It is a truly disturbing case and a devastating breach of trust that remains one of the most disturbing criminal crime sprees in Welsh records.
Rev Emyr Owen was jailed for four years in March 1985 after admitting three charges of abusing and mutilating a human body awaiting burial, and threatening to murder a four-year-old child. The clergyman, who had spent eight years in charge of seven chapels in and around Tywyn in Gwynedd, was found to have severed the penises of the bodies after they had been laid out in a chapel of rest.
The minister of Bethel Chapel was caught after police carried out an investigation into anonymous letters, including one which threatened to kill a woman’s four year old granddaughter, reports NorthWalesLive. The police had no idea who the writer of the letters was, but he let slip a number of important clues. The case is now to be revisited in a documentary, with fresh light shed on why a minister went on a violent crime spree.
