Review of evidence in family’s murder

A FORENSIC review is to be carried out on the evidence which convicted a former builder of the murders of three generations of the same family.

Mandy Power, 34, her bed-ridden mother Doris Dawson, 80, and her daughters Katie, 10, and Emily, eight, were found dead by firefighters at their home in Clydach, near Swansea, in June 1999.

All four had been bludgeoned to death with a pole before their house was set on fire. Former builder David Morris was jailed for a minimum of 32 years having been convicted for a second time of their murders in 2006.

An earlier conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal when a second trial was ordered.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission considered Morris’s conviction in 2018 but did not refer his case to the Court of Appeal.

He has long maintained his innocence and last year a programme by BBC Wales Investigates questioned the safety of the conviction.

It featured interviews with two potential witnesses – one who said he had never spoken to police and the other who said he contacted police to report what he had seen but nobody ever called him back.

Since the programme was broadcast, South Wales Police officers have spoken to them.

Morris was arrested after the finger of suspicion wrongly pointed to Ms Power’s lover Alison Lewis.

Former policewoman Ms Lewis and her former husband Stephen, an officer with South Wales Police, were arrested on suspicion of murder a year after the deaths.