Operation Dolomite and Final Reviews

Hello there and welcome to Murder Most British. I'm Sack. Hey welcome, I'm Rachel. He He show no biner? Yeah Hopefully well it might be a new listener, you never know. Yeah. Well, welcome, new and old. Yeah Oh we've got quite the doozy this week. but' head into Wiles. Other than the language and the names of places Yeah, this this one is quite This case is quite the disputed and fought over and there's quite a divide with it. Yeah, I've tried Try my best to put everything you know, obviously If we were to go over it, it'd be hours long and every little bitty detail condensed it. Yeah, trying my best. but Hopefully everything is clear and you get all of it. so you The listener can judge for yourself. Yep, make up your minds and your opinions on the case Let us know, let us know in the comments like after every case, you know what your ideas and theories or, you know if there's any, especially for a case like this where it's H. I expect hopefully, ye. a healthy debate. Yeah he you know, people to say, hey, this is what I think. Yeah It is definitely one of those ones where it really makes you think What the heck is going on here Interesting. Yeah. or definitely drop us a comment after you are. Listen to the case. Yes, please. But before we begin, a small request from us If you want to hear even more murder Most British, you can join us on Patreon for ad free episodes, early acccess and exclusive bonus cases. that you won't hear on the main feed Head to patreon. com forward slash Murder Most British podcast to take a look And if you enjoy listening to our true crime stories Please give us a like, a follow, and a five star rating It really, really helps us out a lot with whole algorithm and all that Y, it does it bump us up so that other people get to to discover us. so yeah definitely. But then also it tells me and rage that you enjoy what we're doing Most definitely you can also join us in the public cript chat which is our free discord channel where you can talk about cases, share theories and read the latest news from the archive Your support helps the archive grow and ensures no story is ever forgotten This episode contains discussion of Sexual assault, blunt force, violence, arson and the murder of adults and children. It also includes references to postmortem findings and crime scene details Some listeners may find this content distressing Listener discretion is strongly advised. So now let's get to the story. In the early hours of a summer Sunday Flames broke through. Qyet of Kelvin Road At first, it looked like a house on fire neighbors rushed Outside When the emergency crews arrived in the dark And inside number nine was a family who should have been asleep The fire was not the beginning before the smoke There had been violence. before the questions There had been secrets and in Platic One night in june, nineteen ninety nine would open into a case of affairs Police connections Disputed alibis questions that never really went away Claddock sits in the Gotcha Sorry. Kind of like the way I looked it up and it's like loch. Yeah. you have that little at the end You know, Cliff do the best. I'll try my best. We love you, Welsh people. I do my research and I do try my very, very best to try prou try to try to pronounce it as properly as we can But you I'll give it another go. so Cic sits in the Swansea Valley in ground shaped by water and industry The river tour runs nearby And so does the old Swanseie cananal. which helped turn the village into a working rooutot for trade long before this case began. Then in nineteen oh two The Mond Nickel workors rose between the Cal and the Rriver and help define the place for decades Clidic was not the same anonymous pin on a map It was the kind of village built around labour, routine and the long shadow that industry leaves behind. Yeah, I like a little bit of history there. prettyretty cool Well at number nine, Kelvin Rodad lived Amanda Power Mandy. to those who knew her And she was thirty four years old With her were her two daughters, ten year old Katie and eight year old Emily and Mandy's mother, Doris Dawson, who was eighty and disabled Mandy had once worked as a care assistant in a local nursing home By nineteen ninety nine, she was caring for Doris full time Number nine was a family home in the fullest sense Three generations under one roof. daily life organized around children care. and the ordinary routines that make a house feel settled. O Mandy was remembered as lively, sociable and a good company Someone who liked people liked going out and seemed to know half the village Kate and Emily were still young enough for life to revolve around school home, friends and family. Doris depended on Mandy every day Mandy had also been separated from her husband, Michael Power for some time. The marriage was over, but Michael remained part of the family's orbit because he was the girl's father By then, Mandy was in a relationship with Allison Lewis Allison was a former police officer, a former Welsh womomen's rugby international and had martial arts training She was married with children of her own And she and Mandy had met in nineteen ninety eight Allison later described their relationship as intense, almost from the start Mving quickly from friendship into something physical and emotionally serious She also said Mandy had not previously slept with a woman before But because Allison was still married, the relationship came with secrecy and complication from the beginning No. Oh Wow. so she this is her first experience of being with a woman. Yeah, Mandy's ye withith a married woman. Maybe she's always been curious or something and just It happens Another figure in Mandy's wider circle was David Morris It use the name Die for short A builder a former scrap metal dealer from Craig Given Park. He was linked to Mandy through his partner, Mandy Jewel who had once been a close friend of Mandy Powers So Morris was not some stranger at the edge of the story It already belonged to the same small social world Morris's connection to Mandy powerower was disputed too He would later claim that they had been in a secret sexual relationship behind Mandy Tools back But that account was contested and changed over time By the summer of nineteen ninety nine This was not a tidy circle of friends There was tension in it Rentment and secrecy Well, Saturday the twenty sixth of june of nineteen ninety nine It ended like a lot of summer Saturdays do in places like Clidx. W people still out late pub still busy and the village carrying the afterglow of Walesby in South Africa at rugby earlier in the day Mandy spent part of the afternoon shopping in Swansea before heading home And that evening she cooked for Katie and Emily Then she went out to babysit for a friend On the surface, it was an ordinary warm Saturday night. By the time it was over Nothing in Clidk would feel ordinary again. att eleven forty eight that night Mandy Power and the girls arrived home by taxi after she had been babysitting Inside the house, Doris was already asleep upstairs Katie and Emily stayed awake a little bit longer in the quiet end of an ordinary summer night drinks, tired children lightights going on and off a family home settling after a busy day While outside, Ceddock was still carrying the noise of the rugby results As you can tell, you know, football and rugby they'd been but of cheering and rowdy kind of excitedness. Well around then a neighbour on Kelvin Road, Rosemary Jones was woken by the sound of a diesel engine pulling up outside She later said that she heard a car door slam Then the sound of someone trying the handle at number nine Moments later, the landtern light came on. in the poor straight l in and steady drizzle, she thought she saw the silhouette of someone upstairs. At the time it didn't seem immediately alarming Mandy had friends. People came and went. And it was a Saturday night in a village still awake later than usual. So the neighbor went back to sleep But inside number nine, The night had already turned violent Mandy Her daughter' is Katie and Emily and her mother Doris were attacked with a black fiberglass pole. about point three meters to about four feet long Left the house by a previous tenant am ye bad By the time fires were lit in several parts of the house, all four of the victims We're already dead Kitchen fire became the most serious and the house may have been burning for as long as two hours before people outside understood the scale of what had happened. Roughly four hours after that earlier noise and glimpse of movement Flames were seen coming from the house People rush to the streets. Robachowski try to get inside But the heat and smoke forced him back Another family friend, Wayne Jones, shouted Mandy's name into the smoke But no answer came. The emergency services were called at four twenty seven in the morning and firefighters arrived quickly. At first there was still that awful hope that this was a family trapped by fire before anyone could get to them The children were brought out and firefighters tried to resuscitate them, thinking that smoke inhalation might have been the cause But that hope disappeared fast. their injuries made it clear that something violent had happened before the smoke filled the house The fire hadood not caused the tragedy It had exposed it him Well, once the fires were out Police were left with a badly damaged crime scene and a long list of urgent questions How had the killer got in What had been moved, burned, or obscured and how much evidence had been lost in the fire. Yeah, it would be a a rather tricky crime scene because obviously trying to find leads to What happened prior to the fire and then obviously Obviously the f people would know where the fire started and things like that. but as far as evidence of you know, fingerprints and things like that it was what has been lost. Yeah Well what followed was enormous. South Wales Police would later describe it as the largest and most complex murder investigation. ever undertaken by a Welsh police force More than four and half thousand statements were taken Around fifteen hundred messages came into the Inident room two thousand homes were visited and more than three thousand seven hundred exhibits were seized for examination It was never a small or tidy inquiry. spread across the village, across people's private lives and eventually across years. That is investigation Oh God. It is a massive, massive investigation. Yeah. Jeez Well, the kitchen fire was the most substantial. And it was thought to have been started after the earlier fires upstairs fail to properly take hold. One early line of inquiry never fully resolved wasas the identity of the person Rosemary Jones believed had entered number nine. or the driver of the diesel vehicle, she heard outside Public appeals were made Neither was identified Later ree examination of the case also raised a more complicated possibility about the sequence inside the house One view was that Doris Dawson may haveill been killed first And that reading drew in part of the murder weapon, which carried identifiable blood from Mandy and the two girls but no blood that could be attributed to Doris suggesting hers may have been removed as the pole was used again The same reconstruction held that a light bulb may have been broken in Doris's room, blowing a fuse. Because from there, the theory ran that someone may have moved a television from a chair in the girls's room carried that chair downstairs and used it to reach the fuse box and get the lights back on. before waiting inside the house If that reading was right, it pointed to time Mhod and some knowledge of the layout But even that did not turn the night into something clear cut It was an interpretation of the evidence Not certainty. veryery hard to find certainty in the investigation with that. Yeah because what happened first? Because then you can say, well, maybe that happened earlier. Maybe Mandy was was the one that actually you know, before she went out to babysit, something happened And she went to check the fuse box. and then just like, Hey, we got a jet. They're here to pick us up. B., You know, the possibilities are there's so many different interpretations that do things that you go, well, this could have happened or this might have happened differentiffere scenarios and different timings, yeah Well, another discovery pulled the inquiry deeper into Mandy's private life During the postmortems, a pathologist recovered a vibrator from Mandy's vagina Now there was no semen on it though Material recovered from the item and from Mandy's thighs showed Mandy's DNA and indicated that Allison Lewis's DNA might also be present For investigators, that finding turned attention towards Mandy's relationship with Allison and to questions about when the two women had last been together And that was where things became a bit more messy Allison said She and Mandy had been sexually active on the Friday night One reading of that finding was that they could still fit earlier sexual contact and later transfer Another was that they pointed to more recent contacts The evidence raised a real question didid not on its own Pve Allison was at Celvin Road when the murders had happened Hm Yeah, you got to pin down exactly when they were together But if they were together on the Friday night Surely there would be no Th I comeome this Sunday unless she didn't have a was like clean up and wash. I mean, who's to do that? you know, surely. Surely not I mean, like I say, anything's possible. Anything's possible. You know, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt I think she. She would have washed her That mad even more because Allison was not just Mandy's lover She was a former police officer and was married to Stephen Lewis who was still serving in the police while Stephven's twin brother, Stuart Lewis also in the police and among the first officers to attend Kelvin Road So very quickly, this was no longer just a murder inquiry moohing through Mandy's private life, It was brushing up right against South Wellales place itself Porton at the time said Allison went into severe shock after hearing what had happened and later tried to jump from a window and was admitted for psychiatric treatment Oh jeez That's not good I mean I mean, you're in a relationship with any reasons why she could have, you know because I mean, that's a lot to happen to a person, you know, she's obviously ot a lever Wh's who's been murdered Also then her husband is finding out about er being a lover of this lady that they murders her Oh that comes up very it's all very quiet. to h. Well tell you what, it all starts to come out No becausecause the Lewis family quickly became a major focus. Allison's relationship with Mandy gave investigators one line to follow, and Stehven's knowledge of that relationship became another He and Allison said He had not known about the affair until after the murders But there was material that challenged that account Because it included a witness who said she had heard Stehven shout at Mandy to leave his wife alone or he would kill her Dam. There was also material suggesting Mandy may have been expecting to see Allison that night Louise Pew a friend and neighbor Later said Maddy had bought wine and was planning to see her That's getting pretty messy. Yeah, definitely. Well, there was also a sight in in the early hours that kept suspicion circling around the Lewis family. Nicola Williams said that at around two thirty in the morning Nar Calvin Road, she saw a tall stocky man with dark cropped hair trousers and what looked like a shiny bomber jacket bag or a bundle tucked under his arm. She said that she slowed down and that he looked directly at her Hm Getting a good look then bloody bomber jacket I mean I used to have one of them. I remember back in the day with the starter jacket. You look back and you think Oh my God ye. Yeah the starter jackets were the were the who man, you had a starter jacket, man. you were in. you were the cool club Well Nicola later worked with police to produce an EFit, which is a computer generated composite of a you person. and it's said to resemble Stephen Lewis And fifteen months after the murders She picked him out of a video identification parade. The sighting still came with obvious limits it happened in the early hours on the road, and was strongly disputed with the prosecution later treating it as a mistakeen identification rather than a reliable one Hm. He looked great the fuck ater. Like you look at your if it's the middle of the night. you only see one person Yeah He's this person and what they look like. And you got the light time and he looks right at you. I think you're going to get a look good look at him probably Stephven's brother Stuart Lewis He also came under scrutiny too He was one of the first senior officers at the scene But he stayed only briefly Later questions were raised, not just about where he went after leaving Kelvin Road but about what he had failed to do while he was there. The seriousness of the crime, it was argued, was not recognized and communicated as quickly as it should have been The scene was not preserved as it should have been. and valuable early forensic time may have been lost It later emerged to that He had altered his notbook. Yep That's not looking too good. You write something down, you leave it because, you know altering something that you've already written down But if you yes If you're going to change anything, it would be, hey later. I now revise what this you know, whatever So now I have new information, you don't go back and scribble shit out or whatever the happened, you know. Yeah, you still leave it in there It's very, very suspicious. I'm telling you, it gets crazy. In July of two thousand Just over a year after the murders, Allison and Stephven Lewis were arrested on a suspicion of murder And Stewart was arrested on suspicion and perverting the course of justice. I love the way your accent when you say Stewart. Stuart Story it Little Well, they were kind sorry. Let's get back to the story and be serious Well, they were questioned for four days. Th then released on bail The Lewises remained under investigation for months afterwards And their home was even bugged Police. In the end, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was insufficient evidence to mount a successful prosecution. After more than a year spent testing that line of inquiry Dictives were left without charges and without the answer they had hoped for. Well, that sense of a case stalling was visible in public as well. There were repeated appeals for information, posters around the village a reward of up to fifteen thousand pounds and even a mobile instant room set up on Kelvin Road all the scale of the inquiry, no single line had yet produced a clear answer. So after all that That was the moment. David Morris moved from the edge of the inquiry. towards its center His name had reportedly reached police within forty eight hours of the murders. had not driven the investigation at first Now, with the Lewis line failing to produce charges Detectives were looking again at the evidence around him Especially the bloodstained gold chain found in Doris's bedroom and reported information that Morris had spoken about having sex with Mandy Power and mentioned the chain. What had once been background intelligence was starting to look much more important M Teresting Well, that necklace was a nine carat gold chain with its fastener missing. And Manti P's blood was on it pololice needed to know who it belonged to Morris kept denying that it was his. Before arrest and again after caution ly became a problem for him Another item mattatter too blood stained sock recovered from the house which police believed may have been used by the killer as a glove But at that stage, it did not give them the clear answers that they needed and wanted Well, then the forensic picture tightened around Morris. Debris on the chain was said to match paint from kitchen units at Morris' home linking the chain back to him Eric Williams, who employed Morris said he had talked about having sex with Mandy Power and about giving her his chain He also said Morris asked him for money to buy a similar one a detail that only deepens suspicion around that chain and the story attached to it Wh Morris eventually claimed that he had been in a sexual relationship with Mandy Power and that he had left the chamber behind during a visit to the house on the Friday morning. But that account came late came with a problem He said he had left the chain in the kitchen. Yep It was found in Doris's bedroom covered in blood. Yeah, strange Police were also looking closely at Morris's movements that night Witnesses place him in local pubs and some describe him making hostile remarks about man de power. Porting on the case said he had been drinking heavily about pints or so and had also taken amphetamines The timing of it mattered too, because Morris was said to have left the new inn at around eleven thirty PM O Celvin Rote, that was only a only half and a mile away. So roughly about a fifteen minute walk. So Mandy Power and her daughters were said to have been dropped home by taxi at eleven forty eight. Investigators also heard accounts that Morris was wearing a gold chain that night, or one very similar to the chain found in the house those accounts did not all line up perfectly. We're going to hear that a lot. Now everything lined up perfectly. Yeah It's not an easy puzzle. It's not a clean gard. Yeah Well, there was also evidence that he had a scratch on his nose when he was seen the next morning. His alibi weakened too Morris gave different accounts of what he did after leaving the pub eventually saying that after he had an argument with Mandy Jewel That's one keep having to say their surnames. There's two Mandies. He did not go back until about three in the morning He said Mandy Jewel let him in through the back door. But her version did not match his. and it shifted over time as well. Bet them, no single timeline stayed consistent for very long Well, even then, not everything pointed neatly in one direction marked handprint found on the living room carpet near a number of videos also appeared to carry traces of blood became one of the more disputed forensic questions in the case The prosecution expert thought that the fit was better with Morris, though Allison Lewis could not be eliminated The defense expert took a different view, arguing that the mark was a good fit with Allison, but not with Morris That's usually the case with difference of opinion. You get, you know, the prosecution is going say, okay, we need an expert to say that yep then the defense is like, okay, we need an expert that says Nope you know, it's kind of You whoever has the better argument? Yeah Just find the bloody expert that tells the truth on what they think is, you know possible. N like, o, this one where we need to defy and being completely opposite to them. Yeah, you got to try to discredit their shit and blah, blah blah. Yeah So this was not decisive forensic proof pointing cleanly to one person or another It was one contested part of a much larger evidential picture. The same was true of the sexual evidence And by early two thousand one, the case against David Morris was continuing to build. twentieth of march Police arrested him. He denied being the killer, but officers now believed They had enough to charge the man they said was responsible for the murders. Hm Well I so far have not decided yet on who I think is, you know, based on any of this evidence and chains and Um. possible sightings of people and stuff. so crazy if we can figure out who it is. Yeah. Right. Well When David Morris went on trial at Swansea Crown Court in two thousand two. The case was already thick with suspicion, rumour, and rival explanations Inside the courtroom though, the prosecution tried to give that confusion on a single focus. At the center of its case, more than any other single object wasas the gold chain found inside the house By then, Morris no longer flatly denied the chain was his Four days before the trial, he accepted that it probably did belong to him but offered an innocent explanation for it He said he had left it behind during a secret sexual encounter with Mandy on the Friday before the murders taking it from his pocket and leaving it on the Kensen windowsill The Prom was obvious. The chain was later found in Doris's bedroom Boodstained and with this fastener missing And despite how the case is sometimes remembered Morris was not convicted on the chain alone The jury also heard about his repeated denials, the paint debris said to match his kitchen units Witness evidence that he was wearing a heavy gold chain on the Saturday night despite later claiming that he had left his own behind the day before and' changing account of how and why it had come to be there The sexual evidence formed part of the case as well The jury heard about the vibrator recovered from Mandy and the absence of semen on it and the cellular material linking it to Mandy and possibly to Allison Lewis. that matter because it could not be in more in than one direction It supported the prosecution case that Mandy's body had been sexually abused after death But it also kept attention fixed on Allison And on when the two women had last been together Maybe They shared it Maybe they shared the toy Yes, but then you have to go When was it? When did it happen? Yeah Because well you can't I'm guessing, you can't really tell how old I mean, if it's only a day or two, you can't really Well, M it's really, really tough on that one Od in it. Well, the sock was part of the case too But it did not yield the kind of fingerprint or full DNA result that could settle the argument on its own. The defense challenged the chain evidence. including the way witnesses had been asked to identify it They argued that Instead of being shown a police copy, they should have been shown a range of similar chains They also challenged the idea that the chain had been ripped from Morris's neck in a struggle Morris said the clasp had already been broken and later reporting argued that the chain showed no clear damage, proving it had not been torn away in that way prove that it was torn But if it was already sort, like he said, already broken which could have been and that's why he too he's left it had it like possibly. He had it rigged up to, you know with electr piece of wire you know or something like that. And it just Who knows? Who knows Well, the prosecution, though, relied on a wider picture as well They argued that the chain, Morris's lies about it, his shifting account, and the surrounding witness evidence all pointed in one direction And it also relied on a broader picture of him as a man with a history of violence. There was tension in the crown's case The killings came before the main fire What followed looked At least in part, to destroy evidence and reshape the scene For some observers, that sat awkwardly with the prosecution's picture of a simple drunken eruption. awkwardness. was not the same as proof Well, the defense answered the prosecution in two ways First, it said the evidence against Morris did not prove guilt Second, it pointed the jury back towards the Lewises And it did not do that tentatively. The defense statement said that the murders were probably carried out by Allison Lewis, that Stehen Lewis may have helped afterwards by trying to destroy the scene and that Stewart Lewis may have known more than he later admitted There was a gap between what the defense said and its written case. and how far it it was prepared to go in court The jury heard about the affair, Stephven Lewis' disputed knowledge of it, and the questions hanging over the Lewis family did not hear was the defence team squarely putting the murders Oo the Lewises in the witness box And that mattered The defense pointed towards Allison and Stephen Lewis but stop short of directly accusing either of them before the jury One of the clearest moments came when Alison Lewis was being questioned about allegations police had put to her Mr. Justice Butterfield asked defense counsel whether he was actually putting those allegations to her And the answer came back, My Lord, we cannot. It was a brief exchange but it exposed the limits of the case Morris's lawyers were willing or able to run in court The same problem shadowed the treatment of Stuart Lewis He had been one of the first senior officers at the scene, and questions had been raised about his movements in his altered notebook But he was not called to give evidence although suspicion and controversy hovered around the Lewis family The jury did not hear a defense case that drove those allegations head on. through live confrontation in court Well, the judg's directions showed how central that issue had become He told the jury that if Allison Lewis might reasonably have been the killer, Morris should be acquitted The same applied to Stephen Lewis. And if the jury rejected the idea of a stranger or another acquaintance, then As he put it They had seen the killer in the witness box In other words, once the case was framed that way, responsibility lay with Allison Lewis, Stephen Lewis, or David Morris On the twenty eighth of june, two thousand two After an eleven week trial jury convicted David Morris on all four murders The verdicts were unanimous. He was sentenced to life imprisonment And Mr. Justice Butterfield described the killings as horrific and committed with great savagery against four defenseless victims. for Mandy Powers family It was the first legal answer after three years of grief Abion Srutiny Crazy. Yeah, reasonable doubt. But it doesn't end there. Nope But Morris did not accept the verdict And the case moves straight on to a new question whether the trial itself had been fair Within months, arguments were already growing around the chain the Lewis line of inquiry and whether his defense had really been free to pursue that alternative case as hard as it should have been Well, In two thousand five The Court of Appeal quashed Morris's convictions. Wow But it did not say he was innocent did not say the Lewises were guilty did not say the chain evidence was false In fact, it described the case against Morris as strong The problem in the court's view was not the judge's handling of the case or the prosecution's conduct defense itself. which had been compromised. So Morris was not acquitted He was sent for retrial because the court's conclusion was that a strong case had been tried unfairly. Yeah. Well, yeah, like they said, you know the polleice should have ing witnesses Different chains on the chain situation. show them different chain types of chains and then had like kind of like a lineup, you know? Yeah. It's like, oh, do you recognize, you know, which one one is these? Yeah did was it that you say And I him wearing Yeah. You know, you can't just put one and say right Is this the one? they look exactly like. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you need to put comparisons. But there was another problem Blin was David Hutchison He had previously represented Stephen Lewis and Stuart Lewis during the murder investigation. Those were the very men Morris's defense needed to scrutinize as part of its alternative suspects case So the Court of Aeals said that that created a serious conflict of interest. No shit Chisen Still owed duties to his former clients, yet He was also supposed to act fully For Morris Worse still When the Lewis Bothers said that they did not object to Hutchison representing Morris Consent came with the condition Morris was not to suggest that Stephen Lewis had committed The murders what the fuck? So on yeah, that condition He is not to suggest that Stehven had anything to do with these murders. then It's crazy. That's a wild one right there. You can't put a limitation on your representation. No same boy Yeah, you can go represent him, but you can't say that I did it. Mm That's Insane Cersing behavior, isn't it? trying to curerse into a different in a certain direction. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? which is is not good. Very naughty Well, the Court of appppeals said the conflict had shaped the defense from start to finish The issue was not whether every allegation against the Lewises was true It was whether Morris had lost the chance to put that case properly before the jury courourt said He had It said Stephen Lewis should have been challenged more directly over the alleged threat by Louise Pugh over when he really knew about Allison andmandy's relationship over the identification evidence and over his early lack of frankness about his knowledge of number nine. Evidence also placed him in several parts of the premises including the shed where the weapon had been kept The Court of Appeal also referred to evidence that he had lit a match at the premises No That was not in itself enough to show when or in what circumstance it had happened None of that proved any guilt did show why he was a legitimate suspect who should have been scrutinized Far harder than he was. Yeah, definitely and I mean That is where you get reasonable doubt. That's where you could put it to a jury and you say, well, look at this guy In the adance gpe This is all this information against him putting him as a reasonable other the I mean technically you should have been a suspect anyway because of the relationship Yeah But then And the CPS said Nope, they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute. They arrested them. li motive Do you know what I mean? So he should have said. Yeah Stay away with my wife or I'll kill you. Well yeah, there was a witness saying that so The same applied to Stuart Lewis's conduct after attending the scene It said Morris had been denied the chance to present an alternative suspect case that a jury might have taken seriously And for that reason, his convictions were ruled unsafe and quashed A retrial was ordered and the prosecution asked for one immediately Morris' side did not oppose it That ra trial took place at Newport Crown Court in two thousand six The central issue remained the same prorosecution said that the evidence still pointed to Morris while the defense argued that Dow still surrounded the wider investigation and the Lewis line of inquiry But this time Morris had to retrial of the court of Appeal said he should have had. After a retrial that lasted about three months, the jury deliberated for four days before convictting Morris again. Jesus Once more, the verdicts were unanimous. He stood apparently emotionless as they were delivered while members of Mandy Powower's family sobbed in court Mr. Justice McKinnon post four life sentences are made clear that in his view, Morris should never be released It described the murders as exceptionally savage and said that if ever there was a case for life to mean life, this was it. Jeez I got him again Yep D Borris and his family continue to reject the two thousand six verdict insisting he was innocent and arguing he could never receive a fair trial in Wales Buty in legal terms, the position was clear. The first conviction had been quashed The second stood and later reviews did not overturn that gave the courts a final answer not give clinic Pace for Mandy Powers familyam Morris had now been convicted twice Murdering Mandy, Katie Emily and Doris. For his family and supporters, the retrial settled nothing And there were still people outside court who believed the wrong man had been convicted The judge had made clear in two thousand six that in his view, Morris should never be released But that whole life position did not remain untouched Lateater the sentence was adjusted. And he was left serving a minimum term of thirty two years What followed was not any quiet settling of the dust case became a long public argument fought through campaign posters petitions, newspaper reports, documentaries online discussions, and repeated claims that Morris had been wrongly convicted For Mandy's family, that meant the story never really stayed in the past For Morris's family, the campaign became part of life too somethingomet they saw as oat to him. We're not done. becausecause legally though The position did not move in Morris's favor. The Criminal Cases Review Commission looked at the case more than once And the most recent review mentioned in the source came in twenty eighteen when it decided not to send the conviction back to the court of appeal South Wales Police later said the CCRC review had not identified any new evidence Campaigners though pressing broader complaints about disclosure and transparency Well, they argued that significant material had not been seen by the defense. Qion the use of public interest immunity applications in the case A legal process that allows certain material to be withheld if a court accepts that disclosure would damage the public's interest and pointed to forensic materials that they had believed had not been fully tested as well as aspects of the chain evidence they said had been overstated Yeah. I'm sorry, but you need to be give everything. Transparency. Y Be if that would just Put things to bed Bring it out into the light And if really discovery court case The defense should be they should have all the evidence that the police that they have. to then have a proper defense. It's crazy I could just hide shit like that. You know, so far, I believe from what we've covered with this case so far I believe that the Lewises had more of a motive than David Morris to be fair Yeah and what what motive is everything really? I mean they're saying they because he went over there wanted to have sex She said no. And he blew up and killed everybody I can see that. But then is another thing, this's like, why why would the Lewises Hill kid, the the m I like it's just why kill them all? It is You know what I mean? Wh' a wild circumstance Really? Yeah It's a brutal because you can go both ways and go Well, why would they and why would they do? And why this is crazy What is the motive for killing every single person in the house? not just Mandy You know, it's just is Mad Absolutely crazy These arguments kept the wider fight of the safety of the conviction alive And in twenty twenty, the case was pulled back into public view again when a BBC whales documentary questioned Morris's conviction. The program featured two men Wh said They had seen potentially important things in the early hours. After the murders. Hm One, a former taxi driver said that around two thirty in the morning of the murders He had seen two similar looking men in Qiddak onlyly a couple of minutes from Kelvin Road I later came to believe that they were Stephven and Stuart Lewis after seeing their photographs in the press. Yeah, they're twins How are they Well, another witness, John Allen He said that between about four and half past four of that morning He had seen a man in a bumber jacket carrying a green bag near the village but had never gone to the police at the time obviously didn't think it anything suspicious. so H Well, South Wales pololice later said officers had spoken to both men assess what they had said and sought advice from the CPS which concluded that nothing they provided undermined Morris' conviction around the same time Morris's legal representatives asked South Wales pololice to release exhibits for further forensic assessment The force agreed to what it called a proportionate forensic review All were seen by an independent senior investigating officer and an independent forensic scientist It was careful in how it described that step It was not presenting it as reopening of the murder investigation. And not as any sign that police had lost competence in that conviction. Well instead, the line was that the advances in forensic science might now answer some of the questions that had been circling for years. Police also said that the victim's family also been informed of the decision and supported the work in the hope that it might finally answer questions that had circled the case for the years That review became known as Operation Dolomite One of the key exhibits re examamined was a bloodstained sock recovered from the scene long believed to have been used by the killer during the attacks. But unfortunately David Morris was no longer alive to respond to any of this He died at HMP Long Larton In August of twenty twenty one Age fifty nine. after spending twenty two years in custody and continuing to maintain his innocence His death did not end that campaign In some ways, it intensified it. because his supporters now saw the fight as being Clearing the name of a man no longer speak for himself After Morris died, his family gave permission a blood sample to be taken, so forensic testing could go ahead allowing the review to move into a new phase. M Crazy Police later said that the examination of the bloodstain sock found a mixed YSTR profile a form of male line DNA evidence, linkn Morris or a male relative on his father's side to that exhibit That was significant It came with important limits. Scientists could not say exactly how or when that material had been transferred onto the sock. Even so, the reported conclusion was that it was more than likely than not that Morris had contributed to the DNA found there So they got him on the sock Yeah, with the DNA. But then could have been his sw and he took it off. Yeah. Don't know when it was there. donon't know when he transferred that DNA to it You don't don't know There's still questions to Be you know, like you said, you can't pinpoint or when was this suck But then When was it transfer? the el of put a male from like they're saying a male on his side of I would say what if she had a brother? What if What if I'm going to say allegedly or just this is a theory that it was planted Well yeah, it could have been, you know, like I like we always say there's always a possibility of ever Anything is possible I want everybody to remember Allison was a former police officer. Yeah. Her husband was a police officer and his brother was an inspector So if anybody of anybody would know how to do all that And it would be them. you know, I'm not saying that they did possible that That's how it went down It's yeah. anything's possible until You can prove it's not possible. Well at the original trials, there had been no fingerprint evidence and no straightforward DNA, linking more as to the killings After Operation Dolomite, Police said the sock evidence created a qualified forensic link between Morris and an item recovered from the scene It did not prove every detail of the prosecution's case, and it did not reconstruct the whole night did weaken one of the simpler claims made for years there was no forensic link to Morris at all The South Wales pololice said the review had not produced anything that undermined the conviction and that the independent investigating officer said the findings supported the evidence They had originally convicted Morris Pice's point of view preparation Dullomite was not a crack in the case It was reinforcement The transparency fight though carried on In twenty twenty three, the information Commissioner ruled that South Wales pololice had not justified refusing the operation dollarite report on the basis that the request was unreasonable Burdensome and also found the force had breached the foIA time limits. So the FIA, which is FO IA stands for Freedom of Information Act. In the way that it handled the request, then in twenty twenty four Another ICO decision went further finding that some of the information had been withheld too broadly and requireing further disclosure Still through all of it One fact has never changed Three generations of one family were killed in a single night After all the trials, appeals, reviews, documentaries, forensic developments, petitions and arguments That is where the story ends Not with peace for everyone and not with certainty in every mind. with a family destroyed and a loss that never went away So that was the story of the Cinic murders. Yeah. That was wild. I mean Absolutely wild such a tragic case and because there was no clear cut solid evidence to say matter of factly This was the person that did this horrific crime They never had one piece. No. There was a smoking gun type situation And there was always them questions of and even still now, because which is a shame because obviously the family can't closure because people, you know, we're all talking about it. we're all Thinking well you know, there's that we we don't have the answers. We feel like We're being given answers and that, you know, the right person has been convicted. It still just feels. It just yeah, it just feels like the Motive wise and you know, everything that you look to in a case, Yeah, you're looking for all that good G good shit that you could say, Yp, this is the guy. I've got his fingerprints, I've got his DNA. I got everything, you know I got a picture of him there, you know, you want that piece Yeah that says, Yp. I don't know. I think You don't you don't go after people like they went after the Lewises unless you are like You fuck you're a dog with a bone They they investigated him for months. they bugged their house. they then finally arrested him and and, you know What the fuck Mad is' it? It's absolutely crazy And then only after all that collapsed. Yeah Then they go back to Morris. Even though, like we said They knew about him within the first forty eight hours of the murders. Yeah And then they just kind of that off on the back burner and say, well you would as you would because you always go towards the partner that, okay, well is who are they with and when just like what with the sock situation? Well, okay, what about the vibrator? You know, you you you've got D't I You know Okay, I suppose because there was blood on the stock. So that's the only thing that really they could sit there and say, well, you know This must have come when they were murdered It just feels like there isn't enough evidence Do you know what I mean You had a lot of reasonable doubt. Yeah I mean, like I said, you don't go that hard against, you know, and then And then unfortunately, Look at what they did with the trials Yeah. You had the same defense guy that had represented the other ones. He represented him and then the clause of it. You can't tell him that I murderered him. That is such bullshit And then even after into the second trial, they still fucking What are they doing? Yeah No, I agree. It just it seems really like just it's just such a strange strange case. Yeah I would love to hear what everyone thinks about it. Yeah defitely What's your opinions? Yeah, what's your op You know, my opinion? I'm not sure too sure that David Morris was the killer Be you know, in my in my opinion. If I was on a jury something with a la this case I would not Really Lets see that there was enough evidence to convict Both times it was unanimous All of them said ye That's him Yeah Crapy odd Maybe I'd have to have mightight have a difference of opinion if I actually really gave it some good thought. if I mean, obviously it's different when you're there you're on on the jury and you're hearing E And then with the shed, the DNA in the shed for the That's where the poke from Yeah, so they didn't get anything from the poll. N. but But like with, um the DNA on it, so the blood on it. They they didn't find Doris's blood on it They think that it was just because there was all the other blood from the other victims, yes But they didn't find any fingerprints or DNA because The person was using the sock as a glove. Well, such a tragic horrific case with u h go out to to the young children, their mum and the The grandmother. Yeah veryery, very Very sad Well Thank you so very, very much for listening. We really appreciate it.'s this was a crazy one Tell us what you think And if you'd like to support the work we do here in the archive, Please take a moment to follow the show and leave fiveiveestar rating. It helps others find us in what we do Thank you very much Yeah, sharing the podcast as well with someone who loves true crime also makes a huge difference Also, also you can jump over to our Patreon For more trrue Crime episodes, A free and twenty four hours early access Go to patreon. com forward slash Murder Most British podcast You can follow us also on Instagram and TikTok at Murder Most British and on Facebook at MMB podcast. And if you'd like to chat with us and other listeners, please come and join the public crypt, our free discord space with case discussions, theories and updates from the archive Yeah, come on over and talk to us about it Yeah, bring over your opinions. Let us know Everything you need, socials, discord, and more is in our link tree below So until next week guys, stay safe but stay curious And now are Ravens cououncil on Patreon, our top tier We have Ruby Tucker nineteen fifty six Clair Whiskey forty five Extreme clunge And Kelly Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for your support. Really appreciate it See you next time.