UK UK- Sandra Phillips, 37, beaten, strangled, doused in petrol & poss. S.A. @ sex shop she managed, Swansea, Wales, 14 June, 1985, *New initiative*.

[dotr]

September 2025 rbbm.

Swansea: Forensic review into 40 year-old sex shop murder

Police are carrying out a reinvestigation into the unsolved killing of Sandra Phillips in 1985.

www.bbc.com

Just over 40 years since Sandra Phillips' death, a new forensic review is being carried out
''Detectives have begun a forensic review into the death of a woman 40 years ago.
Sandra Phillips, 37, was killed while working in a sex shop in Dillwyn Street, Swansea, on 14 June in 1985.
An extensive reinvestigation of the murder got under way in 2004, but all lines of enquiry were exhausted.
South Wales Police said a number of forensic exhibits had been submitted for forensic testing''.

'The mother-of-four was beaten and strangled at the sex shop she managed and her body was in a pool of blood. She had also been doused in petrol''

''A number of unidentified fingerprints were found at the scene and a telephone handset that was on the wall behind the counter was gone.
Neath brothers Wayne and Paul Darvell were wrongly convicted of the murder and spent seven years in prison before being released in 1992.''

 

[dotr]

6 October 2005,

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | South West Wales | 100 call sex shop murder appeal

'In June 1985, Sandra Phillips, 37, was beaten, strangled and possibly sexually assaulted at the store she managed.'
'Brothers Paul and Wayne Darvell were wrongly convicted of the murder and set free in 1992.'
'The appeal court ruled the convictions were "unsafe and unsatisfactory" after being told that that the brothers had a history of confessing to things they had not done and a police notebook had been altered.'

 

[rvlvr]

Thanks @dotr for sharing this and news about the Diane Jones case. It’s staggering how corrupt and incompetent South Wales Police were back in the 1980s, they repeatedly failed victims and their families.

From the Evidence Based Justice Lab at the University of Exeter Law School:

Scientific evidence, including an examination of a palm print in blood that excluded the two men, was kept from defence lawyers. A police official also ordered fingerprint experts to stop further work on the print, and detectives were alleged to have planted evidence. Statements by two detectives that they saw the brothers near the scene of the murder were shown to be wrong, as an examination of their diaries showed they had been elsewhere at the time.

Wayne Darvell - Evidenced Based Justice Lab - University of Exeter

evidencebasedjustice.exeter.ac.uk

Hopefully these forensic reviews turn up something though I don’t have much faith that these guys were storing evidence correctly, personally I’d be quite wary of the results but let’s see.