On a September night in 1927 boxer and bookmaker Dai Lewis lay dying in a pool of blood in a Cardiff street. His neck had been slashed. Stood over the dying man in St Mary Street were brothers and gang bosses Edward and John Rowlands plus Danny Driscoll, one of the bookmakers involved in the pair's racecourse extortion rackets. A few months later both Driscoll and Edward Rowlands would be hanged for murder.
Dai Lewis' murder has remained in the public eye ever since. The notorious Forty Thieves gang terrorised local racecourses at the time and the Rowlands brothers ran a protection gang that Lewis had been seen standing up to at Chepstow Racecourse just days earlier, investigating detectives had found at the time. Driscoll, a former World War One gunner, had been brought in by the brothers for a revenge killing.
On September 29, 1927, Dai Lewis was drinking in the Blue Anchor pub in St Mary Street. The Rowlands brothers and Danny Driscoll were also there while another gang member, William Joseph Price, was in a café across the road. When Lewis had left the pub, he was wrestled to the ground by Driscoll and had his throat slit by John Rowlands.
