Crime Immemorial

In the quiet coastal village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, Wales—a place immortalized by poet Dylan Thomas for its serene estuary views and timeless charm—a single scream shattered the winter twilight on January 10th, 1953. Seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth Thomas, a beloved local figure known for her cheerful demeanor and tireless work as a church cleaner, was brutally attacked in her modest cottage on Clifton Street. Her pleas for mercy, uttered in desperation, would haunt neighbors and investigators alike, but the identity of her killer remains one of Wales’s enduring mysteries.

Laugharne in the early 1950s was a tight-knit community of around a thousand residents, where doors often went unlocked and neighbors exchanged greetings over garden walls. Elizabeth, a widow who lived alone at No. 3 Clifton Street, embodied this unassuming warmth. She laundered choristers’ surplices in a steaming tub by her fireside, dried them in her kitchen, and delighted children with sweets from the local shop. On that fateful Saturday, she had been seen alive around five p.m., crossing the road to Clifton Stores for a bag of toffees—a routine errand that masked the tragedy to come.

The attack likely began shortly after six p.m., as dusk settled over the Tâf Estuary. Witnesses later recounted hearing frantic cries from Elizabeth’s home: scuffling feet, the thud of blows, and her voice pleading, “Don’t hurt me, Harry,” though neighbors conceded she might also have said, “Hurry!” Neighbor Ronald Jones (also recalled as Robert Thomas Jones in some accounts) froze at the sound, interpreting it as a desperate appeal to a man named Harry. He banged on the door, shouting for the intruder to stop, but found it locked—an anomaly for the trusting Elizabeth. Rushing to summon help, Jones alerted Police Sergeant T.J. Morgan.

Arriving swiftly with a garage owner and Jones, Morgan peered through the keyhole and glimpsed a shadowy figure in a light-colored cap, hunched in the hallway amid fumbling noises and the clatter of overturned buckets. The figure had vanished by the time Morgan forced entry through a living room window. There lay Elizabeth on the flagstone floor, unconscious in a pool of blood, her body twisted toward the back door, arms twitching faintly. Her clothes were undisturbed, but her hat lay nearby, and a broom handle—used as a draft excluder—propped against the wall bore damning evidence: smears of human blood and strands of hair matching hers.

Rushed to West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen, Elizabeth never regained consciousness. A post-mortem the next day revealed the savagery of the assault: seven stab wounds to her chest and back from an unidentified knife (never recovered), a fractured skull from repeated blows with the stick, a broken right forearm, a black eye, and bruising across her body. Death came at nine ten a.m. on January 11th from shock due to cumulative trauma.

With £200—equivalent to thousands today—stashed safely under her mattress, robbery seemed a plausible motive, thwarted perhaps by the screams that drew attention. Yet the ferocity suggested something more personal. Investigators from Carmarthenshire Constabulary, bolstered by Scotland Yard detectives like Reginald Spooner, scoured the scene. A Wellington boot print marred the hallway flagstone, but comparisons with locals yielded no match. Traces of green distemper paint on a suspect’s coat linked tenuously to Elizabeth’s walls, though the product was ubiquitous.

Eyes quickly turned to George “Booda” Roberts, a forty-six-year-old local laborer known for his gentle, childlike nature. Born deaf and mute, with no formal education or sign language, Booda lived with his uncles in Ferry House and wandered Laugharne’s streets doing odd jobs—gardening, errands, sharpening pencils with a kitchen knife. A friend to many, including Dylan Thomas’s family (though the poet showed little interest in the case), he was a fixture in the village, communicating through simple gestures: a hand to the mouth for “cigarette,” a nod for yes.

Booda was undeniably in the vicinity that evening. Sighted multiple times between four p.m. and six forty p.m.—waving to Elizabeth’s nephew at five forty-five p.m., lingering near her cottage, and hurrying homeward—his proximity fueled suspicion. During interrogation, aided by interpreters from Llanelli Deaf Institute, Booda sketched crude maps of the cottage and gestured dramatically: thrusting motions, a nod at a knife, simulating a throw into the sea at Cliff Walk. Police interpreted this as a confession; he allegedly “admitted” entering via the unlocked front door, stabbing her as she answered, beating her with the stick, extinguishing a lamp, and fleeing through back gardens to fields. Detained without charge for three nights—a practice later decried in Parliament—Booda shook his head or shrugged at questions, his grief over Elizabeth’s death evident to acquaintances.

Yet cracks emerged swiftly. The boot print didn’t match his Wellingtons. Witnesses, including one spotting a grey-coated man fleeing wasteland (possibly not Booda), muddied timelines. And that name—Harry. A lodger of that name boarded at No. 5 Clifton Street, just doors away; Elizabeth had employed Booda for chores but knew Harry too. Police efforts to jog Jones’s memory—parading detectives shouting male names down the street—yielded nothing firm, and the lead fizzled once Booda was in custody.

Charged on January 19th at St Clears Magistrates’ Court, Booda faced Carmarthenshire Assizes in February 1953. Deemed “unfit to plead” due to his disability—potentially dooming him to indefinite Broadmoor detention if guilty—the case transferred to Glamorgan Assizes. There, before Mr. Justice Devlin, interpreters struggled to convey evidence; Booda responded only with nods or shrugs.

On March 24th, the prosecution stunned the court by offering no evidence. “It was inevitably a case of considerable difficulty,” they conceded, citing the slender thread of proximity, a vague knife sighting, and “statements said to have been obtained from a man with whom communication was almost impossible.” Devlin agreed, directing the jury to acquit: “You could never have been asked to convict on evidence of that sort.” He lambasted the detention as an “infringement of civil rights,” open to “misconstruction.” Booda walked free, sketching plans for a boating holiday before resuming gardening. He later retreated to a Carmarthenshire care home, never returning to Laugharne.

Seventy years on, the case endures as a cautionary tale of investigative overreach and small-town scapegoating. Freedom of Information requests to the Metropolitan Police in 2024, probing post-trial inquiries by Spooner (who remained convinced of Booda’s guilt), yielded procedural acknowledgments but no revelations of fresh probes—suggesting the file gathers dust as a cold case under Dyfed-Powys Police.