Park Predators - The Rampage

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

In the summer of 1989 a husband and wife on vacation at their favorite hiking spot in Wales fall victim to a vicious killer. Years after the notorious crime, justice prevails but the total number of people murdered by one man, remains a haunting mystery to this day.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.com Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I have for you today takes place in Pembrokeshire Coast National Park in Western Wales. I specifically picked this case for the show because I know there are a lot of you listening who live in the United Kingdom. I've gotten a lot of requests for me to feature parks in your neck of the woods, so here you go. According to the park's website, the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path meanders for hundreds of miles across Wales. It has bluffs that overlook St. George's Channel and Bristol Channel,

just northeast of the Celtic Sea. The part of the path that's in Wales is more than 180 miles long and hugs a good portion of the western side of the rugged coastline. When it opened in 1970, it was the first national trail in Wales. The path is popular with locals as well as tourists from all over the world. But don't let this trek fool you. Most people don't traverse the entire thing in a day. In fact, few people ever complete it in its entirety. On average, it takes about two weeks to walk the whole path if you go straight through. The couple in this story wasn't planning to do that, though. They were just on holiday,

enjoying a leisurely stroll. During their camping trip along the western coast, they'd wake up every morning and enjoy the misty sea air or take a hike on a different section of the path. Until one morning, they didn't. They never returned to their campsite. They never called their families. And authorities in Wales found themselves immersed in a mystery so terrifying, no one in Wales could believe it. terrifying, no one in Wales could believe it. The predator who plucked this unassuming couple from the picturesque path would eventually become known as one of the most notorious criminals in the United Kingdom. This is Park Predators. On Monday, July 3rd, 1989, 26-year-old Timothy Dixon

picked up his 18-year-old sister Julie from an airport outside of London, England. She was returning from a trip to Cyprus and was looking forward to reuniting with her brother and parents at their family home in Whitney, Oxfordshire, a community about an hour and a half northwest of London. Julie and Tim's mom and dad, 51-year-old Peter Dixon and 52-year-old Gwenda Dixon, were supposed to have just gotten home from their own holiday trip in Little Haven, Wales. The couple had spent the last few weeks camping along the idyllic Pembrokeshire coast, and according to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders by Steve Wilkins and Jonathan Hill, the close-knit family planned to get together to share stories

from their travels. But when Tim and Julie arrived at their parents' house, they weren't met with open arms and hugs from Peter and Gwenda. The couple's house was quiet and empty, which didn't make any sense to their kids. Their mom and dad were supposed to have come home from Wales a few days earlier on June 29th. The kids made a few phone calls to the businesses where their parents worked and learned that Peter and Gwenda had both been no calls,

no shows at their jobs on Monday morning. That information made alarm bells start ringing for Julie and Tim. Peter not showing up at his marketing job and Gwenda just ghosting her duties as a secretary was completely out of character for both of them. So immediately Tim got on the phone with the Halston Farm Caravan Park, which was the campground he knew his parents had been staying at in Western Wales. According to Patrick McGowan's reporting for the Evening Standard, Gwenda and Peter stayed at that campground every year when they went camping. In fact, it was familiar to everyone in the Dixon family.

The people reported that a week into the couple's vacation, Tim had actually stayed with his parents for a day, but then later returned to Oxfordshire. When the manager of the campground, a woman named Margaret Davies, answered the phone for Tim, she recognized his voice right away. But she was puzzled by his somewhat panicked tone. She told him that according to her records, Peter and Gwenda were supposed to leave the campground on June 29th, and they hadn't made any plans to stay extra days. Margaret told Tim she wasn't sure where his parents were. All she knew was that

they were no longer paying customers at the caravan park. To get to the bottom of what was going on, though, Margaret hung up with Tim, promising to call him back, and she walked to the spot that had been Peter and Gwenda's assigned campsite. When she got there, she was surprised to find their stuff still sitting around. Their tent was still set up just a few feet away from their Red Ford Sierra sedan, and all their luggage was untouched. Nothing seemed out of sorts or like it was in the middle of being packed up or anything. The only things not there were Peter and Glenda.

So within minutes of returning to the campground office, Margaret rang Tim back and told him what she'd found. After that, Tim and Julie felt in their gut that something was definitely wrong. So Tim called the Dyf Powys Police Department in Western Wales to report his parents missing. The department took the call very seriously and put together a search right away. took the call very seriously and put together a search right away. They sent officers from a station in the nearby town of Broadhaven

to look around the campground, and they enlisted help from the Coast Guard and National Park wardens. The Royal Air Force even sent up a helicopter to get a better view of hard-to-reach areas along the coastal path. And it was in these areas that authorities suspected Peter and Gwenda might have fallen into or gotten trapped.

Everyone who was familiar with that area knew the coastal path was as beautiful as it was dangerous. If you weren't careful, the jagged cliffs towering high above the crashing waves and beaches could get the best of a person. The bluffs were even rumored to mess with people's depth perception. Just one wrong move or step could prove to be fatal. Over the course of July 3rd and 4th, despite searchers' best efforts scouring the area, no sign of the couple turned up. It was as if they'd vanished into thin air. The best clue police had to work with was information a fellow camper from the caravan park provided them. According to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders, a guy staying at the park named Richard Lines came forward and told investigators that on Thursday, June 29th, around 9.30 in the morning, he'd talked with Peter and Gwenda at the campground.

Richard had been staying in a tent right next to the couple. During that conversation, he said the Dixons had told him they'd had enough of the area's unpredictable weather and rain and they were going to go home as soon as their tent dried out. He said after briefly chatting, the couple waved goodbye and set off on a walk towards the coastal path, leaving their tent behind to air out. Based on the timeline and information investigators had so far,

they determined that Richard's sighting was the last time anyone had seen or talked with Peter and Gwenda. On July 5th, two days into the search, police used tracking dogs to try and locate the couple. The source material isn't clear about what items of Peter and Gwenda's they gave to the dogs to lock onto their scents,

but I have to assume it was some item from their campsite. Anyway, around 3.30 p.m., not far from where the Dixons had left their stuff behind, the dogs alerted in a remote area off the path, near the edge of a cliff. Some source material says this alert came less than a mile from the couple's campsite, while others say it was 800 yards to upwards of three miles away. So I'm not sure which is correct, but it wasn't so much the distance that mattered to investigators.

It was a noticeable foul smell lingering in the air that stood out most. When one of the officers wrangling one of the tracking dogs started poking around toward the source of the smell, he saw a large pile of undergrowth and vegetation swarming with flies. After peeling back a few branches and other plant debris, he found the lifeless bodies of a man and a woman laying a few feet apart. The victims were barely recognizable and covered in blood. According to reporting by Caroline Davies and Patrick McGowan for The Evening Standard, both victims had suffered what appeared to be shotgun blasts. Based

on the severity of their wounds, police believed the shots that had killed them had likely been fired at close range. Several newspapers reported that the woman was found lying face down with her sweater pushed up over her chest. From the waist down, though, she was nude, with the exception of her socks. Her hiking boots were still nearby, and her pants and underwear were a few feet away from her body on the ground. Just a few more feet from that, the man's body was lying face down with his hands tied behind his back and his feet dangling over the edge of a cliff that dropped 200 feet straight down to the sea below. Nick Davies reported for The Guardian that bloodstains all over the rocky and grassy terrain indicated the couple had been

killed and dumped in the same location. The murder scene had been right there, near the cliff, not somewhere else, and then the victims were transported there. The Evening Sentinel reported that both victims' hands were bound with a grayish cord or rope, but I couldn't find any other source material verifying that account. Most reporting just says the man's hands were tied with a gray robe. Either way, securing the crime scene was police's number one priority, but that task came with some serious challenges. For one, the weather was misty and wet, which meant everyone had to be careful not to slip. Second, the small area where the bodies were found had little to no room for detectives, pathologists, and crime scene technicians to work side by side. According to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders, some of the investigators had to tie off the man's body with a rope to keep it from falling off the edge of the cliff.

Everyone who came and went from the crime scene had to tether themselves with a harness so as not to accidentally fall over the sharp drop-off. What's wild to me is that the Evening Standard reported that searchers had passed by the exact spot where the bodies were found during day one and two of the search, but had somehow missed the victims. Whoever put the couple's bodies there knew how to hide them well. It was only when the dogs went tracking that anyone realized search crews had been walking around the bodies the whole time. I guess the smell didn't settle in during those first few days.

Anyway, several items that authorities assumed were the victims' personal belongings were found scattered on the ground near their bodies. Investigators collected those things as evidence while at the same time being careful not to miss anything in the tight space. Among the items was a blood-stained, waterproof jacket, a camera, a camera case, walking sticks, binoculars, and a key ring. Noticeably absent from the crime scene, though, were cartridge casings or spent rounds. Authorities thought that either meant the empty cartridges had fallen over the cliff's edge

or the killer had been smart enough to take the spent ammunition evidence with them. According to the Evening Standard, shortly after discovering the bodies, police called Tim Dixon with the news. Until full autopsies were done and official IDs were confirmed, police couldn't say for sure if the victims were his parents. But behind closed doors, they told Tim that they believed the bodies belonged to Gwenda and Peter. The same day Tim got that phone call from police, newspaper reporters from Peter and Gwenda's hometown spoke with Peter's brother, Keith Dixon.

Keith told reporters, quote, We have not heard officially from the police that Peter and Gwenda are the dead people, but you don't find too many people of their description dead in Wales. We know the worst has happened, and though we kept our hopes high, we feared it might come to this. We kept our fingers crossed and just hoped and hoped. Now it's become a reality. The official identification will take place later today, but really that's just a formality. We all know that Peter and Gwenda are the victims of something awful that's happened to the loveliest couple in the world. End quote.

Sadly, everyone's worst fears were confirmed later that same day, July 6th, when a pathologist conducted the autopsies at a nearby hospital. According to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders, Glenda had been shot twice with a shotgun, once in the back and once in the chest. She also suffered blunt force trauma to her head. Peter had been shot three times with a shotgun, once in the back, once in the chest, and once to his head. The gunshot injuries were without a doubt what had killed them, and based on details the pathologists observed in their wound patterns,

what had killed them, and based on details the pathologists observed in their wound patterns, the particular model of firearm police suspected was the murder weapon was a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. Thankfully, some of the wadding from the spent rounds, as well as pellets, were still intact in the victims' wounds. So the pathologists collected those things as evidence and determined they likely came from an Italian manufacturer. Based on insect activity and the rate of decomposition on the bodies, the pathologists estimated their time of death was sometime on June 29th. And since police already had Richard Lyne's testimony stating he saw the couple alive at 9.30 a.m. that day, police concluded that Peter and Gwenda were likely killed sometime after their interaction with Richard,

probably in a late morning or early afternoon of the 29th. That conclusion was reinforced when witnesses who'd been walking on a beach below the coastal path around 11 a.m. on June 29th came forward, and they told police that they'd heard five gunshots ring out on the day the couple was

presumed to be killed. So that was definitely interesting to the authorities. But while the autopsies were helpful to police in terms of being able to tighten up the couple's timeline, nothing detectives gathered from the examinations was earth-shattering. There was no bombshell forensic evidence that made things any easier in identifying the killer. The only solid clue they had, based on showing some of the items found at the crime scene to Tim,

was that Peter's wallet, bank card, and gold wedding ring were missing. The absence of those things provided police with a possible motive for the crime. Robbery. The chief constable things provided police with a possible motive for the crime. Robbery. The chief constable of the police department, a guy named Raymond White, told reporters for the Evening Standard that, considering the nature of the murders, everyone should stay away from the coastal path. He said, quote, This is a horrific double murder.

Until this person is caught, there is an element of danger for people using this path. End quote. Finally, this is one of the first times in all my years researching cases for this show that I have seen an actual law enforcement agency issue a warning with this kind of urgency. Most of the time, investigators put out the typical statement, this is an isolated incident and the public is not at risk, or something to that effect. But rarely have I seen this kind of intentional language used. Constable Raymond White was extremely disturbed by these murders,

and he wanted everyone to know that being in the area posed a serious threat. An urgency about potential danger to the public wasn't the only reason police felt pressure to work fast. They also knew that where the Dixons had been camping was just a short 30-minute ride to Fishguard, a popular port. If the killer or killers wanted to make a quick escape, authorities knew it would be super easy for them to hop onto a ferry and be long gone. authorities knew it would be super easy for them to hop onto a ferry and be long gone. The pool of people to question in that port who may have seen something helpful was dwindling fast, due to the port being a high-traffic area.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, a few days after the murders, detectives got wind that two men and a teenager might have been walking in the general area of where the crime occurred, sometime on June 29th. So authorities put out a request for those folks to come forward and report anything and everything they remembered. The Evening Sentinel also reported that police wanted to find and speak with four tourists who left their names in a visitor logbook at a chapel on the coastal path on June 30th, the day after the murders. These visitors weren't considered suspects, but police felt they may have seen something important while in the area during those critical 24 hours. Eventually, those visitors were located and interviewed, but nothing they provided police

was helpful. The Evening Standard reported that shortly after that, even more witness accounts started pouring in, and folks were reporting hearing gunshots the morning the Dixons were killed. These were additional witnesses on top of the ones police had already spoken with. However, in the rural Welsh countryside, gunshots were fairly common. Some source material says farmers with property that neighboring the coastal path often shot in the direction of the bluffs and were in fact shooting on the day of the crime. But authorities knew the shots that killed Peter and Gwenda weren't accidental or some sort of friendly fire situation.

Their murders were deliberate and planned. Investigators knew this because of the bindings on Peter and the sexual nature of how Gwenda had been left About a week into the investigation a tip came in that turned out to be really promising for the police A few people who'd been on the coastal path the morning of the crime reported that they'd seen a man riding a bicycle close to the section of the path that Peter and Glenda were found in.

Now, this guy on the bike was seen around the time the murders were suspected to have occurred. So police released an artist's sketch of what the guy on the bike looked like, and a public notice went out. It was said he was white, in his 30s or 40s, and reporter Patrick McGowan described him as, quote, unkempt, unshaven, suntanned, and wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and walking boots, end quote. Police didn't confirm to the press whether this man was the killer or a prime suspect. The department only said they wanted to speak with him. In that same article by the Evening Standard, Tim, the Dixon's son, said to whoever the killer or killers were though, quote, how can you live with yourself with what you did to my parents?

You can't be happy with yourself. Why don't you give yourself up to police? It has been hell for the family, thinking how we are going to pick up the threads of our lives again. The whole family is absolutely devastated. End quote. A few days after that, the Guardian reported roughly 600 calls had come in since the Dixons had been discovered, and at least 20 people who'd been prior visitors to the coastal path had willingly returned to Western Wales to speak with authorities.

At one point, six to 40 different men from different locations across Wales and Britain were sought out and questioned by detectives, mostly because they resembled the artist's sketch of the bicycle guy. But in the end, none of those interviews led to case-cracking information, and those men were cleared. It wasn't until two weeks after the killings that police got the major break they desperately needed. The Guardian reported that Peter's bank card had been used after the murders, and not just once. It had been used four times. Multiple newspapers reported that when detectives examined the usage history of Peter's bank card, they found in total 310 pounds had been withdrawn from the couple's bank account

after they were already confirmed dead. Something important to note about Peter's bank card is that as the Atherstone Herald reported, it was a cash points card for National Westminster Bank, which was the Dixon's primary bank. The card could also be used at ATMs for Midland Bank branches too. According to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders, the card's transaction history showed

that someone had used it in a town about 15 miles away from Little Haven around 1.30 p.m. on June 29th to withdraw 10 pounds. The transaction had occurred at an ATM at a National Westminster bank. A few hours after that, 100 pounds was taken out at the same ATM. that, £100 was taken out at the same ATM. At least once during one of those two withdrawals, the transaction had temporarily failed due to the wrong PIN being entered. The card was used again on June 30th, this time 30 miles east of Pembrokeshire, in a shopping area in the town of Camarthen. During that transaction, 100 more pounds was taken out. The last and final time the card was used was at 7.14 a.m. on July 1st, in a community back in the direction of Pembrokeshire called Haverford West. During that transaction, another 100 pounds

had been taken out. Now, the only way the person with the card could have accessed the money is if they had the correct pen. That told police that the card wasn't picked up by a drifter. Whoever was using it was most likely the killer or killers. And the only way they would know the pen would have been if Peter had given it to them. Detectives felt like the few failed attempts had been the suspect misremembering Peter's pen. Thanks to this bank card activity, authorities knew exactly where their suspect had been at four different times.

They canvassed people in the shopping areas near the banks and ATMs, and several people came forward to report they'd seen a rough-looking man in the vicinity around the time of the questionable bank withdrawals. And that man matched the police's sketch of the person that witnesses said had been riding a bicycle on the coastal path. None of the source material mentions ATM video footage, and again, we're talking about this happening in the late 1980s, so maybe there just

wasn't any surveillance footage back then. I don't know, but because no source material mentions it, that makes me think video just wasn't something police could utilize in this investigation. Anyway, on July 10th, BBC aired a special Crimewatch segment in which police and Tim Dixon walked along the coastal path trying to reconstruct the crime. After that broadcast aired, police had to go through hundreds more calls, but nothing very helpful surfaced. Unfortunately, the case dragged on at a snail's pace with no leads. By September, investigators were getting really desperate, and they actually spent countless hours interviewing people at railway stations just to see if anyone getting on or off the trains could identify the composite sketch that had been circulating for months at that

point. However, you might have guessed, nothing materialized from those efforts. The rest of fall passed, and the Cambridge Evening News reported that Peter and Gwenda's bodies were eventually released to the family for burial, and their funerals took place in Oxfordshire on September 8, 1989. While that was all going on, law enforcement had spent weeks trying to analyze the gray rope that had been used to bind the victims. Authors of the book The Pembrokeshire Murders said that the rope was made up of 30-strand polyethylene cord, commonly used in the fishing industry. Nothing about the way it had been tied, though, stood out to the investigators as having come from the hands of an experienced fisherman. The knots the killer had twisted were loose and kind of chaotic. Since the day the rope had been

collected as evidence, detectives had compared it with suppliers all over the world, and they checked boats and marinas in Wales to try and figure out where it came from. Ultimately, they ended up narrowing it down to a Portuguese manufacturer, but were never able to pinpoint how the killer had come across it. The book says that busted-up crab pots, mooring lines, and all sorts of nautical equipment with similar looking rope were scattered around parts of the coastal path. So truly, pinpointing the origin of the rope was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Nick Davies reported for The Guardian that police also developed the film from the camera they'd found near Peter and Gwenda,

that police also developed the film from the camera they'd found near Peter and Gwenda, which Tim identified as belonging to his dad. But the only image on the film that helped them piece together more of the couple's timeline was a picture of a cow. And the reason the animal was so interesting is because it had an ear tag. Detectives tracked down the farmer who owned that cow and figured out the location of the field it was kept in, but all that told them was that Peter and Gwenda had passed by that field at some point. The film, unfortunately, didn't show Peter photographing his killer or killers or any of the circumstances around their deaths. Things were looking bleak on the investigative front until November, which is when a bizarre discovery took the case

in a trajectory no one saw coming. According to Steve Wilkins and Jonathan Hill's book, in November of 1989, four months after the killings, a hidden stash of explosives and weapons was discovered right near the cliffs of Pembrokeshire, seven miles from where Peter and Gwenda were murdered. This stuff was later linked to members of the Irish Republican Army, also known as the IRA. According to the book, in 1989, the IRA was known to have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against parts of Britain as a way to protest and end British rule.

The IRA's factions of paramilitary groups would often house their explosives and arms in coves and caves along the coastal path. So law enforcement began to wonder if maybe Peter and Gwenda had been walking along the coastline on June 29th and perhaps witnessed IRA members moving these illegal arms. It was one theory that explained the brutal execution style of the murders. But the problem with that theory was that a lot of the evidence investigators were looking at in the Dixon case just didn't point to a quick, in-the-moment killing. There was the sexual savagery of how Gwenda had been attacked,

and the bank card transactions after the murders, both of which were compelling facts that whoever committed the crime wanted something from the couple, not just their lives, but their money. In December of 1989, two IRA members were caught trafficking weapons along the coastal path,

and once they were in custody, police questioned them about the murders. Both men were uncooperative with investigators, and it was later revealed by the Birmingham Post that they had solid alibis for the day of the murders that confirmed they weren't even in Wales. So it became clear to police there was no way these IRA members were involved.

After that, weeks turned into months, and no movement happened in Peter and Gwenda's case. The Daily Telegraph ran a one-year anniversary piece, but no matter how hard police tried, the investigation stayed stagnant. That is until January 1998, almost a decade later. According to Sean O'Neill's reporting for the Daily Telegraph, detectives investigating Peter and Gwenda's murders took a 53-year-old man into custody for crimes unrelated to the slayings, but told reporters that this guy was going to be questioned about Peter and Gwenda's death, as well as two other murders from back in 1985 of a brother and sister named Helen and Richard Thomas. Now, we need to pause here for a second and go into a little background about Helen and Richard's case,

because I don't want you to be lost. According to Andy Chandler's reporting for the Herald Wales and the newspaper South Wales Echo, the Thomas siblings were shot to death in their family's manor on the night of December 23, 1985, in Scoveston, a village about 15 miles southeast of Little Haven. If you'll remember, Little Haven is where the Dixons would be killed four years later. The Thomas' home was also set on fire after they were shot. Authors of the book The Pembrokeshire Murders and an article for The People described the brother and sister as quiet people who inherited substantial wealth in the form of a farm property from their late parents. Initially, authorities investigated

their deaths as a murder-suicide because rumors had swirled that the siblings had disagreed about their family fortune. However, not long after discovering their bodies with injuries from shotgun blasts and evidence that 54-year-old Helen had been gagged and tied up with rope, police realized the siblings had been killed by someone else who tried to cover up their tracks by setting the house on fire. And just a quick note, my source material goes back and forth on Helen's age. A few sources claim that she was 54. And this might seem like a small detail, but preserving the facts about these victims is so important, and I wanted to note that for you guys.

Though the fire had made it hard to conclude what, if anything, had been taken, authorities assumed that robbery had been the motive in the Thomas' case. No one they interviewed said the siblings had enemies of any kind. 58-year-old Richard had publicly contested a railway line near some of his family's property, but police didn't think that was motive enough for such a brutal crime. Like I mentioned, with Helen's age, the sources vary on Richard's age as well. Some say he was 56, while others say he was 58. The Thomases were well known in the area, and anyone that knew them knew they had money.

The idea of a robbery gone wrong was the overwhelming theory at the time. Even though specks of blood were found inside parts of the house, which were examined as likely not belonging to Richard or Helen, police in 1985 didn't have the ability to narrow down who the blood belonged to any further. Technology just wasn't up to speed yet to pull DNA or anything like that. The ammunition pellets the pathologist recovered from the siblings' bodies were for a shotgun and were specifically noted as being UK number four and five style ammunition.

However, despite all of those amazing clues, it didn't take long before the investigation stalled for lack of progress. In 1989, when authorities were investigating the Dixon murders, they didn't automatically make the leap to connect the Thomas murder suspect to their case. It was only after they'd reviewed both cases extensively for years that they realized the same perpetrator

might be responsible. Unfortunately, coming to that conclusion took a while because during the early 1990s, police had spent several years looking into wild reports that they thought were going to be fruitful. For example, according to a Wales Online article, a notorious Welsh gangster named Frankie Fraser had once taunted the police by saying that a

former associate of his had killed Peter and Gwenda. In the end, though, police found no evidence to support Fraser's claims, and the whole thing turned out to be a waste of time. And for years, that's how things played out. Some info would come in, detectives would spin their wheels, and it would be a dead end. Whatever information police had developed that ultimately led them to taking this mystery man into custody in 1998, well, they didn't want to reveal any of that to the public. They kept the details of what was going on behind the scenes very hush-hush. In fact, police didn't publicly announce

they were officially revisiting the investigation of the two double murder cases as being connected until 2007. Wales Online reported that authorities said they were going to be retesting and reanalyzing evidence from both crime scenes, considering the fact that new advances in forensic technology had come along. Two years later, in 2009, the break they'd been waiting for came. According to John Bingham and Richard Saville's reporting for the Daily Telegraph, on May 13, 2009, police arrested a 64-year-old man from North Pembrokeshire

named John Cooper for Peter and Glenda's deaths, as well as the murders of Richard and Helen Thomas. Although this was the first time anyone in the public heard the name John Cooper, he was all too familiar to police. John was a convicted felon with a long criminal history for crimes like robbery and sexual assault. According to a timeline of events published by BBC, John had been the mystery man police had zeroed in on in 1998.

At that time, authorities had him dead to rights for separate incidents of sexual assault, robbery, and at least 30 burglaries. For those crimes, he'd been sentenced to 16 years in prison, but had gotten out early in 2008. That year, investigators who'd been sentenced to 16 years in prison, but had gotten out early in 2008. That year, investigators who'd been working the Thomas and Dixon murder cases took another run at him, and they really turned up the pressure. Without any forensic evidence, though, to link him to the crimes, detectives had to let John go in 2008, and they waited to question him again

until more thorough forensic testing gave them something concrete. One of the reasons John had looked like such a good suspect to detectives was because they connected him to a sexual assault and robbery case from 1996. This case happened in the town of Milford Haven, Wales, in Pembrokeshire. According to Wilkins and Hill's book, in March of 1996, five teenagers who'd been walking through a field at dusk

were confronted by a man wearing a ski mask. The guy had pointed a bright flashlight at them and threatened them with a sawed-off shotgun. Toting the gun and a knife, the masked man ordered the teens to walk into the edge of the woods and lay down and bury their faces in the dirt. When one, the masked man ordered the teens to walk into the edge of the woods and lay down and bury their faces in the dirt. When one of the boys resisted, the suspect hit the teen in the face with the shotgun. Then he took one of the young girls by their hair and dragged her away

from the group and sexually assaulted her. When he was finished with that crime, he targeted another girl in the group and sexually assaulted her, too. After the attacks, the man let the teens go and told them that if they reported what had happened, he would kill them. Thankfully, the victims did go to the police, and as soon as they started talking, alarm bells started to sound in police investigators' heads. alarm bells started to sound in police investigators' heads. The general description of the man the group described matched previous reports of a serial burglar and robber who'd been targeting the North Pembrokeshire area. But it took from 1996 to 1998 to 2009 for law enforcement to link John Cooper

to the Milford Haven attack, the Dixon murders, and the Thomas murders. One critical circumstantial link the cold case detectives discovered while reviewing the Dixon murder file had to do with Peter's missing gold wedding band. According to the book The Pembrokeshire Murders, investigators back in 1999 had canvassed several pawn shops in western Wales right after the Dixon's bodies were found. One shop they visited happened to be 50 yards away from the ATMs that Peter's bank card had made two withdrawals from. When the owner of that pawn shop pulled his records, he showed police that a white man with a scruffy-looking appearance

had pawned a gold wedding band on July 5th. The receipt for that transaction listed the seller as a Mr. J. Cooper. Now, the lead detective back in 1989 did visit John and interviewed him, but for some reason, he cleared him as a suspect. The book explains that when John was first questioned, he told the investigator he had pawned his own wedding band, and his wife vouched for him. So, at that point, I guess police had moved right along past him,

which is completely wild to me, but in all honesty, this is something I've seen time and time again with cold cases that drag out over decades. Sometimes, somewhere early on, police do speak with a prime suspect. They just don't know it or realize it until years later. In October of 2009, John Cooper pleaded not guilty to the four counts of murder

and the other crimes police wanted him for from 1996. By 2011, when his trial finally got underway, the prosecutor's office for the Crown Court in Wales had compiled a damning case against him. According to a Wales Online article, evidence collected during the investigations of the 30 robberies and burglaries John had been convicted of in 1998 gave the government what it needed to be able to link him to all the crimes. 1998, gave the government what it needed to be able to link him to all the crimes. You see, while investigating those burglaries and robberies, police had been able to obtain search warrants for John's home. As a result of those searches, police recovered a shotgun, and when they ran DNA tests on it, they found traces of Peter Dixon's blood.

Wales Online reported that the prosecution also presented a pair of drawstring shorts police had found in John's home that also had Peter Dixon's blood on them. Evidence that prosecutors said the police had found that connected John to Richard and Helen Thomas' murders from 1985 included a key to a lock on their property, glove fibers of gloves John owned found on Richard's sock, and an eyewitness who corroborated that John had once worked for Richard on his farm property in the early 1980s. A Wales Online article reported that the prosecution called a man named Christopher Davies to testify, who said that when he was a teenager employed by Richard

Thomas, he remembered John working to repair fences and toss hay on the Thomas' Scoveston farm. Another witness, a man named Neil Evans, also testified that he once saw John Cooper and Richard Thomas have an argument about the price of hay. As you would expect, John's defense lawyers disputed every point the government presented, including the forensic evidence, calling it weak. But the trial carried on, and a few weeks in, took a turn for the bizarre, when a woman named Tina Williams was called to testify. According to a Wales Online article, Tina was a graphic designer for ITV Wales. When police began their reinvestigation in 2009, they asked her to compare their composite sketch of the scruffy-looking man seen riding a bike on the coastal path in 89 to any man in 1989 who had been contestants on the popular UK dart-based game show called Bullseye. popular UK dart-based game show called Bullseye. Over the course of the lengthy investigation,

detectives had learned that John Cooper had been a contestant on Bullseye in late May of 1989, just a month before Peter and Gwenda Dixon were murdered. Up until that point, no one had ever tried to match symmetry points for the notorious composite sketch to John Cooper's likeness. But in 2009, because police were focused on John, they wanted to see if Tina could match his profile from his appearance on the show to their sketch. They just didn't tell her anything about John, though. They had her do her comparison completely in the dark, kind of like a blind study. her comparison completely in the dark, kind of like a blind study. According to Tina's testimony in court, after she watched the recording of a May 30th, 1989 episode of Bullseye, she selected John Cooper as the only person who she thought matched that composite sketch. Even though this wasn't a smoking gun, it was the first time anyone besides police had matched the man portrayed in the composite sketch to John Cooper, and in court, it came the first time anyone besides police had matched the man portrayed in the composite

sketch to John Cooper, and in court, it came across as a huge win for the prosecution. When it came time for the defense to present their side of things to the jury, their strategy was denial. John's lawyer said he couldn't explain why Peter Dixon's blood was on the shorts found in his client's house, but argued it was possibly a result of police contamination. In the end, the defense's time in front of the jury didn't last long, and on May 24, 2011, the trial came to an end. According to reporting by Wales Online, two days later, jurors found John guilty of the sexual assaults of the two teenage girls from 1996, the 1985 murders of Richard and Helen Thomas, and the 1989 murders of Peter and Gwenda Dixon.

The Crown Court sentenced him to life in prison. After the conviction, police couldn't help but wonder if someone as cold and callous as John Cooper could have committed more crimes during his rampage in Western Wales during the 80s and 90s. Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Wilkins told Wales Online, quote, There are a number of issues which I think we need to look at. His own history, where he's lived, what he was involved with at the time he lived in different locations, end quote. Additional crimes that had gone unsolved were a woman in John's neighborhood who mysteriously died in her bathtub in 1989, a double murder from 1976 on another Pembrokeshire farm, and a double shotgun murder from 1993 of a couple who'd been found hidden in the woods in Pembrokeshire farm, and a double shotgun murder from 1993 of a couple who'd been found hidden in

the woods in Pembrokeshire. Authorities strongly believed John could be connected to all of them. Without more information and evidence, though, the police could never make definitive links between John and those crimes. They only had suspicions. And John has never admitted any involvement in those deaths. At the time of this recording, John is 78 years old and incarcerated at a prison in the UK, where he'll remain until the day he dies. All his appeals have been denied. Tim and Julie Dixon, who were barely adults when their parents died, are now around the age their mom and dad were when they were brutally murdered.

The siblings have moved on the best they can, despite this horrific tragedy. Julie told reporters for Wales Online, quote, To many, our mom and dad are just another two faces that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But to our family, they are irreplaceable. There are no words that come close to explaining the impact this has had on us. An integral part of our family is missing. Mom and dad were loving, gentle, and loved people. They were also a charismatic couple who invested a lot of time and energy in their local community. couple who invested a lot of time and energy in their local community. They had wisdom, humor, and were compassionate. Even after two decades, their absence is immense and still painful.

End quote. park predators is an audio chuck original show so what do you think chuck do you approve