent all their money on forensic testing and nothing was coming back positive,’ explains Luke. ‘But he and the team kept going.’
The detective also received an important breakthrough when he discovered that Cooper had appeared on TV game show Bullseye around the time of the killings.
‘Cooper had cleverly destroyed all photos of himself from the 1980s so the police had nothing to compare to descriptions of the killer,’
says Luke. ‘But then Steve discovered footage of him recorded a month before the Dixons were murdered. It was a real breakthrough.’
Discover more about the reallife case in the documentary The Pembrokeshire Murders: Catching the Gameshow Killer (Thursday, 9pm, ITV)