Crime Immemorial

Described by neighbors as a “pillar of the community,” Caroline was known for her warm demeanor, sharp intellect, and unwavering routine. Every Saturday, she would leave home after supper to walk the mile to her mother’s pub, staying overnight before returning Sunday afternoon. Dan, ever the supportive husband, often planned to join her the next day. The path she took—Pant Tywyll—was a narrow, iron-railed trail skirting the village cemetery, dipping into a steep valley thick with brambles and ancient oaks. It was a fifteen- to twenty-minute jaunt through “Dark Hollow,” as locals called it, but on October 6th, 1945, it would become a corridor of terror.

The evening was typical: cool, misty, and unremarkable. At around ten past ten p.m., Caroline bid Dan goodnight, attaché case in hand, a small flashlight tucked away, and an enamel milk pot borrowed from her mother earlier that week. She wore a familiar outfit—a coat over a dress, stockings, sensible shoes, and a knitted hat adorned with red feathers. Dan heard the back door creak but didn’t see her off; he assumed she’d arrive safely at the City Arms, as always.

But trouble stirred almost immediately. At ten twenty p.m., William Thomas Davies, a resident of nearby Glasfryn Cottages, heard a piercing woman’s scream echoing from Pant Tywyll. He grabbed his flashlight and scanned the darkness, his dog bolting toward the sound before slinking back. Davies saw nothing amiss and dismissed it as a fox or a startled walker—common enough in the wilds.

Nearly an hour and a half later, at eleven forty p.m., farmhand Joseph Roberts trudged home along the same path. In the gloom, he spotted a man kneeling in the grass, back turned, broad-shouldered and middle-aged. The figure wore light-colored socks, trousers, and what Roberts took for an RAF uniform—complete with two or three stripes on the sleeve, suggesting a corporal or sergeant. Assuming a romantic assignation, Roberts mumbled an apology and hurried on, receiving no reply.

Dan, meanwhile, retired to bed, untroubled. Caroline’s mother, Harriet, waited in vain at the pub until closing time. By dawn, worry had turned to dread.

Shortly before seven a.m. on Sunday, October 7th, coal miner and farmhand Maldwyn Jones herded his cows along Pant Tywyll. Less than 300 yards from Park Road, in a bramble-choked thicket bordering the path near the cemetery, his eye caught a flash of unnatural amid the leaves: a woman’s form, half-buried in woodland debris.

Caroline lay on her back, eyes staring blankly at the canopy above. Her face bore the purple bloom of at least two savage blows—bruises swelling around her eyes and jaw. Her clothes were in disarray: underwear partially removed, dress rucked up, coat askew. A post-mortem later confirmed the horror: asphyxia by strangulation, her own tie twisted tight around her neck, fracturing her hyoid bone. She had been sexually assaulted, her body dragged from the path into the bushes, leaving a trail of blood spots, a bloodstained nettle leaf, and a shattered bottle in her wake.

Nearby lay her attaché case—snapped open, brambles jammed inside as if hastily refastened at the scene—along with her flashlight, red-feathered hat, and a hair curler. Her gold watch and some cash turned up safely at home, but her leather wallet and the two-quart enamel milk pot were gone, fueling early suspicions of robbery. Police theorized she’d been set upon swiftly on the path, killed, and concealed—her clean shoes and stockings puzzlingly free of the valley’s notorious mud, as if she’d been carried partway.

Word spread like wildfire through Coedpoeth’s 3,000 residents. By midday, the lane was cordoned, forensics combing for clues under the watchful eyes of shocked villagers.

The murder exploded across national headlines—”Fiendish Swamp Slaying” screamed one tabloid. Denbighshire Constabulary’s Chief Constable George T. Guest called in Scotland Yard’s elite: Chief Inspector Tom Philpott and Sergeant Jim Hislop arrived within twenty-four hours, spearheading a probe that ballooned into one of Wales’ largest.

Over 600 statements poured in from a door-to-door canvass. “Murder forms”—questionnaires probing alibis for anyone over sixteen—were shoved through every letterbox in Coedpoeth. Appeals flickered on cinema screens in English and Welsh: “Were you in Pant Tywyll between ten p.m. and midnight on October 6th?” Harriet Williams, Caroline’s grief-stricken mother, posted a £50 reward (a small fortune then) for tips leading to arrest.

RAF bases across Britain were scoured; the uniform sighting suggested military mischief. A truck driver claimed he’d hitched a lift to an airman near the scene days later, but ghosted police. Cinema crowds buzzed with whispers of dances at Coedpoeth’s Drill Hall that night—perhaps the killer, jilted and prowling, had trailed Caroline homeward.

The inquest, led by Coroner Maurice V. Evans (no relation), dragged through adjournments before a January 15th, 1946, verdict: “Wilful murder by person or persons unknown.” The case simmered, reignited in 1951 by a Liverpool CID tip-off and a fruitless three-hour grilling of a Manchester witness. A 1952 letter fingered a shadowy figure tied to early statements, but interviews fizzled. By 1957, files were sealed for 75 years—unviewable until 2032—leaving the trail cold.

No one was charged, but police pursued several leads. For example, Roberts’ midnight sighting of a possible military uniform pinned hopes on a striped-sleeve airman—possibly a local on leave, not AWOL, fresh from a Drill Hall dance. Scotland Yard chased hundreds of servicemen; one, nabbed with crisp £1 notes matching Caroline’s cashed salary, was cleared when his pay proved legit. Whispers even crossed oceans: a 1954 Australian paper speculated the killer, if RAAF, might lurk Down Under, free and forgotten.

Along those same lines, a shell-shocked ex-soldier, haunted by “blackouts,” confessed he might have done it, but his statements were quickly debunked by psychiatrists. Worse was John Lionel Raymond Rusdell, an eighteen-year-old Broadmoor lifer later convicted of strangling teen Dilys Scott in 1950. He claimed Caroline’s murder too, citing a sexual frenzy at age thirteen. Police were skeptical of his claims. Rusdell committed suicide in 1955.

Constable Griffith John Griffiths floated a “tramp” ambush or a local who knew her walk by heart. Sexual mania loomed large, due to the victim’s disheveled attire and evidence of assault, but robbery also seemed a plausible motive.

As of October 2025, eight decades after Caroline Evans’s murder, the crime is still unsolved, and stands as one of the oldest cold cases in Wales.