Unfortunately, so many heartbreaking cases are not solved and remain a mystery decades later. In a new ITV1 documentary series, Cold Case Detectives, unsolved cases are re-opened as detectives attempt again to solve the case.
In the first episode, which will air on Thursday, March 9 on ITV1 at 9pm, detectives look at a shocking child murder that took place in Wales in 1959. On April 7, 1959, Carol Ann Stephens was just six years old when she was snatched from her Cardiff home in Cathays and was never seen alive again.
Carol went to the shops for her mother to get some cigarettes and sweets. She returned home with her purchases and told her mum that she was going out to play.
Her mother told her that she was cooking dinner and not to be long, but recalled that Carol Ann appeared very anxious to get back out. It is believed, from eyewitness accounts, that she approached a green saloon-type car that was parked in her home in Cathays, tap on the window and then got in the car.
After she failed to return home, police launched an appeal and conducted a huge manhunt. Two weeks later on April 22, her body was found in a small ravine near the hamlet of Horeb in Carmarthenshire 60 miles away from her home in Malefant Street, Cathays.
It's thought that she had been dead for a week before being discovered in the stream, covered by overhanging leaves and branches. She was wearing the same outfit as the day she disappeared but her now-grey skirt was around her feet and one of her light brown shoes was lying five feet away from her body.
The other was found 15ft downstream. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled before being dumped miles away from where she was taken. Between her disappearance and the discovery of her body there was a frantic nationwide search for the schoolgirl.
Police from Cardiff were joined by detectives from Scotland Yard and hundreds of people helped search for her. Her desperate mum issued an appeal saying: “One thing I am sure of is that by now Carol will be crying for me. She is a friendly little girl and would talk to anyone however much we discouraged her. But she didn’t like being away from me for long.”
Carol Ann's killer was never found. In the documentary Cold Case Detectives the team is led by Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lewis which includes veteran detective Gerry Blake who has a personal connection to the case having gone to school with Carol Ann and remembering her disappearance well.
In the show, Gerry says Carol Ann's disappearance and murder is the reason he joined the police force. The team hoped to use modern DNA technology to confirm their suspicions about suspect Ronald Edward Murray.
Murray worked for Carson's Chocolates in Bristol and the company gave their workers green Morris Minors. One of the places they delivered chocolates to was the Cathays area of Cardiff, where Carol Ann went missing and he originally lied about his whereabouts the day Carol Ann went missing.
In the documentary, Gerry said: "There was a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting Ronald Murray’s involvement in the alleged offence but there wasn’t that golden nugget I would say… So there wasn’t enough to charge."
Murray's wife also died under suspicious circumstances and although her death was ruled as accidental, detectives looking back now find it suspicious. The inquest heard that Ronald Murray claimed he found his wife Della dead in the living room with an overpowering smell of gas.
Murray then gave a convoluted explanation about the death of his wife. At the inquest, he said it was a result of a trick he had been playing with his son that went horribly wrong.
He told the hearing the trick involved him turning the gas on the hob off and then he would ask his son to go and put the kettle on to make a cup of tea for his mum. When the stove wouldn't light Murray would laugh and tease his son about "not being man enough to make a cup of tea".
Murray claimed the boy had tried to play the same trick on him but mistakenly left the gas on. As a result Della died – with all blame placed on her son. Murray died in 1973.
Unfortunately, the modern DNA testing in the documentary could not return back a conclusive result, meaning Carol Ann's murder remains unsolved. The scientists have recommended that Carol Ann's clothes are kept and could be tested again in three to five years if DNA testing develops further.
It's not the first time that Carol Ann's disappearance and murder has been re-looked at by modern police detectives, back in 2020, the BBC's Dark Land: Hunting the Killers saw another re-investigation into the case. You can read more on that show, here.
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