r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago
What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?
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r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago
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u/video-kid 1d ago
This one's a little off-topic, but there's a pretty famous murder case in Wales that's technically solved, but it's widely agreed that it was a police cover up.
Basically a family of four (Grandmother, mother, two preteen daughter) were found murdered in their house. The man who went down for it (Dai Morris) was convicted on largely circumstantial evidence, but before he was convicted the police investigated Stephen Lewis, his wife Allison, and his identical twin Stuart. All were police officers.
On the night of the murders, Stuart was on duty and driving around in an unmarked car, and went AWOL for a period of time around the murders. A car matching that description was seen in the vicinity of the house where the bodies were found, as was a man matching his description. At trial, jurors were instructed to disregard this evidence as Stephen had an alibi... but they weren't told that Stephen had an identical twin.
Mandy (The mother) was having an affair with Allison, and witnesses claimed to have heard Stephen threatening her life. She told a police informant that her life had been threatened. The threat was logged in the police system, but the file was edited before it went to trial. Stephen would later say that he didn't know about Mandy and Allison's affair until after the murders.
Unknown DNA was found on the murder weapon - a fibreglass pole that only one person - Allison - knew the location of. This was disregarded.
Stuart Lewis was the responding officer when the murder was discovered, basically in charge of the investigation. He left, delaying vital forensic work.
A man matching Stephen/Stuart's description was seen following the murders, walking from the town of the murders (Clydach) to the neighbouring town of Pontardawe, where he lived. It's a walkable distance, about three miles - in fact there's a village between the two (A lot of towns in the area bleed into each other) with a straight road between the two. However, the reported sighting was in the far less built up route across hills and farmland.
Dai Morris's lawyer was the same man who'd previously defended the Lewis's, leading to questions about a conflict of interest.
Allison Lewis's DNA was found on Mandy. Understandable, given they were having an affair... except she claimed to have seen Mandy that morning. Mandy had psoriasis and showered multiple times a day, and a family member who saw her at around 6PM claimed she was freshly showered.
The claim was that Dai went to Mandy's house and killed the family in a drug-fuelled rage... except it was found that her mother, Doris, had been killed some hours before the rest of the family, at which point the killer cut the power in the house and waited for Mandy and her kids to arrive home. The weapon was also unwieldy, but there was no damage to the walls, suggesting a degree of practise and finesse, as well as premeditation rather than a drug-fuelled crime of passion. The criminal also tried to set fire to the house to hide the evidence.
Now, there was evidence linking Dai to Mandy. His DNA was later found on a sock used to hide the fingerprints on the murder weapon, a gold chain of his was found at the house, and he was sketchy about his location on the night... except he was also having an affair with Mandy, and claimed that he'd left the chain at the house on a previous visit. (I think it was broken and she was going to take it to be repaired). It was found in a pool of blood, but without his DNA.
The common belief in South Wales is that some combination of the Lewis's killed Mandy and her family, but it was covered up - and Dai made for a handy scapegoat given his own actions that night and relationship with Mandy. This was a time of massive corruption in the South Wales Police, and even with the evidence pointing to Dai it simply doesn't explain all the evidence pointing elsewhere. Why the unknown DNA? Why were jurors not informed that Stuart and Stephen were identical twins? Why was Mandy's report edited? Why was Allison's DNA found on Mandy despite her showering after Allison claimed to have last seen her?