It was only days until she was due to celebrate her fifth birthday. Times may well have been uncertain, in the early weeks of a war that would go on to last six years, but what was certain was that little Joyce Cox's family would have showered her with love on her special day.
Instead the youngster was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered as she walked home on her school lunchbreak. Just weeks after the outbreak of World War Two this heinous crime brought evil to the streets of Cardiff sparking shock and fear in the community she was from and leaving her family utterly devastated.
Described as a "doll of a girl" Joyce was like any young child who loved playing and was spoiled by her family who lived in Whitchurch. On the day of the her disappearance, on September 28, 1939, she was walking home from Whitchurch Infants' School with her seven-year-old brother Dennis as she had done may times before.
