Joyce Cox 1939 murder: Cousin breaks 84-year silence

Joyce Cox's body was discovered the day after she was abducted in 1939

The last person to see a four-year-old girl before she was murdered has spoken publicly about it for the first time in 84 years.

Joyce Cox was abducted on her way home from her aunt's house in Cardiff on 28 September 1939.

Her body was found the next day by a railway line, having also been sexually assaulted, but her killer has never been caught. 

Her cousin Alan Phillips saw her in an alley less than 50 yards from her home.

Speaking to BBC Wales' true crime series, Darkland: Hunting the Killers, he recalled playing in the garden with Joyce and her older brother Dennis before leaving through the back gate and walking home.

"She came up the lane at the back of our house and I walked to the end of the lane until I could see her as far as she could go, and then we both waved at each other and that was it," Alan said.

The lane where Joyce Cox was last seen alive

"I didn't realise she was missing until later."

At 03:00 GMT the next morning he was woken by his mother and taken by an officer to a police station to be questioned.

"I was in the police station for about three hours on my own and they were bullies," he added. "One was shaking me, which wasn't very nice."

Alan recalled a "nasty neighbour who would hit you", who the family suspected at the time of carrying out the murder.

Alan's sister also reveals the male neighbour touched her inappropriately when she would visit the house to be measured for clothes by his wife.

She said he would touch her shoulders, arms and legs, and would say: "Don't say anything to the wife".

Alan said the police had warned the family not to get involved with the man.

Another cousin, Terry Phillips, was not born at the time but said his mother - Joyce's aunt - was concerned about the same neighbour pushing a wheelbarrow with a sack over it three hours after Joyce's disappearance. 

"My mother was always convinced it was linked," he said.

"Although the complaint was made as far as I can understand nothing was done.

"I would like to see that man properly investigated."

Det Ch Supt Jason Davies, head of specialist crime at South Wales Police, said the original investigation was carried out by Glamorganshire Constabulary and records show detectives interviewed 1,700 people and took more 850 statements over three years.

"South Wales Police has carried out three reviews of this case since 2004, with the 2017 review concluding that there were no further lines of inquiry and an absence of any forensic evidence from a crime committed more than 80 years ago," he said.

"There were reasonable grounds to suspect that a man identified during the original murder investigation was responsible for the death, but due to the absence of direct evidence, he was never charged with the offence and died in the 1950s."

Darkland: Hunting the Killers, BBC One Wales, Tuesday at 22:40 GMT.