The Pembrokeshire murders part 1
The beautiful South Wales coast was the scene of a chilling campaign of murder, rape and terror for more than two decades
Bullseye was a mainstay of ITV’s Sunday afternoon schedules during the 1980s and 90s. The darts-themed gameshow with a quiz element featured three pairs of contestants competing for cash and prizes. At the highpoint of its success, the show was watched by 20 million viewers.
In an episode recorded on 28 May 1989, a Welshman called John Cooper appeared on it. With a mullet hairstyle and moustache of the kind popular with footballers at the time, Cooper spoke quietly to the host, comedian Jim Bowen.
This appearance on primetime television would later astonish detectives of the Dyfed-Powys force in Wales. Bullseye, with its jaunty theme tune and light-hearted gags, was an incongruous setting in which to find Cooper. He was not a jaunty, light-hearted kind of guy. He was sadist, violent robber and murderer of a defenceless brother and sister who lived locally to him.
Within weeks of recording Bullseye, Cooper would commit another horrendous double murder, and later traumatise a group of teenagers, raping one young woman and assaulting another. Jim Bowen and ITV would have been aghast to know the truth about the man they were welcoming on to this family show.
Cooper was an arrogant risk-taker, a gambler, and clearly thought he was too smart to be caught by police. However, if he was expecting to be a big success on Bullseye with plenty to crow about down the pub later, he was to be disappointed. He was a flop in the quiz section of the game, shown up by a female contestant next to him who was faster on the buzzer and knew the correct answers. He cracked a smile, but inside he would have seethed at being beaten by a woman.
Reckless, violent, burglar
John William Cooper was born in Milford Haven on 3 September 1944. He left school at the age of 15 and married his late wife, Patricia, in 1966, the couple having two children, a boy and a girl. He trained in upholstery and carpentry, worked as a farm labourer and in the building trade.
It was in 1978 while working as a welder’s mate on the Gulf Oil Refinery at Milford Haven that Cooper hit the jackpot. He won £90,000 (approximately £530,000 today) in a newspaper spot-the-ball competition, along with an Austin Princess car worth £4,000 (£23,000 today). He was rich, the win having changed his life.
Unfortunately for Cooper’s family, he was too reckless to enjoy the benefits of this windfall for long. He lost money on a series of house moves and through gambling. Within a couple of years he had frittered his winnings away.
He also had a history of lawbreaking and was a violent man. Police think that by 1983 he had started burgling homes. He was a prodigious housebreaker and would eventually be convicted of 30 break-ins, but he was linked to many more. He fancied himself as an outdoorsman and survivalist, keeping a copy of the SAS handbook. As a keen fisherman and local of the area around Milford Haven, set in the beautiful Pembrokeshire coastal area, he had intimate knowledge of the pathways and fields nearby. He would roam the fields at night, watching houses, planning which to attack.
Cooper was not what might once have been called a cat burglar, slipping in and out of properties. He took a shotgun with him and was not put off by encountering the residents. In one incident, he kicked and tied up the homeowners, and kept returning to them to hit them with the butt of his gun.
From burglar to murderer
Three days before Christmas in 1985, Cooper targeted a manor house three miles
outside Milford Haven. Scoveston Park was the Georgian home of wealthy siblings Richard and Helen Thomas.
At around 11pm, flames were seen coming from the direction of the house. By the time emergency crews arrived it was obvious that if anyone was inside the building, they would not have survived the inferno. A strong smell of petrol was noticed by the firefighters. Just after midnight the body of Richard Thomas was recovered from the burnt-out property. A wound was evident on the right side of his abdomen. An x-ray showed that it contained lead shot. Scoveston Park was now a murder scene.
The building’s wooden floors had burned through and collapsed, but Helen Thomas’s body was eventually found on the ground floor. X-rays revealed that she had also been shot, lead particles being found in what remained of the bottom of her skull.
The deaths were shocking because they were so out of character for this quiet area. Richard, aged 58, owned a lot of land and had followed his father into farming. Both he and his sister, who was 54, were rather reserved. Though they were wealthy, the idea that they had been targeted by a violent gang just seemed too alien in this part of the world.
The post-mortems revealed that Helen’s body was tied with black rope, and around her neck was a bloodstained shirt with sleeves knotted. It seemed to investigators that she had been bound and gagged or blindfolded.
Now a burglary that got out of hand was considered. The property was thoroughly searched and no shotgun could be found, further ruling out any suspicion of suicide. Detectives realised they had a brutal double murder on their hands. Crime rates were low in North Pembrokeshire, an area of outstanding natural beauty and farming. The Scoveston Park murders had shattered the local sense of pastoral charm and safety.
An incident room was set up, and scene-of-crime officers and forensic experts sifted the debris. It soon became clear the killer had taken his shotgun and discharged cartridges away with him after setting fire to the house. Further searching advanced the detectives’ understanding of what had occurred. On Boxing Day a pool of blood and lead pellets were found in an outbuilding. It looked as though Richard had returned to the house, been confronted by the intruder and shot. His body was then moved to the house.
Because the level of violence was senseless and out of proportion to the normal pattern of a burglary, it confounded the police. It was a challenge to work out what, if anything, might have been stolen from the property. However, the value of any stolen belongings was impossible to reconcile with the appalling level of brutality and carnage inflicted here. Richard was even found to have £75 in his pocket. Had the Thomases recognised the intruder, who then felt they must be silenced with a shotgun blast?
Houses and farms in the locality were visited and residents’ movements recorded, road checks were used to question motorists, and a £25,000 reward was offered. But all detectives were left with was a theory: this was a robbery of a woman at home alone that went wrong when Richard Thomas returned home unexpectedly. The intruder lost control of the situation and killed them both.
John Cooper had got away with this brutal double murder – for several years, at least.
The murder of the Dixons
It is worth looking more closely at the kind of man Cooper was. Steve Wilkins, the detective superintendent who ended up heading the team that would eventually snare Cooper, built up detailed knowledge of his criminal activities. He said the sadistic killer started out as a peeping tom who moved on to burglary, robbery and finally murder. Wilkins believes the control he gained over victims and the disproportionate violence he used aroused him sexually. Valuables that he took would pay for his gambling habit.
It was four years after he murdered the Thomases – and just four weeks since his Bullseye appearance – that Cooper’s rage erupted into homicide again. The crime was discovered after Tim Dixon and his sister, Julie, visited their parents’ home in Oxfordshire on 3 July 1989 and found their mum and dad had not returned from holiday.
Peter and Gwenda Dixon had been on their annual summer trip to Little Haven village on the coast in North Pembrokeshire. Tim and Julie were surprised their parents had not yet returned. Surprise turned to worry when it was learned that Peter was also absent from work. Tim called the owner of Howelston Farm Caravan Park, where the couple were staying, to ask about them. It was learned that they had last been seen several days before, on 29 June, their last day booked at the site. Police were alerted. Search teams, dog handlers and a helicopter scoured the coast.
Finally, on 5 July, a police dog handler saw swarms of flies and a strong smell coming from near the cliff edge, below the path between Little Haven and Borough Head. The decomposing bodies of Peter, aged 51, and Gwenda, 52, were found in undergrowth.
Detective Chief Superintendent Don Evans, who had also worked on the Scoveston Park investigation, recalled the moment the Dixons were found: “I heard, ‘Boss, boss, come quickly.’ My heart jumped and I ran along the coastal path to the dog handlers. There I saw this horrible scene. Peter and Gwenda Dixon – Peter shot, tied, and his dear lady, partly unclothed. Shot. The most horrific sight you’ve ever seen.”
It would become clear that Peter and Gwenda had each been shot with a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun. Peter had three gunshot wounds, including one to the head, and Gwenda two. Cooper would have reloaded the weapon twice during this cold-blooded annihilation. He had, once again, been careful to collect all the spent cartridges. Gwenda had also been sexually assaulted. The couple’s belongings and the contents of their rucksack had been thrown around the scene. Peter’s wallet was missing, as was his gold wedding ring.
The calculations of an entomologist, who examined the insects on the bodies, along with the account of a witness who had heard five shots fired while walking on the beach below, indicated that the Dixons had been killed on the morning of 29 June.
The investigation got a lead when Peter Dixon’s stolen cash card was used on four occasions following the murders. In a series of cashpoint withdrawals in Pembroke, Carmarthen and Haverfordwest, a total of £310 was withdrawn. Either Cooper had found the PIN number on a piece of paper, or he had forced Peter Dixon to reveal it.
It is difficult not to feel appalled and dismayed that Cooper had inflicted unspeakable trauma and injuries on two unassuming holidaymakers for the sake of a sexual assault, a gold ring and £310. One of the victims had been forced to witness the murder of the other, knowing they would be next.
Cooper’s senseless brutality had subverted the peace and security enjoyed by local residents and visitors to this idyllic stretch of coast. It was now a place of trepidation and fear, where people were wary of strangers and made sure to lock their doors.
He would not be arrested for the two double murders for another 20 years, but Cooper had already made mistakes that would help to incriminate him. For example, he had been spotted by a motorist as he used Peter Dixon’s cash card in Haverfordwest. He was described as being five feet ten inches tall, late thirties to early forties, collar-length hair, unshaven with a moustache, wearing ankle boots and khaki-brown shorts. An artist’s impression of the ‘wild man’ was produced and shown on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme, which later would help to incriminate Cooper.
Cooper’s reign of brutality continues
Unfortunately, Cooper was able to rampage and devastate the lives of more innocent victims. On 6 March 1996, five youngsters aged 14 to 16, were in fields near the Mount council estate on the edge of Milford Haven. The three girls and two boys were stopped by someone shining a bright light at them across a field. They thought it might be a friend. Then they realised the man closing in on them was wearing a balaclava and carrying a shotgun. He ordered them to lie on their stomachs. He raped a 16-year-old girl and assaulted a second girl, aged 15. The man demanded to know if they had money. He told them not to reveal to anyone what he had done or he would kill them. The youngsters hurried away and on reaching the home of one of the girls, they telephoned the police.
If a masked predator with a shotgun, intent on murder and sexual abuse, could roam the spaces around Milford Haven, no one was safe. Police, well aware that the area was plagued by a wave of burglaries and robberies of lone women, in addition to the two unsolved double murders, interviewed suspects and checked leads, but again the investigation lost momentum. Scoveston Park and the coastal path murders remained painful, ongoing wounds for police and the community during these years.
The investigation continues: The Pembrokeshire murders part 2