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00:26Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30...and I never knew who it was. Everybody was scared then.
00:37Llandarcy today is a village haunted by fear. Fear that a maniac strangler could strike again.
00:44In 1973, the bodies of three teenage girls are found dumped near the steel town of Port Talbot in South
00:52Wales.
00:52These detectives are tracking a vicious killer. The biggest murder hunt there has ever been in Wales.
01:00Women especially are afraid. They've got chains on their doors.
01:03It's really shocked the whole area.
01:06For decades, their murders remain unsolved.
01:10There was a real sense of fear that this man was still at large.
01:14What else had he done? What else had this guy done?
01:17Nearly 30 years on, a small team of detectives were tasked with finding the girl's killer.
01:24He was out there just waiting for us to knock on his door.
01:28It became almost an obsession. How do we find the killer?
01:33They would have to go to unprecedented lengths.
01:36New DNA technology is having a massive impact on solving crime.
01:41This was a groundbreaking technique. First time it's ever been done in the whole world.
01:46We're considering exhuming the body of a man who died back in 1990.
01:52We looked at each other and thought,
01:55Should we be doing this?
01:58With the investigation now the focus of a major new BBC drama...
02:03I need an authority to carry out an exhumation on human remains.
02:09We uncover the inside story.
02:12And hear from those at the heart of this groundbreaking case.
02:31This is the scene where the murders took place.
02:39Which, really speaking, hasn't changed an awful lot over the years considering it's 50 years.
02:49We have an elderly gentleman walking his little dog across the back of the woods here.
02:56And he comes across what he thought was someone had thrown a small doll or some sort of mannequin into
03:03the copse.
03:06When he looked a little closer he realised it was the lifeless body of a young girl.
03:13Pauline was lying face down at the top end of the copse here.
03:18She had a substantial head wound.
03:21And clearly she'd been strangled.
03:26Geraldine was found about 150 feet away from Pauline at this end of the copse.
03:33She has been strangled with a ligature.
03:38Geraldine has tried to escape at some point.
03:41She's almost made it to the roadway.
03:44But sadly the killer has caught her, dragged her back in.
03:50Both girls were raped by the killer.
03:55It's the stuff of nightmares, there's no question of that.
04:02And even some 30 years later when I took ownership of this investigation as it were.
04:08Remembering and recalling what happened to these two girls.
04:10I was absolutely 100% committed and determined to find this killer.
04:2216-year-olds Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd were best friends.
04:30They lived just a few miles apart in the small communities of Llan Darcy and Neath in South Wales.
04:37Both a short distance from the steel town of Port Talbot.
04:42They were traditional areas. People looked out for each other.
04:47Llan Darcy dominated by the oil refinery.
04:49You couldn't miss it if only for the smell of oil that permeated the whole district.
04:55For Talbot largely based around the steelworks.
04:59At that stage employing about 13,000 people.
05:03The young people were the only people who got out because they wanted to go out and explore.
05:09They were very traditional communities, very family based, very family oriented.
05:18You can recognise her?
05:20Oh yeah, definitely.
05:22Geraldine would have been about 9 or 10 in that photograph.
05:24You look at us two there.
05:26Yeah.
05:27We look very, very much alike.
05:29I would say that was a typical Sunday afternoon.
05:32Sunday afternoon, definitely.
05:34We used to play as a family.
05:36Geraldine was a fantastic girl.
05:39She really was. Always full of fun.
05:42She was a typical tomboy.
05:45We were the only two girls in the family. It was all boys.
05:50We didn't have much chance to be girly girly, you know, because it was always roughing and tumbling.
05:57She was a larger and life girl.
05:59She was a little bit cheeky, you know, growing up.
06:03Typical teenagers.
06:06These must be 60 odd years old.
06:09These photos.
06:10Brings back a lot of memories.
06:16I can always remember my dad was taken to the mortuary where he had to identify Geraldine.
06:24And it was horrendous.
06:27He didn't tell us the injuries or anything like that because they must have been horrific.
06:36He was never the same man after that. Never ever. No, he was. It affected him something terrible. My dad.
06:43Yeah.
06:44Life was very different after that.
06:48Very, very different.
07:02When the news came out, it was a shock. It was a tremendous shock. We couldn't believe it really.
07:06It was virtually impossible to think of another example of a murder like this.
07:11These detectives are tracking a vicious killer, a strangler. The girls had been struck with great force. Every square inch
07:18of the cops was searched and searched again.
07:22This is an area where murders, well, very rarely happened. Communities looked after their own and suddenly we had two
07:29young girls going out for a night of enjoyment and never getting home.
07:35Teenage girls and their parents are worried and afraid.
07:39There was a real sense of fear that this man was still at large.
07:42It's really shocked the whole area and especially that we know the little girls that this has happened to. It's
07:49really shocked us, Richard.
07:51Never thought it would ever come really home to us here.
07:56I was then a young detective, just literally started. Officers were drawn in from all areas of South Wales.
08:05You had about 100, 150 officers at the time working on the investigation.
08:12Hundreds of policemen started door-to-door inquiries. They were trying to use every means at their disposal.
08:23Detectives soon build a picture of the girls' movements in the hours before they died.
08:36On that fateful Saturday, they were both quite excited because they were getting ready to go out into the city.
08:43And in the darkest night...
08:46You can imagine two 16-year-old girls dressing up in the fashions of the day.
08:52And then they made their way to top rank on the King's Way in Swansea.
09:00The top rank was a large, very large dance hall.
09:04It was the in place for all teenagers.
09:07It became somewhere to get out and meet people.
09:11It had all the usual things, the bright lights.
09:14A chance to enjoy a bit of freedom that you might not have known before.
09:21The girls leave the top rank at around one o'clock.
09:24The same time as Geraldine's cousin, who's also out that evening.
09:29I saw Geraldine and she was accompanied by another girl.
09:36Typical Geraldine, laughing and, you know, making her way home.
09:39We said hello.
09:40And I said, look, you know, make sure you get home safely.
09:43Yes, no problem, Phil.
09:45Good night, see you.
09:46And that was it.
09:49In eyesight, you know, perhaps I could have said, look, you know, come with us and get a taxi home
09:55or whatever it is.
09:56But it never crossed my mind.
09:58I thought in those days it was safe.
10:02They were more than happy, you know, and that's the lasting memory that I have of Geraldine, to be honest.
10:12So they make their way down to Fabian Way, which of course is the main route back to Llandarsi, where
10:17they both go in home.
10:20There would have been no buses at that particular time.
10:24Taxis are very, very few and far between in those days.
10:30So the only option left of them really is to hitchhike.
10:34It was a known thing that all those years ago, because everybody thought that we used to be safe.
10:40You know what I mean?
10:41You never think something like that could happen, you know?
10:46A key witness, if not the key witness, was driving along the main road out of Swansea City and stopped
10:53at traffic lights and actually saw the two girls getting into a white car.
10:59He describes it as a small Morris on Austin 1100 car.
11:05He looked across and saw the driver and described him as this bushy-haired man with a moustache.
11:1130, 35 years of age.
11:14He remembers the two girls and the one thing that struck him is they were both laughing and smiling.
11:22It's the last time the girls are seen alive.
11:31But a car similar to the one they were seen getting into is spotted again that evening.
11:37We had sightings then from various witnesses of a white 1100 car at the murder scene, parked just in a
11:46very small lay-by.
11:49One witness actually described the glow of a cigarette in the vehicle as they passed.
11:56But the one thing, of course, nobody saw is the registration number.
12:04The Austin 1100 became a huge point of interest for the investigators.
12:11Whose car was it?
12:13Who was the man driving the car?
12:18This gentleman is to be a full briefing on the murders of Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes,
12:26with full emphasis being placed upon our search for the light-coloured 1100 motor car.
12:39I was a beat officer at the time in Swansea Central and like most uniform officers,
12:47we were directed really to stop any light-coloured vehicle.
12:52take the number of the vehicle, take the name and address of the driver,
12:56ask him where he was on the night of the murders,
12:58and all this stuff would go flying into the inquiry room,
13:04literally bombarding them with information.
13:10White-lost in the 1100s in the 1970s were a very, very common car.
13:17It was Operation Overlord, really.
13:2111,500 white or light-coloured vehicle owners were interviewed,
13:27and paperwork was generated, so it did overrun the inquiry.
13:34It was my role as a divisional detective to just make inquiries into the vehicle itself.
13:41And what we had to do is visit the person,
13:43and then we had to physically examine the vehicles.
13:49We fingerprinted the vehicles, and we actually taped the vehicles
13:54for fibres, hair, whatever it might be.
13:59and it was very, very time-consuming.
14:09The hunt for the killer is made even harder
14:11because of the unusually high number of men working in the area
14:15at the time of the murders.
14:18There were so many areas where the suspects could have come from.
14:22You had 13,000 working in the steelworks.
14:26You had the big Neith Fair, which attracted a lot of strangers into the area.
14:32Also at the time, the M4 was being built,
14:36so you had a huge amount of transient workers.
14:39Men from all over the UK, and many from abroad.
14:45The police job, given that scale of suspect pool, was virtually impossible.
14:56The inquiry room would have been filled from floor to ceiling of paperwork.
15:0335,000 people actually spoken to.
15:09They were working without computers, relying on means of somehow sifting through that in detail.
15:18Detectives use a complex card index system, containing details of the thousands of people spoken to.
15:26You had hundreds and hundreds of boxes of them, but you only needed a person to misfile one card,
15:34and that could be the killer's name.
15:37So that tiny, tiny human error could destroy the whole investigation.
15:44One officer is given the near impossible task of sifting through and analysing all of the documents.
15:52Working on his own, Inspector William spends 14 hours a day reading every word that's been written on the case.
15:58It was just one person in an amount of paperwork of 30,000 to 40,000 pieces of paper.
16:06It would have been easy to miss that crucial lead.
16:18As the investigation continues, the community come together to mourn the girls.
16:28And their funeral service is relayed to the factory where they'd worked.
16:34There was a tremendous outpouring of grief.
16:39The families, knowing that the two girls were the closest of friends, had decided they would be buried at the
16:45same time.
16:47It made it all the more emotional.
16:53People had that community spirit, and they all felt, to some degree, that it might have been their daughter.
17:00It might have been their child.
17:02So the turnout was quite remarkable.
17:21Pressure is mounting on detectives to find the person responsible for Pauline and Geraldine's murders.
17:30The communities were desperate for somebody to be caught.
17:36This was hanging over their heads.
17:39They literally didn't know who among them was a killer.
17:45People want results.
17:47The family want results.
17:50Nobody was being arrested.
17:54There was no inclination as the guards who had committed these crimes.
17:59They were under severe pressure.
18:02And there are fears that the same man may have struck before.
18:07The girls' murders are disturbingly similar to another that happened just two months earlier.
18:16The murder of 16-year-old Sandra Newton.
18:27Sandra was very, very pretty.
18:29She had beautiful, long, dark hair.
18:34She was very quiet.
18:37But loved her laugh.
18:39She loved, she was very giggly.
18:43I can hear her laughing. I will never forget her laugh.
18:48She had a brace, so every time she laughed, she'd put her hand over her mouth.
18:53Because she was embarrassed about her brace.
19:01She was a lovely girl.
19:07On the night Sandra was murdered, she'd been out in Britain Ferry,
19:10just a few miles from Port Talbot.
19:14On this particular Saturday in July in 1973, Sandra went to a nightclub where she met her boyfriend.
19:25They left the club at around one o'clock.
19:31And they had a little walk down a side street just off the main drag.
19:35And being a courting couple, they had intercourse.
19:41Sandra leaves her boyfriend outside the local working men's club.
19:45And begins to walk home.
19:49From Britain Ferry to her home would have been a distance of about four to five miles.
19:58We believe that, again, she was thumbing a lift.
20:04Or somebody stopped and asked her if she wanted a lift.
20:13She was never seen again until the Tuesday morning.
20:41Sandra's body was found in this culvert.
20:43She'd been there for two days.
20:48Discarded in a pool of water within the side of this archway.
20:54She had been beaten around the head.
20:58She'd been strangled by her own skirt.
21:02And just left there.
21:05I would say that the majority of the people who use this road would only be locals.
21:13Obviously, Sandra's murderer knew this particular area, knew it particularly well.
21:21To think that she'd been discarded like an old bag of rubbish, just thrown one side, not concealed, just left
21:28there.
21:30It's a shocking crime, a really, really shocking and sad, sad, sad incident.
21:40Tuesday, the 17th, which was my birthday, my 16th birthday, came the terrible news that there'd been a body found
21:51up in Thonmawr.
21:53Of a very young girl.
21:55And we just knew.
21:58We just knew it was her.
22:03My beautiful friend.
22:04And she had her life taken away from her.
22:08She had her future taken away from her.
22:15Still think about myself.
22:18I'm sorry, but I just...
22:22I just think what she went through and...
22:26..all these things that could have been...
22:29..should have been.
22:35Such a waste.
22:38Waste of life, you know?
22:39Waste.
22:46Sandra's body is found just seven miles from where Pauline and Geraldine were killed.
22:52All of the girls had been strangled.
22:56Officers have to consider that the same person could be responsible for their murders.
23:02But despite the similarities, someone is already in the frame for Sandra's killing.
23:10The prime suspect for Sandra's death was most certainly the last person who saw her,
23:16which would have been her boyfriend, John Dylan Morgan.
23:21He's questioned by detectives and traces of Sandra's blood are found on his shirt.
23:28He explains that it got there when they had sex on the night she disappeared,
23:32as Sandra was on her period.
23:36He was interviewed at length.
23:38But he constantly maintained that he didn't kill Sandra.
23:43Sandra's boyfriend isn't charged with her murder.
23:46But suspicions amongst officers and the community remain.
23:52Crucially, detectives continue to run separate investigations into her killing and the Llandasi murders.
24:05By spring 1974, officers are still no closer to finding Pauline and Geraldine's killer.
24:14The police had gone up so many alleys that had no end,
24:18and they had mountains and mountains of evidence that were getting them nowhere, really.
24:24The vast investigation is quietly wound down.
24:31We thought that we would never find out who was responsible.
24:37Obviously none of us ever stopped hoping that one day we would find out who he was.
24:48The boxes are put away, the case is filed and it's put on the shelf.
24:52It's never forgotten, it's always there.
24:56But in real terms, all you can hope for is that at some point someone might come forward
25:04and assist in the investigation and open it up again.
25:11Detectives must have felt pretty down to just walk out that station and say,
25:16OK, we didn't find the person responsible.
25:27Decades pass without any new leads.
25:32Then comes the crucial development that allows officers to reopen the case.
25:44New DNA technology is having a massive impact on solving crime.
25:49Science is linking people to crimes as never before.
25:53It's already having a dramatic effect.
25:58I was the detective chief superintendent, head of CID for Southwest Police.
26:04DNA was progressing and it was an exciting time.
26:09Technology was on the move and I think we had to be on the move with it.
26:13The national database holding the samples is expanding rapidly.
26:18It was decided that we would re-look at murder investigations
26:24that hadn't been resolved.
26:27A decade ago they needed blood or stains the size of a two-pence piece.
26:31Now a particle smaller than a pinhead will do.
26:37I was a forensic scientist at the Chepstow Laboratory.
26:41We were asked by South Wales Police to see if we could get a DNA profile
26:45from items that they still had from Geraldine and Pauline.
26:53There was still material available for me to cut out and extract the DNA from.
27:01I targeted the semen stain on the girls' underwear.
27:06And we were very quickly able to get DNA.
27:12Which was very exciting.
27:15The problem was that it was a mixture of the attacker's DNA and the girls' DNA.
27:23For months the forensic team worked to separate the profiles.
27:29They identify the girls' DNA using samples of their blood and swabs from their families.
27:37These are then isolated from the mixed profile.
27:42Leaving just one.
27:45The killers.
27:49This is a big moment in the case because we now have the offender's DNA.
27:56They immediately search the national DNA database in the hope that they'll find a match.
28:02We did a search straight away.
28:06But we couldn't find the offender on there.
28:12But we've got something.
28:19Armed with this crucial lead, in 2000 a new operation, codenamed Magnum, is launched into Pauline and Geraldine's murders.
28:30Nearly three decades after first working on the case, the now detective inspector, Paul Bethel, is tasked with finding the
28:37killer behind the profile.
28:41His team are under increased pressure as the investigation is being followed by a documentary film crew.
28:47So that's looking quite positive.
28:49If we could just run through where we were yesterday, Phil, with the individuals that you were looking at.
28:54I was tasked by the head of CID to lead the investigation to become the SIO on Operation Magnum and
29:02take it forward.
29:04Paul phoned me up.
29:06He explained that they had a DNA profile of the person responsible for the murder of Geraldine and Pauline.
29:14And how would I be interested to come on board?
29:19I was very excited, you know, to start one's career in the police service at the time of a murder
29:26and then with a chance of detecting it 27 years on would be a fantastic achievement.
29:33It was a massive moment for us as investigators. We now had a golden opportunity to search for the killer
29:38of these girls.
29:41The original case files and exhibits are all moved to an old police station, where the small team of seasoned
29:48detectives will be based.
29:51The first floor for three of those rooms are filled from floor to ceiling with the old documentation.
30:00Many of the case papers had been stored over the years in old garages and sheds.
30:06And many of them had deteriorated.
30:09Some were rotted with mould and damp.
30:13And we actually found mice droppings in one or two of the boxes.
30:18That was a huge challenge, to gather in all that information after 30 years and make sure we found every
30:25scrap of paper that related to the old original case.
30:30One piece of paper that had half rotted away, that could have had the killer's name on.
30:36For eight months, the team combed through each document to compile a list of likely suspects.
30:43What Paul decided was that we had to identify 500 people from the 35,000 spoken to, with a view
30:57of obtaining DNA swabs from them.
31:01We were given a budget of 500 swabs. Anything over 500 is finished.
31:10We selected men that we would now try and track down and obtain their DNA to compare against the killer's
31:18crime state.
31:20And that was based on the description of the individual.
31:24Did they own a white D1100 car? Did they have previous convictions for violence or sexual offences?
31:32So all these types of parameters were put in place.
31:37However, 30 years later, where were they?
31:41Were they still living in the address from 1973?
31:46Of course, many, many weren't.
31:48Some had moved abroad. Some had moved abroad. Some had moved away.
31:51People were in New Zealand, were in Iraq. How do we find these individuals?
31:57We used the DVLA. We used the tax office, the unemployment office, pensions, passport office,
32:04numerous agencies to try and identify the individuals that we needed to profile.
32:12With the list decided, the team now have to persuade each person to volunteer their DNA.
32:20DNA was still in its infancy, really. So you had people who knew nothing about DNA and the others maybe
32:27had their doubts about it.
32:29So that was our main challenge, was actually getting people's authority to obtain the swab.
32:37To this stage of the investigation, we were getting suspect samples in from the police.
32:43They were being compared with the offender's profile that we had.
32:47We were also searching the offender's profile against the database once a month.
32:54But there were no matches.
33:01Over a year into the reinvestigation, detectives are no closer to finding the girl's killer.
33:08But alongside the murders of Pauline and Geraldine, the Magnum team are also looking into the killing of 16-year
33:15-old Sandra Newton.
33:19And forensic tests on semen stains found on her underwear give them their first major breakthrough.
33:28Colin Wranglian said that they tested the samples and that the profile was a three-way mix.
33:36And that that three-way mix was Sandra herself, her boyfriend, which of course we knew because he had said
33:43they'd had intercourse.
33:45And an unknown male.
33:52That other person I recognised straight away from a particular feature of the DNA, but this was the Llandarsi killer.
34:00That was the first time in almost 30 years we knew 100% that the same man had killed all
34:07three girls.
34:10Llandarsi today is a village haunted by fear.
34:12Is there a maniac at large here, living an apparently normal life?
34:16Is it likely that a man like this might do it again?
34:19I feel myself, yes, it's quite likely he could strike again.
34:24This was an absolute bombshell.
34:27Because this meant that there was a serial killer operating in South Wales in 1973, killing young girls.
34:35What else had he done?
34:37What else had he done?
34:38What else had this guy done?
34:40There was a killer on the loose somewhere in Wales or the UK.
34:55After nearly 30 years, it's finally proved that Sandra's boyfriend was not her killer.
35:04So we went to see him, explain to him the result of the test.
35:09He obviously became very, very emotional.
35:12He cried, he thanked us and he said, I can walk down the street now with my head held high.
35:17Which was great for us, you know.
35:24But the tests also reveal that like the other girls, Sandra had been raped by the killer.
35:35Pat, Sandra's mum, had always said that the only solace that she got from the whole event
35:41was the fact that her daughter, Sandra, had not been sexually assaulted by the killer.
35:48I now had to go back to Pat and tell her that Sandra had been raped.
35:55That was heartbreaking, I've got to say.
36:05We were determined to find the killer.
36:10It basically took over my life.
36:14And I remember one occasion when I was driving home.
36:17I was actually pulled over by a traffic officer.
36:22Because apparently I was veering all over the road.
36:26Without any knowledge of my driving.
36:30I was constantly thinking about what did I need to do next.
36:35You become almost obsessed with the case.
36:39It takes over your family life as well.
36:44Do you remember me telling you when that particular evening I came home
36:48and I'd been pulled in by the traffic cops we used to call them, do you remember?
36:53I was really worried about that mind.
36:54You were working like 7 in the morning till 2 in the next morning.
36:58And then so tired when you came home.
37:02Absolutely shattered.
37:03There was 3 little girls involved and we had 4 little girls, didn't we, at the time.
37:08So it was a big thing.
37:11I often recall I was always thinking about it and perhaps you would be talking to me.
37:16And then you'd say, well you haven't heard a word I said.
37:19Yeah, well that's true.
37:20Because I was thinking about the case and thinking about what I was going to do the next day, do
37:23you remember?
37:24Yeah.
37:25I mean the last thing you want to do is bring work home and let it impact on a family
37:31and that, but sometimes it was difficult.
37:32Oh yeah, definitely. It was always going to be the main thing in your life, I knew that.
37:40When you talk about, you know, this issue of why are we bothering after 28 years, if you saw the
37:47crime scene photographs, if you saw the bodies of those little girls, that would just answer the question.
37:57That's it. We need to find out who's done this.
38:02Having failed to find a match on the DNA database, forensic scientists now have to come up with a new
38:08approach.
38:09They decide to look for a relative of the killer.
38:14We started to think, was it possible that we could use the idea that crime can run in families?
38:23You inherit your DNA from your parents and you pass your DNA onto a child.
38:29So could we look on the national DNA database for a child of the offender?
38:35This was a definite possibility.
38:39It meant getting a spreadsheet printout of several thousand DNA profiles from the South Wales area, sitting down with a
38:51pencil and a ruler and crossing out everyone that doesn't match.
38:57After several hours of going through the process, we were left with about a hundred names.
39:05They were all exact half matches to the offender's profile.
39:12So they were potentially a child of the offender.
39:24This was a groundbreaking technique. First time it's ever been done in the United Kingdom and possibly in the whole
39:31world.
39:31And from there, developed the whole new investigative tool, which is now known as familial DNA.
39:42I went through the list and one name stood out and that was Paul Catburn.
39:51Paul was on the database because he had committed a number of lesser offences.
39:58Paul was just seven years old at the time of the murders.
40:03But in their list of 500 most likely suspects is a man with the same unusual surname.
40:10Paul's father, Joseph Catburn.
40:30Catburn was somebody who lived in the Sandfields area of Port Albert, which is a huge, at that time, a
40:37council estate.
40:39He was married during the time of the murders.
40:43He was somebody who didn't have regular employment.
40:48He worked on occasions as a bouncer at various nightclubs.
40:54He was known in the community as a bit of a thug, a bit of a hard man.
40:59He had a history of domestic violence.
41:03He'd been to prison on a number of occasions.
41:07I'll get a statement. You do the car.
41:10During the initial inquiry, officers had visited Catburn, as he was one of the thousands of light-colored 1100 owners.
41:18His car was in the driveway. It was up on blocks.
41:23He gained some excuse for it having mechanical problems and he had to take the wheels off so that it
41:28wasn't roadworthy at the time of the murders.
41:33And his wife had forgiven him by basically saying that he was home on the nights of the murder.
41:41He was briefly interviewed, but nothing went any further.
41:48Now, with tests proving that his son's DNA is a 50% match with the killers, Joseph Capon becomes the
41:57prime suspect.
41:59Earlier in their investigation, Magnum officers had already tried to visit him when working through their 500 names.
42:08I'd actually taken out Capon's name from the system.
42:13I don't know why, but I felt that there was something there that needed to be looked at.
42:20But there was a problem.
42:23I went to the house, spoke to the lady there.
42:27She said, I'm his wife, but he's dead.
42:33Joseph Capon had died 11 years earlier of lung cancer.
42:38To confirm their suspicions, detectives now need to find a way of getting his DNA profile to compare it with
42:46the girl's killer.
42:50We had the partial profile from Paul, and we needed more, and it was suggested to us by the scientists
42:57that we needed to get the family to give us swabs.
43:05The team went to his ex-wife and daughter, and they took a swab from them.
43:13They were analysed at the forensic science laboratory, and that took us a little bit further.
43:19That gave us about two-thirds of a full profile for Joe Capon.
43:26And when we compared that to the crime stain profile, we could see that that matched.
43:34But we needed the full profile to make absolutely sure that we'd identified the killer.
43:43The final whistle hadn't gone, we still had to be 100% sure we needed to take DNA from Joe
43:52Capon's body.
43:58So the decision was then, a very difficult decision, was to embark on the exhumation of Joseph Capon.
44:09Capon had been buried in a hillside cemetery just outside Port Talbot.
44:14His coffin is one of three in a shared family grave.
44:19We sat down with Paul and said, right, how do we go about exhuming a body?
44:24I'd read about it before, and you'd heard about it before, but how do you exhume a body for this
44:32purpose?
44:34Never before had a suspect been exhumed in the UK to try and prove their guilt.
44:42We were made aware that you had to have the Home Secretary's permission to exhume a body.
44:50The application went through all the way very much to the top.
44:58I remember the case because it had been in the headlines years earlier, and the lack of an outcome had
45:07been controversial for some time.
45:09My main concern was that there was sufficient evidence, because it is a big step, and obviously it has implications.
45:18You get it wrong, and the families involved would quite rightly be greatly aggrieved.
45:28It was a huge amount of pressure on me, and the team, to make sure that we were doing the
45:33right thing.
45:35The family are capping. They became victims all of a sudden. They were embroiled in this.
45:41We needed to be sure that we treated everybody with respect, dignity, and to realise that what we were doing
45:50was absolutely necessary to bring closure to three murders.
45:58With no guarantees that permission will be granted by the Home Office, investigations into Cappen continue.
46:06Within the old case papers, we came across a stop-by-night checkbook, if you like, where police officers in
46:12those days used to stop and check vehicles in the middle of the night.
46:16And there amongst those was his vehicle number, time and date, and his name, Joseph Cappen.
46:27It proved that Cappen had lied and had been driving his car around the time of Pauline and Geraldine's murders,
46:34when he said it was on blocks and without wheels.
46:40In those days, because everything was kept in paper form, in book form, it was missed.
46:46But understandable, as I said, with the amount of material that the officers had to deal with.
46:52The Magnum officers also discover that the girls may have known Cappen.
46:58He was a local bus driver at one time, and part of his route was Llandarsi village.
47:03In those days, the bus used to pull up in the village, and the driver would have a cigarette break,
47:10and children would jump on the bus and have a chat with the driver or the conductor.
47:15It suggests that there's a good chance they knew him, and so they were quite comfortable and happy to get
47:21into his car.
47:26February 2002, two months after submitting the application, the team finally received the crucial decision from the Home Office.
47:37My decision in the end was very clear, and that was that Joseph Cappen's body should be exhumed.
47:46To test once and for all that this was the perpetrator, this was the man who'd committed the murders,
47:52and to bring whatever comfort we could to the families.
47:58For the sake of everyone, finding the truth was really important.
48:13Detectives investigating the murders of three teenage girls nearly 30 years ago say they have a prime suspect.
48:20It's a positive line of inquiry, and quite honestly it's very significant.
48:25They're considering exhuming the body of a man who died back in 1990.
48:30When the message came that they were going to dig up a body because they wanted to prove absolutely who
48:37the killer was,
48:38really, it was something more than just out of the ordinary. It was absolutely amazing.
48:44You think, oh my gosh, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel, you know.
48:51Finally, after all these years, you know, finally they are going to bring some answers to the family.
49:03At midnight, we intend to commence the exhumation process.
49:08We've had some difficulties because there are actually three people inside the grave that we intend to open up.
49:18This was one of the most important briefings I can recall in my career.
49:23Two of those people quite clearly had nothing to do with our inquiry. They're family members.
49:28One question was, what condition will the coffins be in?
49:33And what we were told quite simply is, you never ever know.
49:37It's a process you have to go through to find out.
49:41They could have all deteriorated and rotted away and they could have collapsed like a pack of cards.
49:47It could again take hours. It could take considerable time. It's a very complex process.
49:53I was concerned. It's this hero zero sort of scenario where if everything goes well, so be it.
50:00But of course, if things go wrong, it could have caused huge problems.
50:16After 30 odd years, we were there. It was happening.
50:20It had now come to nearly the end game. History was being made.
50:27There's a lot of things going through your mind. It was anticipation.
50:32There was a lot going on, a lot of police officers covering the graveyard itself.
50:38Pathologists, archaeologists, forensic scientists, scenes of crime officers, grave diggers.
50:46The press were lined up outside on the main road.
50:53The exhumation was taking place about 30, 40 yards up the hill, inside a police tent.
51:01We could see the lights in the tent and see movement of shadows, but we weren't allowed any nearer.
51:08It was grim in the extreme.
51:12I watched the whole exhumation process in our mobile unit.
51:18I was switching constantly in my mindset from, you know, this is all going to be fine,
51:24to this is going to be a disaster, something's going to go wrong.
51:33Inside the tent, it's quite tense, I can assure you.
51:44It was a horrible night, and the grave diggers dug down.
51:53We got the first coffin out.
51:58And just as we got to Cap'n's coffin, there was a huge clap of thunder.
52:11It was the feeling that evil had been identified.
52:16It set shivers down my spine.
52:18It set shivers down my spine.
52:20Everyone felt the tension.
52:23We looked at each other and thought,
52:26should we be doing this?
52:29It was like something out of a horror film.
52:31It's really something none of us will ever forget, I don't think.
52:34something that, well, I don't want to experience again.
52:42We came to Joe's coffin.
52:53And we found that it was intact.
53:00The sense of relief was incredible.
53:05We managed to get his coffin out then.
53:09It all had to be done with precision.
53:13It was a huge amount of work,
53:16physically and mentally, for the team.
53:21We took him to the mortuary of Morriston Hospital.
53:28And that's when the forensic examinations were done.
53:37From Joe Cap'n's remains, we took a tooth, a molar,
53:41one of the thick teeth,
53:42because that's where the DNA is preserved best.
53:46We also took one of the femurs.
53:49They were sent off for analysis.
53:52It was going to be an urgent process.
53:56There was always that nagging doubt in the back of my mind.
54:01What if it wasn't him?
54:04It did keep me awake,
54:05worrying that the profile wouldn't come back as we thought it should.
54:21As I walked up those stairs, I knew that, in many ways,
54:27this was the end of the journey that myself and the team had been on.
54:33We were about to deliver the final result to the public.
54:40This was a huge moment.
54:42This was the culmination of all our efforts.
54:45This is what we'd been working for.
54:49This is what we'd been waiting for for 30-odd years.
54:53And all of a sudden, we had this information.
54:58We now confirm today that the samples taken from Mr. Cap'n
55:04matched the crime scene samples taken from Sandra, Pauline and Geraldine.
55:13These murders will now be closed.
55:21100% it's him.
55:24He was the person responsible for the death of the young girls.
55:31After nearly three decades, the serial killer was finally unmasked.
55:38But one key question remains.
55:40Are there other victims?
55:43I'm not totally convinced that we know every crime that Cap'n committed.
55:53And that's not for the want of trying.
55:56I mean, investigations in Southwood Police continue.
56:00We cannot do any more at this stage.
56:06Given that he had a car, how far could a man like that travel?
56:10What murders in other parts of the country have been down to Cap'n?
56:16His details are on the National DNA database.
56:20If there are unsolved murders there that they can find a DNA profile for,
56:24they can search the database and identify him as the killer.
56:30Time will tell whether or not he was involved in anything else.
56:44But for those at the heart of this case, the long wait for answers was finally over.
56:51This case is the most important case I've ever worked on.
56:56The first use of familial DNA to identify a killer.
57:01Absolutely groundbreaking moment for us all.
57:05We didn't give up.
57:08We always knew and maintained that we would find the person responsible for the murder.
57:15It was against the odds, but we did do it.
57:20It's an honour to get some sort of solace for the families.
57:27That's the achievement, I think.
57:33Although you get on with your life, it never goes away.
57:38No words can ever describe the way we all felt.
57:43It was a huge relief.
57:46Mm-hm.
57:49I was the last person to see her.
57:52So I do think about that.
57:54But I think as time goes, it does heal a little bit.
58:01After all that time, the closure was the biggest thing.
58:08I've been going down to her grave for 49 years, and every time, it's hard to believe she's there.
58:17I believe I see her again.
58:18We've got a lot of catching up to do.
58:23After all them years, she can finally rest in peace now.
58:56MRS PLAYS
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