The Pembrokeshire Murders: Catching the Gameshow Killer

He is the most dangerous human being

that I've ever come into contact with.

This was about excessive violence.

For him, taking somebody's life in order to take property off them

is totally justifiable.

This is the story of the extraordinary hunt

for a serial killer who evaded justice

for almost a quarter of a century.

If you can look at the sea for me...

The case is at the heart of the major ITV drama

The Pembrokeshire Murders.

This actually happens to people.

It's not a made-up story. It's not fantasy.

This is reality.

Now we bring together the real people

who brought this killer to justice.

A specialist team determined to unlock forensic secrets

which had remained undiscovered for decades...

Every contact leaves a trace.

It's just whether or not we're clever enough to find it.

...and who turned to a TV game show for the final crucial evidence.

This was a race against time... I am not a murderer!

I am not a murderer! ..to catch a killer.

This was a guy that was never gonna stop.

Pembrokeshire is an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Beautiful coastline.

And it is a place where people come and spend their holidays.

It's an area which is very, very close to my heart,

an area that I love, an area which I lived in.

If you've got to choose somewhere to live in the UK,

then Pembrokeshire should be top of the list.

Beautiful countryside with a terrible secret.

Pembrokeshire was a quiet little place...

...and yet we had someone

that had been capable of, er, such horrendous crimes.

Somewhere in this rural idle, a serial killer stalked.

In the 1980s, four innocent people

were blasted to death with a shotgun.

For more than 20 years, the crimes remained unsolved.

'Those crimes cast a shadow over Pembrokeshire...'

...and two big double murders were a cloud over the force.

In here, we've got the main bulk of the stuff...

Encouraged by developments in forensic science,

Dyfed-Powys Police brought together

a small, hand-picked team of detectives

to take a fresh look at the murders.

What we'll do today is just to give you a brief background,

and then, later on...

The top-secret operation was code-named Ottawa.

I am Steven Wilkins.

I was the senior investigating officer for Operation Ottawa.

Cold-case reviews nationally had moved on,

particularly with... with forensic science.

There'd been a considerable amount of success,

so it's very, very important that serious cases are reviewed.

The Ottawa team had to go back to the very beginning,

when the murders began.

In December 1985, fire ripped through a secluded manor house

belonging to Richard Thomas and his sister Helen.

My name is Don Evans, former detective chief superintendent

of Dyfed-Powys Police.

Three days before Christmas, on a Sunday night,

I was at my home

when my control room telephoned me to say that there was

a large fire at Scoveston Park, near Steynton, Milford Haven.

When I arrived, the fire was so extensive

that everything had fallen through from the roof

onto an area where I saw the body of Richard Thomas burning,

partly burnt clothes round him burning.

There was an area on the abdomen

which had not been burnt in the fire.

That's where I saw this circular wound.

I thought at that time that it was a shotgun wound.

The body of Richard's sister Helen was eventually found in debris

from an upper floor which had come crashing down

through the burnt-out manor house.

The remains of Helen's body had gunshot wounds,

and she had black rope round her neck.

Initial enquiries began to reveal a terrifying scenario.

Police were to discover that Helen Thomas had been alone

when the killer arrived.

She had been tied up, possibly sexually assaulted,

and then shot.

When Richard returned, he too had been shot.

The intruder then started a fire to cover their tracks,

and it worked.

Scenes of crime officers spent weeks

sieving through the wreck of the house,

but found nothing to lead them to the killer.

It went on for a long time, er, without success.

I thought possibly it was committed by someone

quite close to the locality.

Every house in the rural villages around Scoveston Park

was called on by the police.

One man interviewed was 41-year-old John Cooper,

a handyman with convictions for violence in his youth.

Cooper was interviewed.

He was strongly alibied by his family,

er, who, it would appear, was terrified of him.

Said that he was home all night,

as it was a wet night, and that he hadn't gone out.

And officers took him out of the inquiry.

At that time, we were nowhere near close to solving it.

It was alarming for everyone.

Their main questions were, "Do you think it'll happen again?"

And I obviously was trying to instil in the public that,

no, it won't happen again.

But I was keeping my fingers crossed, everything crossed.

I had gone away on a week's holiday, returned on the Monday morning

to be informed, quite coolly,

that a couple at Little Haven, they are missing.

I heard, "Boss, boss! Come quickly!"

My heart jumped.

And I ran along the coastal path to the two dog handlers,

through the undergrowth, right down to the cliff edge,

and there, I saw this horrible scene -

Peter and Gwenda Dixon.

Peter shot, tied...

...and his dear lady, partly unclothed...

...shot.

Five shots.

The most horrific sight you'd ever see.

The worst I've ever seen.

It was an assassination.

And here we had another major incident.

A double murder in the county of Pembrokeshire.

Horrific.

Why don't you just give yourselves up to the police?

How can you live with yourselves with what you've done to my parents?

While officers had no idea about who might be responsible,

there was one lead.

A witness came forward, and this sketch was produced

of the man seen using Peter Dixon's cash card at a local bank.

The figure in the sketch became known as "The Wild Man"

due to his unkempt appearance.

The man was almost certainly the killer,

but despite widespread appeals, there were no new leads.

Thousands of people were interviewed,

significant enquiries were made in relation to that.

Unfortunately, without a result.

The killer had slipped through the net again.

But the murders were not the only unsolved serious crimes

worrying detectives.

I'm Glenn Johnson, detective inspector

from the Operation Ottawa investigation.

For more than a decade, this rural area of Wales

had been dogged by a series of burglaries.

The burglaries were of property always in the Pembrokeshire area,

backing onto fields.

Jewellery, items of value were stolen.

These continued into the 1990s,

when police set up a major operation to catch the culprit.

During a house-to-house enquiry, a number of exhibits were recovered

that were identified, er, stolen from these burglaries.

The house belonged to John Cooper, the handyman who had been questioned

about the murders of Richard and Helen Thomas in Scoveston

13 years earlier.

A detailed search of his house, grounds and a nearby lake

uncovered a buried shotgun, more than 50 ropes and stolen jewellery.

In December 1998, Cooper was jailed for 16 years,

having been found guilty of 30 burglaries and one robbery.

The press dubbed him "The Super Burglar".

During the trial, there had been suspicion

that he might also have been involved in the shotgun murders...

...and Cooper got away with the killings.

Cooper was eight years into his sentence

when the Ottawa team was brought together.

It was kept very, very tight.

Positioned in an office in Fishguard Port.

Cooper was in prison at the time, and we certainly didn't want him...

make him aware that we were reviewing the two murders.

The sheer scale of an investigation which covered evidence

from four murders and a number of burglaries was daunting.

There was five computerised incident rooms.

There was one old-fashioned paper-based incident room.

11,000 exhibits and over a million documents

that we had to review before we could even think about

whether that was gonna end up in a trial or not.

But, from day one, I felt that we would find the person responsible,

that we would find the truth.

Evidence is always there, but you've just got to find it.

But could they link Cooper,

"The Super Burglar", to the murders?

It now seemed that another terrible crime

which took place about three miles away from Cooper's home

might hold fresh clues.

That night, their childhood was taken from them.

It was a... a really terrible attack.

GUNSHOT

In 2006, a small team of detectives

was on the trail of a serial killer who had evaded justice for 20 years,

and they had a prime suspect.

John Cooper was in jail for burglary,

but detectives believe clues to the murders

might lie in another terrible crime

which had taken place close to his home while he was still free.

In 1996, a man wearing a balaclava and armed with a shotgun

confronted five teenagers in a field near Milford Haven.

The Milford Haven attack was... for me, was very, very important.

It took place in March 1996.