On Thursday, 16 May, Home Office pathologist Dr Deryk James, who had carried out postmortems on all four victims, began giving evidence in the trial. He told the court how he was called to 9 Kelvin Road shortly after the killings and saw the bodies of Mandy Power and her two daughters lying on the ground outside the house. He noted the ‘obvious blunt head injuries’ Mandy Power had sustained and the circular end of a pink plastic vibrator protruding from her vagina.
‘There were also obvious blunt injuries to the face of Emily, who was partially clothed.’ Katie, who was fully clothed, had sustained ‘an obvious injury to the back of her head’. Dr James also saw the body of Mandy Power’s mother, 80-year-old invalid Doris Dawson. She was lying on her bed with a partially burned duvet on top of her. Paper had been wrapped around her limbs and an attempt made to burn her corpse.
Looking at his notes, the doctor described in more detail the injuries sustained by the victims. Mandy Power, he said, had died from a blunt head injury when her skull was smashed with a rod-like implement. ‘The skull injuries were particularly severe, the result of extremely hard blows.’ Neck injuries she suffered showed there had also been an attempt to strangle her. Some of the injuries showed ‘tramline bruising’, suggesting they had been made by the same implement. On one part of her face there was an injury with a pattern like a Maltese Cross; this was caused when she came into contact with a similarly patterned knob on a chest of drawers in her mother’s bedroom. ‘Injuries to Mandy Power’s wrists were the sort that resulted when someone was trying to ward off blows’. Dr James estimated that ‘probably at least 15 blows’ with a rod-like implement would have been needed to cause the injuries he described. Dr James was of the opinion that Mandy Power was dead by the time the fires were started because no smoke or carbon monoxide was detected in her airways.
Describing the injuries sustained by eight-year-old Emily Power, Dr James said her skull had been smashed by blows from a blunt instrument. ‘We are looking at least seven or eight blows to the head, face, neck and chest areas,’ he told the court. ‘She would have been dead at the time the fire started.’ Dr James said the child sustained ‘no defence injuries – that is, injuries to the arms as though someone wants to ward off blows’. The absence of defence injuries, he told the court, is probably significant. ‘She may well have been unconscious from the first blow which was across the face and was hard.’ He said ‘the pattern of injuries suggested a rod-like implement’.
Dr James told the court that Emily had a 15cm tramline bruise between her left shoulder and the midpoint of her chest. There was an 18cm by 9cm area of bruising between the front of her right shoulder and the base of her neck, and bruising to the left side of her neck as far as her left ear. She had an open wound on the left side of her face. There was also extensive fracturing of the upper part of her skull; her lower jaw was broken in four places, and her left cheekbone and eye socket were fractured. The child’s upper chest area was bruised.
When questioned by Patrick Harrington as to the number of blows that would be necessary to inflict such extreme injuries, Dr James replied: ‘There would need to be three to four blows to the back of the head and three to four blows to the face, neck and chest areas.’ He gave the cause of Emily’s death as blunt head injury.
‘Katie’, he said, ‘suffered 22 separate external injuries’. He gave his opinion that she had been struck ten to fifteen blows. There were severe wounds to her scalp and extensive fracturing of her skull. Parts of her shoulder, wrist and hand showed bruising and grazing. ‘There appeared to have been three blows,’ the court heard. ‘A cheekbone had been fractured along with a joint of the jaw, and a bone in the right hand. There was no significant carbon monoxide in her airways’, which, Dr James considered, ‘indicated that she also died before the fire started.’ He added: ‘It was an assault with a blunt instrument to the right side of the head where there was a very large laceration, a very severe skull and brain injury in keeping with a rod-like instrument which had been used to strike to the side of the head.’ The cause of Katie’s death was ‘blunt head injury’, he said.
‘The injuries sustained by Mandy Power’s mother, Doris Dawson, were consistent with her having been struck repeatedly with a rod-like instrument,’ Dr James told the court. The 80-year-old invalid was struck five or six times, and was also dead before the fire started. Her body was charred from the mid-thighs to the face, and her right arm and hand were also charred, Dr James said.
Mrs Dawson had a 19cm ragged cut from the left side of her forehead to the right side of her chin, and a similar tear on the left cheek. A 23cm by 4cm bruise extended from the front of the left shoulder to the right breast. There was no skull fracture, but there was bruising to the left side of the scalp and to the left side of the face. Her left cheekbone had been crushed. The lower jaw and the margin of the eye socket were fractured. There was further fracturing to the bones of the middle of the face. Several ribs were broken, along with the voice box and a collarbone. There were no injuries consistent with Mrs Dawson trying to defend herself.
Dr James gave his opinion that Doris Dawson died of serious blunt head and chest injuries. The left side of her face had been crushed and she would have had difficulty breathing because blood was found in her airways. ‘Her injuries were consistent with her having been struck repeatedly with a rod-like instrument,’ he said.
Questioned by the judge about the amount of force required to inflict the injuries suffered by the victims, Dr James said, ‘the force used would have had to be at the severe end of the spectrum’. Asked by Peter Rouch about the order in which the victims had died, Dr James was unhelpful, saying with regret that ‘In this particular case I was not able to gauge the sequence of death.’
Dr James agreed that Mandy Power, her mother and daughters had been struck many times more than was necessary to cause their deaths. His reply suggested that the victims did not suffer such extensive brutality just as a means of silencing them, which Patrick Harrington had proposed, but for some other, as yet unknown, reason.
At the end of the fourth week of the trial, scene of crimes investigator Detective Constable John Rees testified that when he and his colleagues entered 9 Kelvin Road soon after the murders, he found Mandy Power’s skirt and tights in the hallway of the burned house, and he recovered a burnt white bra from the floor of Mandy Power’s bedroom. This suggested that either Mandy Power had removed some of her clothing downstairs or her clothing had been forcibly taken from her in an attack which may have started downstairs.
Detective Constable Philip Bowen was called to give evidence and recalled interviews with Morris before he became a suspect. The first interview had taken place just two days after the murders. He said he saw no scratch marks on Morris’ face. His testimony corroborated the evidence of several witnesses, including Jeff Jewell, Mandy Jewell’s father, who also said he had no facial injuries. This seemed to indicate that either the memory of Morris’ Rhyddwen Road neighbour Janice Williams (who gave several contradictory statements) were clouded, or she deliberately gave false evidence against Dai Morris in order to implicate him in the crime.
The final witness called to give evidence that week was forensic expert David White. He told the court that he was a civilian scene of crimes investigator with South Wales Police, and had arrived at the house shortly after the killings. On the first floor landing White found a four-foot pole that was later confirmed as the murder weapon. Among the items taken for analysis was a strap-on vibrator, which was recovered from an extensively burned hold-all in Mandy Power’s bedroom, and the white T-shirt she was believed to have been wearing when she was killed.
White said that in the back bedroom the corpse of Doris Dawson was lying on the bed. When he examined her, he found an engagement ring lying ‘isolated’ in the middle of her torso. He took away the ring for forensic examination. He also noted that paper had been packed around the body.
In a subsequent visit to the house, White found a blood-stained white sock in Mandy Power’s room which he also took away for forensic examination. And he removed a blood-stained heavy gold neck-chain found on the floor of Doris Dawson’s bedroom.
In the fifth week of the trial, key forensic scientist Claire Galbraith was called to give evidence. Her opinion was that Doris Dawson was attacked while she was either sitting or lying in her bed. Katie Power was attacked and beaten on the landing and Emily Power attacked in the girls’ bedroom. Galbraith believed Mandy Power was injured in her own bedroom before making her way into her mother’s room. At this point she fell down and was beaten again and her head made contact with a chest of drawers.
It was Galbraith’s opinion that Doris Dawson was probably the first of the murder victims to be killed. She reached this opinion on the basis that, while the pole had been used to beat the old lady to death, no blood or DNA belonging to her was found on it. But blood belonging to Mandy Power and the girls was found on the pole, so the pole had either been wiped clean for some reason after being used to kill the old lady, or Doris Dawson’s blood and DNA had come off during the three attacks that followed.
During the assault on Doris Dawson, the pole smashed a ceiling light; this had resulted in a short circuit which plunged the house into darkness. In the downstairs lavatory detectives found a chair that had been used by someone to stand on while repairs to the fuse box were carried out to restore the electricity supply. Under cross-examination by counsel for the defence, Galbraith agreed that a television set found on a bed in the children’s room could have been in this position when blood got on it and on a wall behind it.
Peter Rouch suggested that the television set had originally rested on the chair taken from the girls’ bedroom, which had been brought to the downstairs lavatory. Galbraith said that if this was the case, the television set must have been lifted off it and the chair taken downstairs before Emily Power was attacked in the bedroom. Galbraith confirmed that the chair found in the downstairs lavatory at the house had no blood on it.
The significance of Claire Galbraith’s expert evidence cannot be overstated. It not only corroborated her opinion as to the order of deaths, but it indicated that there was a considerable delay between the time of Doris Dawson’s murder, and the attacks on the rest of the family. Even the approximate time when the electricity supply was interrupted can probably be ascertained. Neighbour Rosemary Jones testified later that when she looked across at 9 Kelvin Road at 12.30 a.m., the house was in darkness. This meant that the fuse had blown sometime before 12.30 a.m. – in other words, sometime before, or about the time Mandy and her daughters arrived home. But, even more importantly, it meant that the prosecution’s proposed motive for the murders was almost certainly wrong.
The report of Glasgow-based pathologist Dr Peter Vanezis was read out to the jury. Dr Vanezis had been instructed by the prosecution to prepare a report following the postmortem examination of Mandy Power which had been conducted by Home Office pathologist Dr Deryk James. Part of Dr Vanezis’ report read: ‘Although Mandy Power had been subjected to a severe assault, it was notable that there were no injuries to her groin area.’ He held the view that if the vibrator had been forcibly inserted ‘during life’, there would have been some injuries.
Dr Jonathan Whittacker, an expert in DNA profiling, confirmed that he could find no connection between Dai Morris and a large number of items removed from the house and subjected to forensic testing. Cross-examined by Peter Rouch, he said he could not find even a partial DNA profile relating to Morris on any of the items sent to him.
If builders’ labourer Dai Morris, allegedly high on drink and drugs, really had wiped away all trace of his DNA and fingerprints in the house after committing the murders, and destroyed his DNA in the bath and bathwater also, it truly was a most remarkable clean-up operation. It was one which virtually all forensic experts insist could not happen.
Dr Michael Barber, a forensic scientist specialising in footmarks and fingerprints, took the stand. He had been asked by the prosecution to examine a piece of carpet from the living room at 9 Kelvin Road. On the exhibit sent to him at his London laboratory, he found three marks. One was a print made by footwear; the other two were handprints, he thought. Analysis of the prints indicated the presence of blood in all three. He carried out tests to see if the handprints could have been made by a hand inside a sports sock. Dr Barber confirmed that a hand shape would be visible even if a sock had been worn.
Cross-questioned by Peter Rouch, Dr Barber said that his tests ‘resulted in marks that were indistinguishable from those found at the murder scene’. In his opinion, ‘the two hand marks found on the living room carpet at [9] Kelvin Road could have been made either by a hand wet with blood, or by a hand inside a sports sock which was itself wet with blood’.
When opening his case for the prosecution, Patrick Harrington had told the court that a blood-stained sock found at the murder scene might have been used by the killer as a glove worn on the right hand. But, he added, handprints did not have anything like the status of fingerprints. He also told the court that, according to one expert, the handprint could have been made by the defendant Dai Morris.
Chepstow-based forensic scientist and DNA analysis expert Michael Appleby also told the court that he had examined hundreds of items removed from the murder scene. He confirmed that while he detected DNA from all four of the victims, he found no blood or cellular material on any of the items which belonged to the defendant. But cellular material found on one of Mandy Power’s inner thighs could have come from bodily fluid or tissue emanating from Alison Lewis, he said.
Finally, Peter Rouch told the jury that Home Office scientists had examined hundreds of items removed from 9 Kelvin Road and had also carried out a detailed examination of the house. With the exception of the broken gold neck-chain lying in a pool of blood, no DNA, fingerprints or other trace evidence was found that linked Morris to the crime scene.