Late in December 2008 I met Tom Atherton, Gerard Elias QC and Susanne Thomas to discuss the case; they had now considered the advice file. Mr Elias referred to other legal cases that dealt with ‘evidence of bad character’. Their view was that bad character should not bolster a weak case, but they felt that this case was exceptional. They felt that the Ottawa team should develop this approach, but any decision should be delayed whilst the forensic work was going on. This would take a considerable amount of work because Mr Elias felt that the defence would quickly respond with an abuse of process argument, or ‘no case to answer’ following any decision to charge Cooper. The ball was back in our court, we needed to present a case to the Crown based on bad character, similar fact and circumstantial evidence while developing the forensic work. To do this I needed more staff, and as before I enjoyed complete support from DCC Andy Edwards and the Gold Group. I felt we were at a make or break point and the next six months would be crucial. I needed to concentrate wholly on this investigation and it was therefore agreed that I would be dedicated solely to Operation Ottawa and taken away from my other duties. When the team met in February 2009 for a briefing at Pembroke Dock, little did we know the next few months would be life changing for all those involved in the case.
‘You Can’t Beat a Bit of Bully’
IT WAS FEBRUARY 2009 and the team assembled at Pembroke Dock Police Station. We had taken over the third floor, and the beloved snooker table had finally gone, presented to a local club. The disclosure team now comprised of six officers: Temporary Detective Sergeant Barry Kelly led the team of experienced detectives, DC Emyr Griffiths, DC Simon Lewis-Davies, DC Oliver James, DC Mark Roach and DC Fred Hunter. They had the daunting task of reviewing all of the material making up the three Ottawa investigations, as well as Huntsman. The CPS had now identified a lawyer to help with this process. Grenville Barker was a very likeable man who loved Cardiff City F.C. He was easy to work with, clear about what he needed and nothing was too much trouble for him. Our regular discussions allowed me to give clarity of purpose to the disclosure process and the team quietly got on with it.
The road ahead was now clear. I needed to present a case to the CPS and Gerard Elias QC on the basis that we would not get any forensic evidence linking Cooper to the Ottawa offences. The forensics work would continue to its natural conclusion now that Angela Gallop and her team had breathed new life into it. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and they had started to review the fibre exhibits. We knew that Cooper had been a gloved offender and his family had said that he had clothing locked away in a wardrobe in his shed which he put on before creeping out into the night. LGC now had all the various gloves recovered from the Sardis robbery and from in and around his home. The face-to-face meetings with the scientists were working well, although their view of what an examination was and mine were at times poles apart. The combination of the scientist and detective sitting at the same table discussing what they actually meant by examination was fascinating. It enabled us to identify additional avenues to pursue and helped us understand what might have been done in the past. Together with LGC we worked though each individual exhibit and its potential for development. It was a potent combination and if this didn’t work then I believed nothing would.
Meanwhile I commissioned a review of the linking matrix, by my peers. SIOs who were not connected to the case were asked for their opinion on our processes. They were very supportive, because once the key elements of Cooper’s behaviour and M.O. had been stripped out of the three Ottawa offences and overlaid with his convictions, the similarities were startling. We had compared some 1500 suspects and persons of interest, together with their offending history against the linking matrix, and none had committed serious crimes that had the same key elements that we were investigating.
One of my analysts was tasked with producing a year-by-year picture of particular types of crime that had taken place in the same geographical area as the Ottawa offences and Cooper’s convictions. This was not an easy task as the records were a mix of paper-based and computerised. Home Office rules for recording these crimes had also changed and I had to take this into account. The process would range from 1983 to the present day and provide a visual representation of how crime had changed in the area over this period. Our work on ‘bad character’ was very important and without forensic evidence we would stand or fall by it. The matrix gave a visual representation of what we now needed to turn into evidence.
Identification of the suspect now raised itself as an issue, particularly in relation to the Dixons murder, and I needed to discuss it with the CPS. I was satisfied that a witness had indeed seen Cooper at the NatWest cashpoint in Haverfordwest and that his was the source of the artist’s impression of the ‘wild man’ and his bike. It was possible that other people who had seen a man of a similar description had also seen Cooper. The television appeal on 7 November had uncovered another witness who had had a frightening confrontation with a similar man on the shoreline leading into Pembroke on the day of the murders. The rules of evidence state that if a suspect is available to take part in an identification parade, he should be given the opportunity to participate. This was a very unusual set of circumstances though, and we were twenty years on from the crime. We had a passport photograph of Cooper from around the time of the Dixons murder, but it was of poor quality. My personal view was that an identification parade or the use of old photographs would be pointless but I needed to raise it with counsel, to ensure it was explored at an early stage. Cooper’s appearance had changed significantly over the years and I could not guarantee that the photographs truly represented how he looked at the time of the sightings.
Our meticulous inquiries into Cooper’s background had revealed that in 1989 he had taken part in the popular ITV game show Bullseye. Comedian Jim Bowen, whose catchphrase was ‘You can’t beat a bit of Bully’, hosted the show. Contestants had to answer general knowledge questions and throw darts for prizes. Given Cooper’s propensity for gambling and his enthusiasm for darts we weren’t surprised that he had put his name forward for the show together with another member of the local pub darts team. What was particularly interesting was the date: 1989.
We had amassed many images of Cooper over the years in various guises and with numerous hairstyles. What we didn’t have was a picture of him at the time of the Dixons’ murder. If footage still existed of his appearance on Bullseye this could be hugely significant. I decided to call Jonathan Hill at ITV Wales and asked him for his assistance in locating the Bullseye show. He could hardly believe what I’d told him and set to work tracking down the programme. Jonathan knew that Central Television in Birmingham had produced Bullseye and it was there that he made the first enquiries. He soon discovered that much of ITV’s archive was now held in vaults in Leeds and this became the focus of his search. He called the librarian in Leeds, who without being fully aware of the significance of the enquiry, seemed rather bewildered that he was being asked to look for a single Welsh contestant amongst dozens of episodes of the much-loved show. Various searches revealed that the programme had been transmitted in the late autumn and in the run up to Christmas. What wasn’t included on the database was when the shows had actually been recorded. The librarian set to work viewing hours of footage looking for some mention of a Welsh contestant. At the same time enquiries began to pinpoint the dates of these recordings. This would require considerable effort and also some good luck.
One of the senior administrators at ITV Wales, Nia Britton, had the idea of checking the financial paperwork from the series for a reference to a recording date. After twenty years it was a long shot. Incredibly, a memo from the Director of Programmes at Central TV was located, which happened to mention moving the recording dates of the show to the spring of 1989. It was exactly the time we were interested in. We were getting close. Then after deeper investigations, photocopied contracts turned up for Jim Bowen and for a make-up artist who had been booked for the recordings in May and June. Days
later the librarian rang back and said that he had found an episode with two men from Milford Haven, including a John Cooper. Eureka! Now we knew which episode he had appeared in we were able to tie down the date of the recording. When Jonathan called me I could hardly believe what I was hearing. He said that the episode with Cooper had been recorded on 28 May 1989, exactly a month before the Dixons were murdered. A few minutes later Jonathan called me back saying that the librarian was about to play the episode down the line from Leeds to Cardiff. He said he would call again when he had it in his hands.
Forty-five minutes later his number flashed up on my mobile. “It’s incredible Steve, you have to see this,” he said. It was Cooper, bold as brass, smiling and joking on national television having almost certainly murdered two people in cold blood. At the start of the show Jim Bowen chatted with Cooper and the other contestants to put them at their ease before the game started. The conversation was relaxed as the contestants talked about their lives and playing darts; Cooper was then asked about his interesting hobby.
JIM BOWEN: You’ve got an unusual hobby John, haven't you?
COOPER: Oh yes the SCUBA diving.
JIM BOWEN: SCUBA diving, and apparently it’s the place to do it?
COOPER: Oh we’ve got coastline.
JIM BOWEN: Yes because is it the mountains are sort of inverted and you’ve got all these...
COOPER: We’ve got deep water where you can swim over mountains and all sorts of things.
You could hardly make it up. There was Cooper, just a month before the killings, revealing on national television knowledge of the area where the Dixons would be murdered.
Jonathan went on to describe how in the quiz section of the show, Cooper’s general knowledge let him down time and time again. Faster on the buzzer, with the right answers, was the female contestant next to him. Cooper forced a smile but he would have hated losing, especially to a woman. In the end Cooper and his teammate were forced into an early exit. But this wasn’t quite the end of the story. As the show reached its climax the winners were given a chance to gamble the prizes they had picked along the way against the star prize hidden behind a screen. It was the great tradition of Bullseye to offer the star prize gamble to the runners-up if the winners refused to chance their arm. If the runners-up declined the losing pair would then be brought back to throw darts for the star prize.
Cooper had been thrown a lifeline. Having been humiliated on national TV, here was his chance to redeem himself and scoop a big money prize. Right on cue, beaming ear to ear, Cooper walked back on to the studio floor and announced that he wanted to gamble his winnings for the star prize. It was another extraordinary chance to scrutinize the prime suspect. This time it was Cooper throwing the darts and not his partner. Yet again his misplaced confidence in his own abilities would be tested. As the drums rolled, Cooper threw his three darts and lost the lot. For a split second he looked to camera with a stare that said it all. As the credits rolled the host tried to console the pair with a friendly hug and a joke; one can only imagine what Cooper was thinking.
The Bullseye footage was clearly now a key piece of evidence. Here we had the prime suspect on tape just a month before the Dixons were murdered. His physique, haircut and features could all be scrutinised. The opportunity was not lost on Jonathan too. In an edit suite at ITV Wales in Cardiff he decided to view the image of the artist’s impression of the suspect from the 1989 enquiry. The sketch had captured the suspect from behind his right shoulder with is face almost in profile. Watching the Bullseye sequence through, Jonathan then stopped the tape at the moment when Cooper adopted a similar pose. The images were then put side by side with the help of a graphic artist who pasted the still images next to one another on the screen. The result was chilling. Cooper had long bushy collar length hair just like the artist’s impression. Given that Cooper’s hair is likely to have been brushed into shape by a makeup artist before the TV show, it matched closely. His features too bore a close resemblance, particularly the nose and chin. Then there was his stocky physique, just like the man in the sketch who was drawn with his shirt and shorts pulled tightly across his body. The similarity was compelling and I knew we would have to apply through the courts to get hold of the footage and the graphic images. For the first time we could see Cooper as he would have looked at the time of the Dixons’ murder. In my thirty years service I had seen many artist’s impressions and photo-fit efforts, but I had never seen as close a match as this.
A critical piece of work was the research and analysis. A team was brought together and started to build to a picture of the circle of offending and criminal activity that emanated from Cooper’s home, with a radius as far as the coastal path. We wanted to know about certain crime pattern trends that were occurring during Cooper’s offending period, and post his arrest to the present day. This would include both detected and undetected offences including murder, robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, criminal use of firearms, rape, sexual assaults, arson and attempted crimes.
The second priority was to research all Cooper’s convictions together with offences that could be linked to him, in order to identify his method of offending or M.O. For the next few months we continued with this work from Pembroke Dock. The whole team worked tirelessly and with considerable skill and commitment. All Cooper’s family had been interviewed and statements taken from them. Adrian in particular had made some chilling revelations about his father’s almost nightly disappearances when he would go to his shed, change his clothing and go out into the dark across the fields. On one occasion he was able to see into the secret wardrobe that his father kept in the shed. There were photographs of people he did not recognise and items of jewellery. He also saw a shotgun, which was shortened at the barrel and stock. Was this the reason that Cooper went to great lengths to discredit his son? He knew that Adrian could potentially give very damning evidence against him. Again, it was all very interesting but how much could I use in a court of law?
The time had come for the team and I to lock ourselves behind closed doors and map out the evidential and bad character case as it stood. This needed to be a team effort because we all had a detailed knowledge of Huntsman, Ottawa, Cooper and what evidence was available. The team were assembled at Pembroke Dock Police Station and I briefed them about what I wanted. I now needed to catalogue the hard evidence alongside the bad character case and ask the three questions I always ask in any investigation I am leading: What do we know? What do we think we know? What do we need to know? The last two questions dictate the direction of the investigation and provide answers to the first question. At this point I needed the team to put down on paper what we could put forward in a preliminary hearing or a potential court case.
The first task was to strip out the relevant parts of his Huntsman convictions. The offences were committed mainly in the early evening and in winter months. All the offences were committed within a closely defined geographical area and within a two-mile radius of Cooper’s home. All the properties attacked were isolated and backed onto fields. The main item targeted was jewellery from bedrooms, although some other property, such as cash and electrical equipment, was also stolen. Of the 30 offences of burglary for which Cooper was convicted, property from twenty-five of the victims was recovered from 34 St Marys Park or the homes of his family. (It was accepted that they had innocently received the property). It is only when you examine the shear number of offences that you understand why Cooper was branded ‘a one-man crime wave’. We now looked at the crimes and the exhibits in more detail:
Clariston Hall – 20th April 1983
This was a night time burglary of an occupied, three-storey farmhouse surrounded by fields. Cooper entered the premises by breaking the downstairs bathroom window. Fortunately a stout internal locked door prevented him from getting past the main kitchen. Jewellery, including a gold-coloured bracelet, was stolen. The bracelet was recovered in the Cooper’s garden fifteen years later. He answered ‘no comment’ in police inte
rview, but stated in evidence that he did not recognise the bracelet but that his wife had one similar. He stated that the grandchildren must have played with it and left it in the garden.
The Old Vicarage, Rosemarket – 25th October 1988
A night time burglary of an unoccupied detached property, surrounded by fields. Jewellery was taken that was recovered at the Cooper’s home and identified in 1998. Cooper maintained a ‘no comment’ interview but in evidence asserted it was his wife’s or his daughter’s jewellery.
13, Hazel Grove – 1st December 1989-31st January 1990
A burglary of an unoccupied bungalow, which backed onto fields and a bridle path from Llanstadwell towards Waterston. Entry was forced into a rear patio door. Over £2,700 worth of jewellery was taken. Some items, including a cigarette case with a built in Ronson lighter, were found in Cooper’s home. Significantly, keys were also stolen from the premises and found in the cesspit of his home. Cooper gave a ‘no comment’ interview, but in evidence he maintained that the cigarette case and lighter were given to him in 1984.
The Pembrokeshire Murders: Catching the Bullseye Killer Page 17