On September 28th, 1939, four-year-old Joyce Cox was walking home from Whitchurch Infants’ School in Coryton, Cardiff, Wales, accompanied by her seven-year-old brother Dennis. The children stopped by their grandmother’s house briefly, then continued on their way. Upon arriving in the alley behind their house, they met their cousin Alan, and the three of them played in the back garden for a bit. Shortly after Alan left, however, little Joyce would completely vanish.
An extensive search was conducted for the missing child, but for many excruciating hours, there was no sign of her. At around seven-thirty the following evening, though, one of the searchers’ dogs began digging around in some undergrowth on an embankment along the Taff Mineral Railway line. There, stashed beneath a bush, was the body of Joyce Cox.
The little girl had been raped and strangled. Her underwear was found nearby, as was a gas mask, a tobacco pouch, and a copy of the Western Mail newspaper that was dated September 27th. Someone had written a quotation on the paper with a pencil.
The Glamorganshire Constabulary conducted a three-year investigation, in which they took over 850 statements and interviewed approximately 1,700 people. Despite this, the case eventually went cold, and Joyce’s mother passed away in 2003 without ever knowing who had murdered her child.
In 2017, the cold case was reopened, at which point it was revealed that the prime suspect in the crime, who had never been arrested due to lack of evidence, had died in the 1950s. According to a 2023 article from BBC News, family members at the time suspected the culprit might be a neighbor of the family, who was described as “nasty” and would allegedly hit the children. Joyce’s female cousin also later claimed that this same man had touched her inappropriately, and Joyce’s aunt asserted that she had seen the neighbor pushing a wheelbarrow with a sack over it on the day of Joyce’s disappearance.
Whether this neighbor was the same person police suspected of the slaying is unclear, but whatever the case, the 1939 murder of Joyce Cox seems unlikely to be solved at this late stage. But the surviving family still holds out hope that they will one day get answers.
Crime Immemorial 