David Morris case: Suspicions continue running high

Mandy Power with daughters Katie (10) and Emily (8)

More than a quarter of a century has passed since that terrible night of 26/27 June 1999 when four innocent females, three generations of the same family, were brutally murdered in their own Clydach home.

Elderly disabled Doris Dawson (80), her attractive divorcee daughter Mandy Power (34) and her two young daughters Katie (10) and Emily (8) were viciously battered to death with a ferocity that defies comprehension.

Convicted of the crime in 2002, David George Morris’ conviction was quashed in 2005 because three appeal court judges agreed that he did not have a fair trial – his solicitor was in cahoots with earlier murder suspect, South Wales Police Sergeant Stephen Lewis, and Morris’ counsel was prohibited from questioning him properly. In 2006, Morris was convicted for reasons that were also unfair – his counsel was incompetent – and he was sentenced to four life terms of imprisonment. Morris died in prison 15 years later, always protesting his innocence.

Morris was convicted on the basis of lies he told the police, his lack of an alibi, and his broken gold neck chain discovered at the crime scene. This, he explained, he had left behind when he called at 9 Kelvin Road on the Friday before the murders in pursuance of his months-long affair with murder victim, Mandy Power. A thorough forensic investigation discovered no fingerprints nor DNA in the house belonging to him, though there was plenty of forensic evidence found throughout the house belonging to South Wales Police Sergeant Stephen Lewis and others.

With the passage of time, and the untimely death of David Morris, it might be reasonable to assume that interest in the case would wane. But that simply isn’t the case, and there is, perhaps, even more interest in the Clydach murder case today than there has ever been. About a half million followers are regularly checking in on social media websites devoted to the case, and they are keeping a close eye on developments.

Almost from the outset it became clear that there was something very wrong with the police investigation; Acting Inspector Stuart Lewis arrived at the crime scene, 9 Kelvin Road, immediately after an early morning fire in the murder house was brought under control. Then, instead of taking charge, as would be expected of a senior police officer, he left after just 8 minutes, but not before telling firemen to douse the house again which, had they done so, would have destroyed fingerprint and DNA evidence left in the house. Inexplicably, he then hurriedly left the crime scene, leaving just a junior WPC in charge.

Later that same morning, when crowds of onlookers descended on Kelvin Road, many of them mobbed South Wales Police detectives telling them that three weeks earlier, Sergeant Stephen Lewis had threatened to kill Mandy Power and he ought to be investigated. Their many claims were brushed off and ignominiously ignored.

It was almost a year later when Martyn Lloyd-Evans staged a recorded police interview and forced a vulnerable witness, Louise Pugh, to repeat the evidence she already gave in a statement to police officers on 28 June 1999 which has since disappeared. “Three weeks before the murders,” she told them, “Stephen Lewis had threatened to kill Mandy Power.” In the 2022 Sky TV documentary Murder in the Valleys Martyn Lloyd-Evans said that it was on the basis of this, and other “new” evidence that Louise Pugh gave them, that he ordered the arrest of the Lewises.

But three weeks before the murders, a registered police informer overheard a conversation Mandy Power had with her friends in a Clydach pub, when she told them of the death threat made by Stephen Lewis. The informer met with a South Wales Police detective on the afternoon of 28 June 1999 and passed on this information. The detective made a contemporaneous note of their conversation and posted the memorandum on the HOLMES police computer system. This message on HOLMES was hidden away from David Morris’ defence lawyers by South Wales Police, and only came to light in 2014 – eight years after Morris’ conviction.

Thus, it is established fact that Martyn Lloyd-Evans and South Wales Police knew on the day after the murders that Stephen Lewis had threatened Mandy Power three weeks earlier, and failed to act on this information by arresting him. Lloyd-Evans’ claim that he learned about the threat only when Louise Pugh came to them almost a year after the murders is untrue, and ppoints to possible corruption at a high level within South Wales Police.

This is just one of the many anomalies described in Force of Evil: Crossing the thin blue line to murder which clearly demonstrates that South Wales Police officers convicted an innocent man for murder, whilst simultaneously protecting their own.

If people were suspicious so early in the murder investigation that the police were covering up a crime committed by some of their own, it was hardly surprising. By the time of the Clydach murders, nineteen people had been framed by South Wales Police detectives and jailed for crimes they did not commit.

Despite the observable corruption demonstrated by these police officers, not one South Wales Police officer was ever convicted of wrong doing.

Worse, a sinister tradition evolved within South Wales Police of officers watching each other’s backs. It ensured that police officers would cover up crimes committed by their colleagues no matter how serious the misconduct, or how criminal their actions might be.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than the 2011 prosecution of eight South Wales Police officers, accused of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, for framing five innocent men for the murder of Lynette White. Their trial collapsed because vital evidence, in the custody of a South Wales Police officer, Chief Superintendent Christopher Coutts, went missing, and then after the case was thrown out, the evidence miraculously turned up – in Christopher Coutts’ office!

As truly shocking as this was, nothing could compare with the reactions of the eight police officers on the steps of the court after their acquittal, whooping with joy and punching the air in excitement. These were not the reactions of innocent men having been found not guilty of serious crimes, they were more akin to guilty criminals who had gotten away with it. 

Little wonder then that suspicions continue to run high that David Morris did not commit the Clydach murders, but was framed as a convenient scapegoat by South Wales Police officers, and others, who most certainly were involved in this heinous crime.

By John Morris and Paul Dalling

John Morris qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1987 and worked in two leading Swansea criminal law practices before taking over an existing general practice which he ran for 10 years. In 2000, he moved to Ireland where he worked in a Dublin general practice. He took early retirement in 2015 to research and write "The Clydach Murders: A Miscarriage of Justice". He continues his research into the case, He has published several other books, and he also writes for a national magazine.

Paul Dallin has a background in construction and engineering, but he has spent the last twenty six years painstakingly investigating the Clydach murders. Paul and John are the co-authors of "Force of Evil: Crossing the thin blue line to murder" which exposes the corruption and conspiracy behind the Clydach murders, and the proven imprisonment of David George Morris, an innocent man.

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