Crime Immemorial

Clutching her change, Carol returned home briefly, her face alight with excitement. “I’ll just go out to play, Mum—I won’t be long,” she promised, before skipping back into the rain. It was the last words her mother would hear from her.

Hours stretched on as Carol failed to return. Mavis, wracked with worry, alerted neighbors and scoured the streets. By evening, Cardiff police were mobilized for what would become one of Wales’ largest manhunts. Officers fanned out across Cathays, knocking on doors and appealing for sightings. The search escalated rapidly: thousands of cars were stopped at checkpoints, ports were monitored for potential fleeing suspects, and volunteers combed woods, empty houses, and even Cathays Cemetery. Farmers were asked to check outbuildings, and authorities mulled draining the vast Roath Park Lake, fearing the worst. Mavis made tearful public pleas, describing her daughter’s trusting nature: “Carol’s so friendly—she talks to anyone, even though we’ve told her not to.”

Whispers among Carol’s playmates added chilling layers. Friends recalled her boasting of a “new uncle” who had taken her on car rides in recent weeks, a detail that hinted at grooming. On the day she vanished, witnesses placed her near the junction of Robert Street and Fairoak Road, tapping on the window of a green saloon car, possibly a Morris Minor, parked outside the Fairoak garage. Inside sat a dark-haired man in his thirties, wearing a trench coat and brimmed hat, scribbling on papers.

For two agonizing weeks, the child’s whereabouts were unknown. Then, on April 21st, a surveyor scouting land near the remote hamlet of Horeb, five miles north of Llanelli in Carmarthenshire, stumbled upon a heartbreaking scene. Tucked in a narrow ravine by a trickling stream, concealed under overhanging branches and leaves, lay Carol’s small body. She was about sixty miles from home, dressed in the same sodden outfit from her disappearance: a greyed skirt pulled to her ankles, one brown shoe discarded five feet away, the other swept fifteen feet downstream. The cause of death was strangulation, compounded by sexual assault.

The location spoke volumes. This wasn’t a random dump; the concealed culvert, shrouded in hedges, demanded local knowledge to navigate undetected. How had a Cardiff schoolgirl ended up here, possibly after a four-hour drive sans motorways? Police speculated the killer was no stranger to the area, perhaps using the journey to silence her cries.

The initial probe, aided by Scotland Yard, interviewed over 10,000 people, sifted 3,000 vehicles, and logged 1,100 statements, yet clues remained elusive. Early focus fell on Carol’s biological father, James Lynch, a London bus driver amid a bitter divorce, but his alibi held firm. The green car loomed largest: neighbors recalled Carol emerging from a similar vehicle days earlier, dropped off around the corner rather than at her door. A peculiar man had been spotted peering over her garden wall the night before. But the driver had slipped the net.

Decades later, fresh eyes uncovered a prime suspect: Ronald Edward Murray, an Australian-born steeplejack turned traveling salesman. From 1951 to 1952, Murray worked at the JP Zammit Brick Factory in Horeb, mere yards from the ravine. By 1959, he drove a company-issued green Morris Minor for Carson’s Chocolates in Bristol, his routes snaking through Cathays. An overlooked employment memo revealed him requesting more “children’s lines of sweets.” His alibi was a contrived tale of illness, and a hit-and-run with a dog. Detective Superintendent Roy Davies pegged him as the killer in internal notes.

Murray’s life revealed further darkness. Charming yet mendacious, he alienated friends and neighbors in Llansamlet. His wife Della’s 1969 gas poisoning death, blamed on a “prank” with their son, was deemed accidental, but relatives suspected foul play, convinced Murray orchestrated it to “get rid of her.” Murray died in Penarth in 1973, taking secrets to the grave. A 2020 BBC Wales documentary, Dark Land: Hunting the Killers, led by ex-Chief Constable Jackie Roberts, pored over files and deemed the links—Murray’s car, driving routes, nearness of the factory to the dump site, and his specific request for more sweets—sufficient for modern prosecution.

In 2023, ITV’s Cold Case Detectives shadowed Detective Gerry Blake, a Cathays native who played with Carol at Sunday school days before her vanishing. Now leading South Wales Police’s Major Crime Review team, Blake re-examined artifacts like Carol’s cardigan, skirt, and glasses for DNA traces. “This is why I joined the force,” he confided.

South Wales Police, under Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lewis, affirm the file stays open, but more than sixty years on, the horrific murder of Carol Ann Stephens is still unsolved.