Bloodline Detectives - Episode 13 - Llandarcy Serial Killer | Forensic Files

NANCY GRACE: September 1973, Llandarcy, South Wales, in the United Kingdom, a man out walking his dog
comes across a horrific scene. He approached the object, as he thought it was, and discovered it
was the body of a young girl. Strangulation that has taken place. NANCY GRACE: Officers soon discover a second body.
She has a serious head wound. Both girls had been sexually assaulted. They had both been raped, in fact.
NANCY GRACE: The murder shocked the community with fears for young women's safety.
Don't go out late at night. Don't accept lifts. A serial killer operating in South Wales in 1973.
NANCY GRACE: The largest investigation in Welsh history launches to find the killer.
Police officers were drafted in from everywhere. Detectives from all over South Wales were brought in.
We owed a debt, a huge debt, not only to the families, but also to our community.
NANCY GRACE: But the investigation faces numerous challenges and eventually goes cold.
They had no real suspects, a real prime suspect from the beginning of the inquiry
to the end of the inquiry. It was an impossible task, really, for any team of detectives.
It was not until the DNA evidence came much later that they were able to piece it together.
That, of course, transformed the entire inquiry. NANCY GRACE: This is the story of the Llandarcy murders,
the investigation that uncovers a serial killer, and how familial DNA searching helped solve the crimes
almost three decades later. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [MUSIC PLAYING]
September 16, 1973, police in Wales receive an emergency call. PAUL BETHELL: A gentleman walking his dog
came across what he thought was some sort of model or a dummy lying in the copse, just off the Llandarcy motorway
there. He approached the object, as he thought it was, and discovered it was the body of a young girl.
And he immediately reported the matter to the police. NANCY GRACE: Officers immediately
rushed to the location and are horrified by the scene. The police attended at the scene.
One of the officers there decided to make a search further afield and travel about another 10,
15 yards into the copse. The constable noted what he thought was a pair of white boots sticking
up in quite a bizarre way, just a few yards from him. He went over and looked and saw it was
the body of another young girl. He went back and explained to the sergeant. His actual words were, "There's another one
further down, boss." And the constable had to sort of convince the sergeant. He said, "No, sergeant, I'm really serious.
There's another body further down." NANCY GRACE: Before long, police and reporters from the locality
swarmed the crime scene. We were interested in-- obviously, dramatically interested in what was a terrible scene.
Because we all knew the nature of the area down there to midway between anywhere.
It would have been dark. It would have been secluded. And these girls must have been terrified at the time.
It was a copse alongside a sports field. A quarter was set up around the entire copse,
starting at the main road and up to the groundsman fence. The girls were both fully clothed.
Strangulation that was taking place. I think there were some very lengthy ropes that were used to kill them.
DAVID BARCLAY: One of the girls had made an attempt at escaping and run off. And she'd been hit over the head with a brick
or something like that. And then she'd been strangled there. A lot of her possessions were under the legs
of the other girl, and that girl had been attacked and then strangled further in the copse.
NANCY GRACE: As the investigation gets underway, concerned parents are out looking
for their daughter and her friend, who had not returned home the night before. The parents noticed police activity
and approached an officer. PHIL REES: They spoke to officers there and said that, you know, basically, our daughters
haven't returned last night. They were only 16 years of age, you know? They were just kids.
And then it materialized then, in fact, that they were, in fact, their daughters.
PAUL BETHELL: A member of the family was asked to come in to the crime scene tent
and view the bodies. It must be something that lives with that member of the family
today-- the worst scene you could ever imagine, a complete and absolute nightmare.
NANCY GRACE: The victims are identified as 16-year-old girls Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes.
Geraldine and Pauline very, very ordinary, typical 16-year-old teenagers. MARTIN SHIPTON: They were working
class kids, both, obviously, very loved girls. Had left school at a young age, who worked
hard at the sewing factory. Really, it's just ordinary girls in the community. PHIL REES: They would save all week from their money.
Part of the wage was given to their parents. The rest were kept for a Saturday night
out type of thing, for new clothes. PAUL BETHELL: They were BFFs, as we would call them today,
bought the same makeup, had the same group of friends, very, very close friends.
PHIL REES: So they were just [INAUDIBLE] in life, and unfortunately, their lives were
taken away from them in this terrible, terrible event. NANCY GRACE: Investigators discovered
the gruesome details of the girls' murder during autopsy. Both girls had been sexually assaulted.
They'd both been raped, in fact. MARTIN SHIPTON: And then subsequently, they were able to conclude that they had been told by the killer
to put their clothes back on. There was debris, woodland debris on the inside of their clothing, which
seemed to indicate that they had been brutally attacked and then allowed to dress again.
DAVID BARCLAY: It became obvious that the offender had been with them for a considerable period of time.
And he had frightened them, controlled them for a considerable period of time. MARTIN SHIPTON: One of the girls' blood
was found on the back of the other girl's clothes. I mean, one can imagine that they were both being
herded around by the killer. They were probably hit in order to make them submissive.
They were probably struggling. And it was after they put their clothes back on that they were both strangled
from behind with this five-foot rope. NANCY GRACE: A major investigation begins into the brutal rapes and murders of teen girls Pauline
Floyd and Geraldine Hughes. The initial investigation was the largest that South Wales police had ever undertaken, really.
Police officers were drafted in from everywhere. Detectives from all over South Wales were brought in.
MARTIN SHIPTON: I think initially, there were as many as 150 detectives who were working on the case.
It was seen as a very big crime indeed. And a lot of resource was put into it. PHIL REES: And that particular night in September
was Neath Fair Night, those thousands and thousands of people who come to Neath.
It was the busiest night of the year, really. They went to the fair in the afternoon, went home, changed.
Then they made their way to the top ranked club, which was the biggest club in South Wales at the time, people
who come from everywhere. I'm not saying five miles, 10 miles. I'm saying 30, 40 miles.
PAUL BETHELL: I think on the night, if I remember, there was something like 1,700 young people
in the top ranking Swansea. The problem was, you could get there by bus, but how would you get home at 1 o'clock in the morning?
NANCY GRACE: Detectives must trace the last movements of Pauline and Geraldine. PAUL BETHELL: They were actually seen
walking towards the main road by a relative of Geraldine's. And he was the last person to actually see them alive
and had a brief conversation with them. Actually said to them, don't forget, straight home, no hitchhiking.
NANCY GRACE: But detectives believe the girls must have gotten into someone's car.
How else would they end up at the crime scene, just off the main highway? MARTIN SHIPTON: This was an area which
it would really need a local person to know that such a place was there. It wouldn't be somebody who was just passing through
as a lorry driver and committed a crime on an opportunistic whim. There really was the sense that it was a local person
who was involved. NANCY GRACE: Who is this mobster that he could overpower, batter, and murder two healthy 16-year-old girls
with apparent ease? Next on "Bloodline Detectives," can old-fashioned police work find that answer
and calm a terrified community? [MUSIC PLAYING] 1973, UK police are investigating
the murders of 16-year-olds, Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes. The bodies of the girls had been discovered at Llandarcy, Wales.
Both have been strangled. Detectives know they're hunting a ruthless killer. But the location of the murder scene
is making their job very difficult. PAUL BETHELL: The logistics of the area were the worst it could possibly be
for an investigating officer. At the time, the M4 motorway was partly constructed, hundreds of manual workers and engineers,
et cetera, who were all living in the locality and billeted bed sets, flats living in the area.
So that was the first problem. You had a college sited nearby with several thousand students.
The traveling fair had arrived with all the individuals that that brought with it and visitors
from outside. And of course, seven miles down the road, you had the city of Swansea, a huge city in itself.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives began to investigate the theory that the girls could have hitchhiked
to get home on the evening they disappeared. They was sewing machinists. They worked in a sewing factory, 16-year-olds.
Wages weren't grand, you know, teenagers on smaller wages. So the option was not to take a taxi.
It was just too darn expensive to take a taxi at that time. And at 1 o'clock in the morning, there
wasn't the option of buses. They just weren't there. So a lot of young people used to hitch rides in the area
to get home. And I guess that two girls hitching together would have considered themselves to be pretty safe.
Wouldn't have been concerned about security or any danger, but of course, as things turned out,
they were tragically wrong. GILBERT JOHN: The area they would have to go through, [INAUDIBLE],, was
a very dark area at the time. And so coming home, they would have to face up to getting into that area.
And it wasn't an area you'd hang around. So they would have been quite brave to be there.
But they would have had little choice in where they picked up a lift because that was the way home.
NANCY GRACE: Investigators then get their first clue as to who may have picked the girls up that night.
There was a witness in a car who had seen an Austin 1100 turn up at a bus stop where these girls were hitchhiking.
And as he looked into his rearmirror, he saw the two girls get into the vehicle.
He then proceeded towards the lights in Midland Crossing. He stopped at the red light, and the light-colored vehicle
pulled up alongside him. Unfortunately, the motorist's vision was obscured by the girls because both of them
apparently got in the front seat. He identified the driver as being male with dark, bushy hair.
As the lights changed, the vehicle then drove off in the general direction of Nease.
Then a quarter past 1:00 in the morning, three people traveling on the road between Llandarcy and Nease
saw a light-colored vehicle parked in a layby some 30, 40 yards from where the young girls were murdered.
The mystery was, who was driving that car, trying to find out who could have been the killer.
Simple as that, really. MARTIN SHIPTON: So what they had to do was to try to track down everyone who was driving
this particular white Austin 1100 and try to eliminate them from the inquiries. Now the thing is that at the time,
this happened to be one of the most popular models of cars. An extremely common vehicle.
You wouldn't get a more common vehicle. PHIL REES: We had to stop any light-colored vehicles,
obtain the names of the drivers, the registration number of the vehicle, description
of the person driving. You can imagine the manpower it took one to find the vehicles,
speak to the people, obtain witness statements. They took tapings from the seats of the vehicles.
All this information was going into the incident room. There was 30,000 index cards there.
An index card was a person of interest. There was 11,500 owners of white 1100. There was 15,000 statements.
And you have to remember, no computers-- all done manually as it were. It totally swamped the room.
And the investigation was finding it very, very difficult to go in any other direction because all
the resources were put into that particular line of inquiry. NANCY GRACE: While detectives desperately
try to track down a killer, fear and panic are rising in the community. One murder is shocking in itself, but for there
to be two girls killed in this way set off a lot of alarm in the community. The deaths of Geraldine and Pauline
changed the complexities of how young girls who go out on a Saturday night. Up till then, if you didn't have a lift home
or if there wasn't a bus, you would find a lift home. From that night onwards, that stopped.
They actually put warning posters out. There was one with an 1100 motor vehicle on the front,
emphasizing the dangers of hitchhiking and that it led to murder and to avoid it if possible.
It was obviously a lesson of the dangers of hitchhiking, which I think, today, still stands.
NANCY GRACE: With the killer still on the loose, police make every effort to keep the community at ease.
PAUL BETHELL: The area was, more or less, flooded, if you like, with uniformed officers patrolling the streets,
knock on doors, you know, speaking to local shopkeepers. To just show that there were people around to protect
those late at night, although the warning was there from the police-- don't go out late at night.
Don't accept lifts. NANCY GRACE: But despite the best efforts of police, the immense workload and the lack of any solid leads
means the case is reaching a dead end. GILBERT JOHN: The search among the travelers at the Nease
Fair, the search among the workers on the motorway, the search among other people who'd been at the top
ranked that night, sift it down, bring it down to the local people who might have been involved.
It was an impossible task, really, for any team of detectives. PHIL REES: And at the end of the day,
they had no real suspects, a real prime suspect from the beginning of the inquiry
to the end of the inquiry. What they had was the white 1100. GILBERT JOHN: They just simply had
reached the point where there was nothing else could be done. They could see no avenue to take it further.
Like most unsolved crimes, it just seemed to drift. And it was not until the DNA evidence
came much later that they were able to piece it together. That, of course, transformed the entire inquiry.
NANCY GRACE: Despite the best efforts of police and amid the anguish of the victims' families and friends,
unsolved cases like this one often drift off the radar and go cold. Next, a new breed of investigators,
the bloodline detectives use new forensic weapons to try and catch a killer. [MUSIC PLAYING]
By mid 1974, the investigation into the murders of 16-year-olds Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes
has gone cold. Despite extraordinary efforts, police failed to find the man who killed
the girls on a September night in 1973 in Llandarcy Wales in the UK. MARTIN SHIPTON: In the community,
there was a great deal of anger. There was a great deal of worry and anxiety about the fact
that somebody in their community not far away, as they were convinced, was responsible for this.
PAUL BETHELL: People start looking at each other. They start finger pointing. Everyone is sort of looking over their shoulder
at everyone else. The man sitting next to you on the bus-- did he attack [INAUDIBLE]?
All these sort of strange things, of course, that causes a lot of issues, a lot of problems,
a lot of animosities, and a lot of difficulties within families. NANCY GRACE: But as the years pass, advances in DNA
are changing the scene for investigators around the world. Throughout this time, the forensic material
in the Llandarcy murders is tested over and over in the hopes of solving the case.
My first involvement was back in 1990 when DNA had first been introduced. And we were looking at certain cold cases.
And this case from 1973, the two girls, was put forward as a possible case because South Wales police had stored all their old casework.
And unfortunately, the DNA method at the time in 1990 wasn't sufficiently sensitive to work with that type
of cold case material. 1991 produced the first phases of DNA amplification analysis.
The method wasn't sensitive enough for this particular important case, the double murder of two girls.
So we still held on to that material. 1995, DNA amplification reached a new level called SGM.
Now we did run a sample, but we didn't get a result. So we held on again until the introduction
of DNA LCN, Low Copy Number. NANCY GRACE: This new advance in 1998 is sensitive enough to retrieve all DNA
samples from the 1973 evidence. COLIN DARK: We knew we would get mixed profiles because we had the girls' DNA
mixed in with the semen DNA. The technique was so sensitive, it would pick up everything.
So from 1998 to 2000, we were working on getting the girls' DNA profiles so we could interpret the mixtures.
In 2000, we achieved that. And we were able, then, to obtain a DNA profile that we could use to search
the national DNA database. NANCY GRACE: Detectives now have a DNA sample for the killer,
but no match in the UK National DNA database. With this new evidence on January 27, 2000,
27 years after the murders of Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes, the bloodline detectives reopened the case,
code name Operation Magnum. They asked National Crime Faculty, where I was then the head of evidence,
to organize a review meeting. And we organized that meeting, which included another pathologist, psychological profilers,
crime analysts, and myself, as part of the physical evidence team. And the purpose was simply to look
at everything to do with the two deaths, the two girls. However, we also at that meeting asked
about other local criminality. It's a standard thing to ask about. At that time, they said, oh, there
was another girl that was found, but she'd been murdered by her boyfriend. NANCY GRACE: The girl's name is Sandra Newton.
Sandra Newton was a girl who disappeared about three months before the the two girls were murdered.
PHIL REES: She was found murdered in [INAUDIBLE] in the small village of [INAUDIBLE],, which is about
five miles north of Neath. She'd been raped and she'd been strangled by the-- by her own skirt.
Sandra Newton was also 16 years of age. She had also been at a nightclub. There was also the common factor of [INAUDIBLE] 1100,
which was seen, in the description of one of the witnesses, going like the clappers
in the vicinity of where the body was discovered. NANCY GRACE: At the time of the investigation,
all eyes on the married man that Sandra was involved with. He admitted that he'd been with her on the Saturday night.
That he'd had a drink, that they came out. They had sex outside. Then there was a-- they had a bit of a tiff.
He walked one way home, and she walked the other way home. And that he maintains that's the last time he saw her.
So the emphasis was on him. NANCY GRACE: With new DNA capabilities in 2000, detectives decide to reopen the cold case of Sandra Newton.
During Operation Magnum, myself and my colleague, [INAUDIBLE],, had the opportunity then
to go and see the ex-boyfriend. NANCY GRACE: A DNA swab is taken and compared against evidence taken from Sandra Newton's
crime scene back in 1973. So we had to generate Sandra's profile, which we were able to do.
We also had the boyfriend's sample. He had provided to volunteer a swab. So we had his DNA.
And then to our great surprise and the big bombshell for Operation Magnum is that we had another person's semen,
and I knew because I was so familiar with the Llandarcy crime scene that it was the killer for the Llandarcy girls.
It was heart stopping, I would say, to realize that we had a link between these two very,
very vicious murders. PAUL BETHELL: That was the first time in almost 28, 30 years that we knew that, A, it
was one killer and, B, that it was the same man in relation to all three girls. This opened up a serial killer operating in South Wales
in 1973. PAUL BETHELL: The murder of three little girls, we owed a debt, a huge debt, not only to the families, which
were the foremost thoughts in our mind, but also to our community. To the public, we owe a debt.
We've got this information that can take us to the killer. What excuse could we use not to pursue that?
NANCY GRACE: Operation Magnum begins a swab campaign in the hunt for the Llandarcy killer.
The 1973 investigation generated something like 35,000 names to work through. So Operation Magnum was designed to whittle
down the numbers to a manageable size to begin with. So the police generated 500 top priority names
that they wanted to analyze. So these individuals would then be approached to give
a voluntary mouth swab for DNA. The result would be directly compared to the Magnum
crime stain profile. NANCY GRACE: But once again, the investigation hits a dead end.
There is no hit on the national database, so he hasn't been DNA sampled. It doesn't necessarily mean that he hasn't committed any crimes,
but his sample hasn't been put on. He might have been in prison. He might have died.
He might have gone abroad. So how can we identify this person? In this case, he had one very peculiar
allele, a very rare allele. That's the bit of the DNA profile. And it was decided by Colin Dark that he would
look for people with that strange allele who were on the database. NANCY GRACE: What was, at that time,
a new forensic weapon will narrow down the results in the UK national database. But as we'll see next, that's only the beginning
for the bloodline detectives. [MUSIC PLAYING] The year 2000, 27 years after the brutal murders
of two innocent teen girls across the Atlantic Ocean in Wales, the bloodline detectives are
bringing the case back to life. Their forensic DNA weapons, new at that time, are starting to pay off.
About 80 odd percent of killers live within about a three, four-mile radius of murder scenes.
On that basis, why don't we [INAUDIBLE] and see how many people living within the locality
of the murder scenes carry those two unusual alleles? It brought back a list of 13 people.
About fourth or fifth down was a young man by the name of Paul Kappen, K-A-P-P-E-N,
which was an unusual name. Now this is where the element of luck comes in. And any detective will tell you on any investigation
we always hope for some sort of element of luck. Had the name been Evans or Thomas or Williams
in South Wales, yes, we'd have got there undoubtedly, but it would have taken us an awful lot longer.
But Kappen, extremely unusual. NANCY GRACE: Paul Kappen's last name strikes a chord
with Detective Philip Rees, who worked on the original investigation in 1973. PHIL REES: I immediately remembered Joseph Kappen.
He was the son of Joseph Kappen. He was somebody actually in the inquiry, been taking
statements from his family. Big breakthrough. NANCY GRACE: Detectives now feel they
are closer than ever to solving the 27-year-old murder case. We focus our efforts, went back into the old case papers,
and spent quite a bit of time really looking for Joseph Kappen. Who was he? What was he all about?
You know, where did he figure in the investigation? He had that car. He had been out and about that night.
He fitted the profile exactly. And in some ways, there had been mistakes in the original investigation which had not identified him.
Going back to the no computers scenario, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of documents.
And you have one man, literally one man-- it was a man-- reading them and trying to cross-reference.
And obviously, things are going to be missed. You can't possibly read and assimilate
all that information. It just can't be done. But we were able to now extract the information, the statement,
the form recording the visit to his home, the form in relation to his car. We were able to find all those and build a picture of him
as an individual. NANCY GRACE: Investigators know they're on the right track, but they need a DNA test to prove it.
So we then did a reverse paternity. So we had Paul's profile, we had the sister's profile,
and we had the mother's profile. Which would eliminate the section of the DNA profile
which was not related to Joseph Kappen. When they sent that away and the evidence came back
from the laboratories that it was the man whose DNA profile had been found in the undergarments
of the girls who had been killed, suddenly they knew they had their man. NANCY GRACE: So who is Joseph William Kappen?
PAUL BETHELL: Physically, he was a huge man. He was about 6 foot, 6 foot 2. We knew that he was extremely violent.
We discovered that he worked as a bouncer, that he would quite easily assault males,
that often police officers would see young men walking, holding their chins or bleeding from the nose
where they'd received a blow. From what we gathered, he was a man who had been guilty of minor crimes beforehand,
a man who's known to be cruel. It all indicated a man who might have been absolutely ruthless
in his attack on the girls. COLIN DARK: He would go out at night to commit burglaries.
He would tell his wife to watch the television. But when he came in from whatever he'd been doing,
he would then get her to tell him what was on so that if the police asked him, he would say,
no, I was at home watching television with my wife, and this is what I was watching.
His ex-wife and the two older children were not surprised at all. They described him as a very evil individual.
It was very sad and tragic, really. And what they said was that as a father, I mean,
they went through horrendous times. There was one occasion when he took Paul out
for a walk, his son, on the beach, and they took with them-- he had the family Greyhound.
Now this was a Greyhound that had gotten too old, too ancient to run, to race. So they kept it as a family pet.
And at some point on the journey along the beach, he stopped and said, oh, watch this.
And he had wire, which he wrapped around the dog's neck, and strangled the dog in front of the little boy,
in front of Paul, which it's quite staggering when you think of it, the cruelty and the why, what are the reasons.
MARTIN SHIPTON: It emerged that he was a man who was a serious domestic abuser. And in fact, he used to rape his wife.
Almost imagined at the time when the police came knocking at the door, asking the question,
where were you at this particular time? He says, I was at home, and the wife wouldn't have dared do anything other than to go along with him
and provide him with his alibi. We managed to trace quite a number of females, women who
were young girls at the time in the 1970s, who, in fact, had been attacked by him sexually and physically.
NANCY GRACE: Two women in particular come forward to the Operation Magnum team and give details of a night in 1973
when a man who resembles Kappen gave them a lift home. One of them was sitting in the back of the vehicle.
He turned and punched the girl sitting in the front of the vehicle to the side of the face
for no reason whatsoever. Nothing said-- just punched her to the side of the face
and then began to tear at her. The girl in the back panicked, obviously, and tried to get out of the back of the vehicle
and realized that the handles had been taken off the back of the doors of the vehicle.
She couldn't get out of the back door. She started to scream. They both started to scream, kick, fight.
And what happened was a light came on about 100 yards away, and it was a farmhouse.
He panicked, opened the door, the front door, and kicked the one girl out, literally
kicked her out of the car. The girl claimed the second girl climbed over the back seat of the car and fell out of the vehicle.
And the vehicle drove off at speed, leaving with the door flying open, leaving the two girls on the floor.
And they ran to the farmhouse and reported it. But that never went anywhere, that investigation,
because nothing was known. Now, from the description of the driver, from the description of the vehicle,
from the description of the attack, there's no doubt in our minds-- and the timing--
there's no question they are probably two of the luckiest girls alive. There's no question of that.
Because we are quite satisfied that was Joseph Kappen. NANCY GRACE: But no one will ever
have the satisfaction of seeing Joseph Kappen in court. He died in 1990 from lung cancer.
He was somebody who was able to get away with this. And he was even able to get away with it after he died.
He fitted everything so perfectly and had never been caught. The fact that we never had this man in the dock and the trial
was never held, so the questions were never put to the man who could have answered them.
Quite simply, we'll never know exactly what happened, just surmise, really, what could have led up to the deaths.
But we know from the key witness that the girls got into the vehicle around about the 20 past 1:00
in the morning period. To Llandarcy, to the location where the vehicle was later seen, you're only
talking two or three miles. So that would have taken a matter of four to five minutes
to get there. And then of course, he's dragged them physically, obviously, or threatened them, what we believe
is threaten them with this Bowie knife into the copse, where the attack then takes place.
GILBERT JOHN: Just know that there was-- it must have been a terrible scene. You can imagine.
You know, dark woodland, girls being chased or pursued through that woodland, perhaps being assaulted fairly early
on by a man who, according to earlier reports, had attacked other girls. And then we have the situation where Pauline was found
and Geraldine was found 40, 50 yards away. For them, there would have been no chance to escape.
And he was obviously giving them the impression that they were going to be released maybe because he told them
to put their clothes on again. At that point, they must have thought this is the end of the ordeal.
But no, he got his five-foot rope, ready to finish them off. NANCY GRACE: Since Joseph Kappen is dead, he cannot be tested
for a DNA match, or can he? Next, the bloodline detectives make history with a new DNA technique that might match
a dead man to a vicious crime. [MUSIC PLAYING] South Wales, the UK, 2002. For the first time in 29 years, police
believe they've identified the killer of three girls, raped and murdered in Wales in the UK back in the early 1970s.
Despite a massive investigation at the time in the murders of Sandra Newton, Geraldine Hughes, and Pauline Floyd,
it's taken extraordinary developments in familial DNA to identify Joseph Kappen, the man investigators
believed to be the killer. There is, however, one more significant problem-- Joseph Kappen is dead.
DAVID BARCLAY: A paternity test is useful, but it's a second generation. You're working out what the profile of Joseph Kappen
would have been. To get certainty, you really need to get his DNA profile. NANCY GRACE: For the first time in UK history,
detectives received permission to exhume a body as part of a murder investigation.
On May 17, 2002, the exhumation of Kappen's body takes place in Port Talbot, Wales.
Which led me to a graveyard, watching policemen digging up dead people. Not a pleasant task just being there,
so goodness knows what it was like for the policemen themselves. And there was a tent, and we could
see activity through and around the actual tent. And we knew that there was this rather
gruesome recovery of a body. COLIN DARK: And just as we were about to lift out Joseph William Kappen's coffin, there
was a huge clap of thunder. The heavens opened, and down came the rain, hitting the tent, making all sorts of noises.
And it sent the hairs on the back of my neck up at that time. We now know why. We were exposing evil.
He was dressed in his best suit, remarkably well preserved, because he was still effectively in a plastic
shroud. We got a full profile, and it matched against the three girls, Pauline, Geraldine, and Sandra.
NANCY GRACE: Kappen manages to carry out these crimes and go undetected for the rest of his life.
PHIL REES: There was a lot of unanswered questions even after the detection of the crime,
and I suppose a lot of unanswered questions for the family as well. They wanted to know a lot of things,
but we couldn't give them that information. PAUL BETHELL: If your daughter is raped or murdered
or killed, whatever, how can that ever be put right? There was no feeling of elation at all.
In fact, it was just this horrendous feeling of sadness. And it was almost as if, quite bizarrely, the black cloud
that we'd lifted over the community had settled on us as a team. We never celebrated the fact that we'd
made this incredible discovery, this cutting edge technology that is now used worldwide to find rapists and killers,
familial DNA searching. PHIL REES: Operation Magnum was a big operation. We had loads of detectives.
And in fact, there was three of us. I know I'm quite proud that I was part of that team,
and I think we did a good job. NANCY GRACE: Decades after his death, Joseph Kappen, his body
exhumed, is finally pinned as the killer of Geraldine Hughes, Pauline Floyd, and Sandra Newton.
With these cases now closed, the families of these teen girls can try and move forward.
This notorious serial killer of Wales, dubbed the Saturday Night Strangler, is one of the first cases ever solved
using familial DNA searching. This is now a signature method of a new breed of investigators.
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining me and the bloodline detectives. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Brief Summary

The episode details the 1973 Llandarcy murders and how DNA technology identified killer Joseph Kappen decades later.

Key points

The Llandarcy Murders. In September 1973, two 16-year-old girls were found murdered in South Wales, shocking the community.
The Investigation Begins. A massive investigation is launched, becoming the largest in Welsh history, but faces numerous challenges.
Victims Identified. The victims are identified as Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes, ordinary girls with bright futures.
Community Panic. The murders instill fear in the community, changing how young girls go out at night.
DNA Evidence Revives Case. After decades, advances in DNA technology lead to the reopening of the cold case in 2000.
Operation Magnum Uncovers Serial Killer. Detectives link Joseph Kappen to the murders of three girls after decades.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

They must have been terrified at the time.

Reflecting on the victims' last moments.

3:55WatchApr 1, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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