Top barrister wants 1976 farm murder case reopened

A leading criminal barrister has backed calls for police to reinvestigate the deaths of a brother and sister at their remote farmhouse nearly 50 years ago.

The bodies of Griff and Patti Thomas were discovered by a postman at Ffynon Samson, in the village of Llangolman, Pembrokeshire, in December 1976.

Barrister Andrew Taylor believes certain items of evidence and information gathered by police at the time cast doubt on their belief that Griff Thomas killed his sister and then himself.

Dyfed-Powys Police said its review of the case was ongoing.

Mr Taylor has represented families in cases where murder convictions were overturned posthumously, including Mahmood Mattan, the last man to be hanged at Cardiff Prison, and Timothy Evans, hanged for killing his wife and daughter but later pardoned, after serial killer John Christie confessed to the crime.

After reading the police and pathology reports from the time of the original murder inquiry, the barrister said the case was undermined by certain aspects of the evidence, including:

• A nail found embedded in the skin above Griff's eye. He said there was "no satisfactory explanation" from either police or the pathologist about how it got there
• Griff had bled profusely - believed to come from a head injury - something the police report said might "go against" the theory no third party was involved
• The absence of any accelerant to fuel the fire: something Mr Taylor sees as "highly significant", if it was a suicide
• Two half-drunk cups of tea left above the fireplace, and a plate with two rounds of bread and butter and some crisps on the arm of a nearby chair - suggesting a visitor known to the siblings had been welcomed into the farmhouse

An inquest at Haverfordwest in February 1977 concluded with a verdict of manslaughter for Patti and an open verdict for Griff.

"To my mind, the coroner must have come to the conclusion that there were unanswered questions, otherwise he would have come to a verdict of suicide," said Mr Taylor.

"For the sake of the family, I hope that police reopen the case. It’s not nice to have one of your relatives branded a murderer."

Family and friends of the Griff and Patti - who were 73 and 70 when they died and had lived together all their lives - have never believed the police's conclusions about the case and have long campaigned to clear Griff's name.

Dyfed-Powys Police launched a forensic "cold case" review, Operation Hallam, in October 2022 to consider whether modern forensic techniques could shed new light on the case.

The deaths at Ffynon Samson are the subject of a new BBC Sounds podcast, Death on the Farm.

Some have speculated over the years that John Cooper, convicted in 2011 of two double murders in Pembrokeshire, could have been involved in the deaths at Ffynon Samson.

Forensic expert Tracy Alexander, who worked on the Cooper case, told the Death on the Farm podcast she remembered his name being mentioned by police, but that the force did not have anything "concrete" to go on.

Steve Wilkins, former senior investigating officer for the John Cooper inquiry, welcomed the review into the deaths of Griff and Patti, but said it would be "surprising" if Cooper had been responsible.

He said if third party involvement was established, then the case should be re-investigated.

But he said there were differences in the "modus operandi" between the deaths and Cooper's crimes.

He also said Cooper was a "professional criminal" whose motive had always been "financial gain" - yet thousands of pounds in cash was left in Griff and Patti's farmhouse.

Dyfed Powys Police said its investigation was ongoing and that it was in touch with the family, adding: "The timeframe for conclusion of the review is not known at this stage."