Seventy-year-old Isaac Hughes and fifty-year-old Arthur Waite were good friends and spent a great deal of time drinking in their local pub, the Rifleman’s Arms, in the small mining town of Blaenavon, Torfaen, Wales.
The two men were engaged in their favorite pastime on Easter Monday, which fell on April 3rd of 1972. They drank for most of the day, and when the pub closed at eleven p.m., the friends walked to Isaac’s house, which was only yards away. It was the last time either man was seen alive.
On Tuesday, Isaac’s brother Bert became concerned when he couldn’t get hold of Isaac, and when Wednesday came with still no word, he took a ladder to his brother’s home and climbed in through a bedroom window.
Bert found the two men dead in the living room of Isaac’s cottage; Isaac sprawled across the sofa, and Arthur sitting upright in an armchair. Both had been murdered by multiple, savage blows to the head with a blunt instrument.
Because there was no sign of forced entry, detectives assumed that one or both of the men had known the killer, and had let him into the cottage on that fateful night. Authorities were unable to determine if robbery was the motive, however, as they were uncertain as to whether any money or valuables were missing.
At autopsy, it was found that the bladders and stomachs of both men were empty, leading police to assume that they had not been killed after returning from the pub on the night of April 3rd, but had probably met their end the following morning, perhaps around eight or nine a.m.
Every male resident of the small town was questioned during the course of the inquiry, and an Identikit drawing of a possible suspect was released to the public. Despite their efforts, though, investigators never made any progress on the case, failing to find the murder weapon and making no arrests. The strongest suspect at the time seemed to have been a friend of Isaac’s who lived nearby and sometimes came over to run errands for the elderly man, but though police questioned the man dozens of times, he never admitted guilt.
The case remains open, and detectives hope that a member of the public with information about the double homicide will one day come forward and solve the mystery once and for all.
Crime Immemorial 