Who killed Jerzy Strzadala?

In April 1948, the body of Jerzy Strzadala was located in Aberdare Park, South Wales. He had been murdered but until now, little has been known about his death.

This episode delves deep into his case, sharing his story and what is known about his murder. 

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Sources

https://eehe.org.uk/?p=63064
https://www.polishexilesofww2.org/stanislaw-linda
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/frenzied-murder-miner-welsh-park-19297113
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66581131

Transcript

 A quick note on pronunciation. I am not a native Polish speaker and today's episode contains a Polish name. Despite seeking advice on pronunciation from Mags, I still struggled with it. And so, to avoid causing any offence, I am going to say his full name only once in the introduction. After that, I will refer to him as Jerzy or as George, which is the English name that he adopted whilst living here.

Without further ado, let's get into today's episode. It was the 20th of April, 1948. Britain was in the midst of its post war struggle for recovery. The country was in ruin. And the founding of the NHS was a matter of weeks away. But in Aberdare, a small village in the Cunnan Valley, in the county of Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales, a group of young boys discovered something that would forever change their lives.

Taking a walk through Aberdare Park, a location that we have discussed in a previous episode, the boys discovered a body. It was the body of a young man, and he had been murdered. What followed was an investigation that surprised the small village, baffled the local police, and brought a celebrity detective to their doorsteps.

The victim was Jerzy Strażdowa, a Polish immigrant who had allegedly come to the UK after the Second World War. A widely liked man who worked in the local coal mine, his death was brutal and with suggested links to Nazi concentration camps, it was a murder that horrified the local community. When I first stumbled upon this case, it's safe to say that it intrigued me, and I fell into a rabbit hole of research.

Because this case is one that is incredibly close to home. In this case, the murder location is literally over the other side of the mountain, and it's right opposite the school I attended. And yet, with it being over 80 years old, It was one that I had never heard of. As someone who reads about mysteries and true crime cases and has an avid interest in history, it was something that I could not easily forgive.

Because this case is a curious mix of both. A true crime case that has a strange and curious connection to the Second World War. My particular area of historical interest. Until now, little has been known about Yeo Ji, who he was, where he came from, or what we know about his death. What has been presented is a mixed map of sensationalism, with some sources seeming to suggest that his death may have even been linked to the Holocaust.

But as with many things in life, and particularly true crime, things were not as clear cut as they seemed. The media coverage led you to believe one thing, but having submitted a Freedom of Information request to South Wales Police, and having obtained a somewhat redacted copy of the report that was written in 1948, some of the hidden facts are herein presented.

In today's episode, you're going to meet Yerji. Or George, as his friends and colleagues called him. And learn the known facts of his murder. What follows is the fullest and most encompassing version of that story that is publicly available at this precise moment in time.

This case first came on my radar in August of 2023, as the BBC had published a news article about the case. Titled, Aberdare, the park murder that may have had Hitler links, it's safe to say that it caught my attention. Aberdare is a small village in the Cannon Valley, an area that is situated just over a mountain from where I live.

And it's also the village in which I attended secondary school. It's a village that you have already heard referenced, because it also featured in a previous episode about the Raglan bus crash. The BBC article outlined the story of Yerges Strasbourg, at least what was publicly available at that time.

But this article focused more on the celebrity metropolitan detective who had come to Wales to investigate than it did on the victim himself. It did outline the bare bones of the case, offering a very basic understanding of what the police had uncovered and what was known about Jerzy, a Polish man who the BBC labelled as an immigrant.

Needless to say, that was only partially accurate. It finished by highlighting a potential theory, that it was possible that Jerzy had been killed in what they labeled a potential, quote, revenge attack. It suggested that due to the potential sighting of another Polish man within the area at around the time of the murder, It was possible that a grudge from Poland had been concluded in the UK.

Specifically, it suggested that they may have known each other from an interaction at a concentration camp in Poland. It was further suggested that either one of them may have been a guard. While the other, a victim. This article had me hooked, and I wanted to know more. But disappointingly for me, there was very little information available.

Fast forward to April this year, and something strange happened. It was a sunny day, the rare kind for Britain in 2024, and I took my dog for a walk to Aberdare Park with my family. There was a fun fair in the park, it was heaving, and we decided to sit down and enjoy the atmosphere. I left my grandparents on a bench near the lake, while myself and my mum went to get ice creams.

While there, my friendly and personable grandad struck up a conversation with an older gentleman who was sitting next to him. This man was only a couple of years older than my grandfather, but had lived in Aberdare all his life, and he started to tell my grandad about Yurji's murder. He remembered aspects of it and told my granddad that he could never understand how the murder had never been solved.

Knowing about this podcast, my granddad called me over and asked the man to tell me about the story. He was astounded when I told him that not only had I read about it, but I'd already considered including it in an episode. He urged me to consider going into detail with the case and to do what I could do to raise awareness.

So, I did. That evening I revisited what I had already found and started to consider if there were any further routes for me to take. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to South Wales Police, hoping that perhaps their cold case team would allow me access. They declined my initial request, advising me that there were boxes and boxes of evidence, and that under the law, they were able to decline because of the sheer level of work that my initial request would have involved.

But they did offer to send me the report that had been written in 1948. I accepted their offer immediately, telling them that this was perfect. It would probably contain as much information as they had at the time, and all I needed to know. That was in April, and months later, I was still waiting. The report itself had been written following the inquest, and was largely based on the investigation conducted by the aforementioned celebrity detective.

The man in question, Robert Honeyfabian. This man, or R. H. as he tended to be known, was from the Metropolitan Police Force and he had a track record. He had been sent to Aberdare to assist with the investigation, setting himself up in a local hotel and establishing what would now be called an incident office.

This man was big news, with his appearance gathering as much local media attention as the murder itself. He had recently cracked several high profile cases in London. and was a figure that drew fascination from the community. One such notable case that he worked on was that of Alec D. Antiquus, as this was a case that eventually assisted with the abolition of the death penalty.

Born in 1911, Alec D. Antiquus was the son of an English mother and an Italian father, but in 1947, Alec was murdered. At the time of his death, he was married to a woman from Croydon, and was a father to six children, the eldest of whom was said to have been 12 at the time of his death. He owned a motorcycle repair shop in Collierswood and on the 29th of April, 1947, he lost his life.

The incident had initially started as a hold up at a jeweller's shop in Charlotte Street near the Tottenham Court Road, with three armed, masked men having left their car running on the street outside. The manager of the store had tackled one of the men, and he was rewarded by having been hit around the head with a pistol butt.

One of the suspects had even fired their weapon at a store manager, but thankfully it had missed. The manager's assistant had already activated the incident alarm, But before authorities could arrive, the men had returned to their car and attempted to flee. But there was a slight issue with their getaway plan, as the road had been blocked by a lorry.

Aware that their time was running out, the men fled on foot. waving their guns to show passers by that they were armed. Unfortunately, Alec De Antiquis was also in the area on his motorbike because he was collecting repair parts for his business. Having witnessed the scene, he tried to stop them from fleeing and was fatally shot in the head.

The robbers were able to escape, and Alec lost his life. R. H. Fabian was the detective that was tasked with solving this case, and he knew that it all resolved around one key witness. A cabbie who had been driving along Tottenham Court Road moments before the incident. He had witnessed a man jumping on the running board of a tram.

wearing what he described as what looked like a bandage around his jaw. But the man was pushed off and he then disappeared into an office block called Brook House. For whatever reason, it took three days for this information to reach the police. But when it did, they hit the jackpot. They searched the building and found a number of important items.

Firstly, they found the key for the getaway car, but also a raincoat and other items of outer clothing. They also found a scarf that had been used as a mask. Using good old fashioned policing, remembering that this was the 40s and at least 40 years before DNA, the police investigated every avenue possible.

The jacket located had a numbered maker's ticket sewn into it, allowing them to track down the exact manufacturer. And this is where things get interesting. That number allowed them to then find the name of a buyer. And Fabian knew the family. It might seem strange to us that a coat would be registered to a person, but this was 1947.

Britain remained on a war footing in some regards. Rationing was a British policy that limited the amount of food, clothing, and other essentials that a person was able to purchase. Something that was done to ease the impact of limited resources. As a result, the coat would have been purchased with a ration coupon, and hence it was trackable.

The jacket was connected to a man named George Vernon, but it was his younger cousin who had drawn the attention of the police before. Because Charles Henry Jenkins was known to have been violent, and Vernon confirmed that he had lent the jacket to Jenkins. The police placed Jenkins in a lineup, but witnesses failed to identify him, and for the time being, he was released without charge.

But it was during this process that something curious happened, as Jenkins told the police, without prompting, that he had lent the raincoat to a man named Walsh. The police were stunned. They hadn't mentioned anything to Jenkins about the jacket. But specifically, they hadn't told him that that was why he was there.

Jenkins told the police that he, Walsh and another man had been involved in an earlier robbery. And that it was to Walsh that he had given the coat. Walsh admitted his part in this offence but there was no way he was going down for murder. Instead, he offered the names of the other men who were part of his gang.

He incriminated Jenkins, but he also named Christopher James Gagety and Terence Peter Rolt as his colleagues. A little while later, the police had another breakthrough, when two guns were found in river mud that were able to be linked to the murder. One of them had fired the bullet that had missed the shop manager, while the other had fired the bullet that had killed Alec.

Gaggerty and Rolt confessed, but Jenkins refused to comment. In July 1947, All appeared at the Old Bailey and were found guilty. Jenkins and Gaggerty were hung for their crimes, but Rolt escaped the death penalty because he was under 18. This caused controversy at the time, because it was never discovered which of the group had actually committed the murder.

The idea that two of the three could be killed while one was saved when it was possible that the one that was saved was the killer angered many. It's essentially a case of joint enterprise murder, a controversial law in the UK that has since been mostly abandoned. It's a controversial law that basically states that anyone present at a murder can be found guilty of having committed it.

However, justice groups have tended to criticize it heavily, as there are historically only two groups of people that tend to be prosecuted under it. That is, people of colour and people from working class backgrounds. There are other instances where it could have been applied as And it hasn't been. This has led to huge amounts of criticism from campaign groups, with them believing that prosecutors tend to pick and choose when they use it.

And with certain groups of society tending to fall victim to it more often than not, it has now been somewhat stopped. Let's look at an example. Take the killers of Stephen Lawrence. One could argue that those six, and yes, I said six because I believe there were six, not five, were the prime example of a joint enterprise murder.

They were all racist. They were all present, and they were all involved in some way or another, and yet they were never charged with joint enterprise murder. The debate about capital punishment had been rolling around for a while, but the case of Rolt was one that actually eventually contributed to the discourse surrounding it, and in the 1960s it was abolished.

It's fair to say that Fabian had proven himself to be a competent and thorough investigator, but he didn't always get it right. Another one of his most notable cases was the unsolved murder of Charles Walton. Charles was an Englishman, whose body had been found on the evening of the 14th of February, 1945.

His body was located at the Furze Farm on the slopes of Meon Hill in Warwickshire, England. Much like the focus of this episode, that killer was to evade Fabian, and to date, it remains the oldest unsolved murder on the books of Warwick Police. In this case, there was a prime suspect, a man named Alfred John Potter, for whom Walton had been working, but there was never enough evidence to convict.

And that seamlessly brings us back to the murder of Yaraji. Whose case is another that Fabian was never able to solve, despite his best efforts. In July 2024, South Wales Police finally sent me the redacted version of the report. At first, I was disappointed and sceptical, assuming that when they said redacted, a huge chunk would have been taken out.

But in reality, it was only names and identifiers. Who Jerzy was, the circumstances around his death, and what, if anything, was uncovered about the murder, was contained within those pages. So, without further ado, here is everything we know about the murder of Jerzy Strasdorfer. The document starts by outlining the important information about the inquest itself and by summarising the crime.

It states that the inquest took place on the 21st of May 1948 in the courtroom of Aberdare and that it was presided over by the coroner Mr Alwen John and there was a jury present. It outlines that Jerzy was 33 at the time of his death, and that he was an employed miner of the Miners Hostel in Hildreincklemorgen.

It states that his body had been located on the 20th of April, 1948, at around 1. 10pm. The inquest had found that the cause of death had been quote, murder against some person or persons unknown, end quote. Having established the inquest's circumstances and conclusion The report then outlines what was known about Jerzy and within a few short paragraphs, many of the falsehoods about this case were finally revealed.

Jerzy Strażdowa was born on the 18th of April 1915 in the village of Zabozorzy, which is situated in southern Poland. As far as we know, he never married, and between 1935 and 1943, he had worked as a wheelwright in Poland. In 1939, the Germans invaded, and to the best of our knowledge, Jerzy lived under their rule without any major issues.

But in 1943, he had been drafted into the German Army and served with them for a very brief period of time, because in 1944, he was captured by the British forces. He, along with many others, were brought to the United Kingdom. But on the 3rd of July 1944, he was released. The English authorities had been satisfied that he was Polish.

Based on what we know about this period and how the historical data coincides with Jerzy's joining the German army, It's highly likely that he was forced to join. Between 1939 and 1943, the Nazis had enacted their racist policies towards Poles in an entirely different fashion, deciding not to conscript.

However, in 1943, with the war having recently turned fortunes and with them now losing countless German soldiers on a daily basis, From 1943 until the end of the war, Polish men were conscripted into the German army, with him still facing racism, but with it now being under a military command. Based on the fact that Jerzy was conscripted into the force in 1943, it was highly probable that this was done underneath this policy change.

For that reason, the British would probably have been more sympathetic to him, because unlike the German prisoners of war, who were held until its cessation, Jerzy was one of many Poles who were willingly released. After all, Poland was a victim of Nazi aggression, and the men who had been conscripted hadn't chosen to find themselves in that plight.

Jerzy was sent to Polkomet camp near Whitburn, West Lothian in Scotland. The report itself doesn't actually include much discussion about this, but I wanted to know as much as I could. It turns out the Polkomet camp was situated on the grounds of the Polkomet estate, and that during the war it was used as a military space, with the Polish army in exile specifically using it for their recruits.

On the 26th of July 1944, Jerzy was transferred to a signal and training centre that was stationed at Turf Hills camp in Kinross, Scotland. On the 18th of December 1944, Jerzy was made a medical orderly of that camp. From what we know, he remained there until 1946. On the 22nd of September, 1946, he was enlisted into the Polish Resettlement Corps.

He served with them until the 13th of June, 1947. When he then went to a mining training centre at Oakdale, Monmouthshire, in Wales. On the 4th of July, 1947, Jerzy left Oakdale and went to the Miners Hostel in Hyderwine, Aberdare. It was here that he was living at the time of his death. On the 4th of July, 1947, Jerzy left Oakdale and went to the Miners Hostel in Hirwine.

It was here that he was living at the time of his death. From here, he was able to easily access the local pit to Herbert's Colliery, and it was here that he worked until his death. For international listeners, it's worth highlighting that the coal industry was vital for the South Wales region at this time and the entire area was known for its coal.

It was regarded to be the best, purest and most effective coal seam in the world and it was often nicknamed Black Gold for its quality and the profit that it made. Did you know that the first ever million pound cheque in the entire world was signed in the coal exchange in Cardiff Bay. Not America, not London, but here in Wales.

That was how valuable the coal industry was. And the miners themselves were also regarded to be vital. During the Second World War, they were one of the few industries that was protected from conscription. They were not needed in Germany or on the other war fronts. But they were needed here to keep the coal industry going.

Coal was vital to the war effort. And no doubt Yerzhi would have been joining that industry, aware that it came with a sense of pride. The coal industry is something that we will be revisiting time and time again. Particularly when we eventually discuss some of the coal disasters. The most famous of which, of course, being Sanghenib and Abavan.

While the coal industry is now non existent in the region, during the 1940s there would have been a substantial number of active pits. It was a dirty, dangerous job, but those who did it tended to love it. And there was a sense of victory that came with each coal collection. But more importantly, it was the sense of community and pride that many miners remember the most.

Coal mines tended to be generational, with brothers, fathers and sons all working within them. Between July 1947 and the date of his murder in April 1948, Jerzy was working as an assistant collier. The day before his death, on the 19th April 1948, Jerzy and an unnamed collier for whom he was the assistant, had worked the day shift.

They had clocked in at 6. 30am and clocked back out at 2. 30pm. After his shift, Yerji jumped on a bus that were taken back to Hirwain, the small area of Aberdare where he was living. It was a short bus ride, but he alighted the bus at the hostel. It was there that Jerzy was witnessed by several people throughout the afternoon of the 19th, the hostel manager being just one of them.

However, at around 5. 10pm, Jerzy and a fellow minor, who was 19 years old, took a bus into the larger village of Aberdare. Before climbing onto the bus, he was Jerzy had asked his fellow miner if he had a change of a 1 note, an obsolete tender that most of us have not come into contact with. However, the young lad didn't have the change.

Instead, he stated that he only had enough for his fare and a second spare half crown. Unable to change the 1 note for Jerzy, he lent him the second half a crown, allowing Jerzy to board the bus without breaking into his note. They both got off the bus in Aberdare, and while Jerzy went to the post office, the younger miner went.

Shortly after, they reunited outside the Wrex, a local cinema, and Jerzy returned the money to the younger miner. While Jerzy was handing him this money, he also noticed that Jerzy had a 10 note, some silver, some coppers, and a registered envelope. The men then parted company, with Jerzy telling his colleague that he didn't know where he was going to go.

His friend said that he would see him again, and the younger man went into the cinema. The next sighting of Jerzy is at 6. 15pm when he is witnessed at 14 Cannon Street, which is a short walk from the wrecks. At this location, he purchased six sheets of brown paper from the newsagent. Shortly after this sighting, Jerzy is witnessed by another Polish minor, who spots him near the Palladium Cinema.

This location was also on Cannon Street. Presumably, this street was the High Street in much the same way that it is today. Between 6. 15pm and 6. 40pm, Jerzy is witnessed by a local secretary, who saw him walking up and down outside the Empire Ballroom, which is also on Cannon Street. She told the police that his behaviour suggested to her that he may have been waiting for someone.

Many of these businesses no longer exist, but the buildings themselves do, and I was able to find these locations on a map. All of them fit with him being in the high street before making his way towards the park. Between 6. 40pm and 7. 45pm when Jerzy is next sighted, his location remains a mystery.

However at 7. 45pm he is seen just outside Aberdare Park by a miner who also worked at the colliery. The report makes it clear that Jerzy was well known to this individual and it is therefore a trusted sighting. He told the police that he witnessed Jerzy meet a man whom he believed to have been aged between 24 and 26 years old.

He describes the man as being short, stout, with dark hair and that he was wearing a blue pinstriped suit. He places the two men at the park lane entrance to the park. The witness suggests that the two men were speaking in Polish and that the meeting appeared to have been by appointment. He says that they did not seem to be arguing, but appeared to be friendly, but he did not see where the two men went next.

There are a handful of other sightings after this one. However, the police are confident that this is the last confirmed sighting of Yereji. The next sighting is unconfirmed, but it does sound highly likely to have been Yereji. This witness is the only person named in the report because he falls outside of standard data protection guidelines.

That being because this man was 60 at the time of the murder and is now deceased and so the police will have established That there was no harm in his name being included. His name was Mr. Isaac George Powell, and he told the police that he thinks he saw Yeoji near to where his body was eventually discovered.

According to this witness, he saw a man walking near to the boathouse in the park at around 9pm. He remembered the time because it was just before closing. He told the police that another man seemed to be following him. He noticed this because it struck him as strange, particularly because it appeared that the first man was trying to shake the second one off.

The first man then started to run, with the second then copying. At this point, they left his vision, and he was unable to see where they went. However, this location is only 20 yards away from the plantation where Jerzy's body was eventually located. While unable to say definitively that it was Jerzy, the report outlines that the police do believe this was a genuine sighting, and that it might have been the quote, preliminary to the murder.

Early the following morning, several of Jerzy's colleagues noticed that his bed had not been slept in, but they didn't find it concerning. For that reason, it was not reported. At 1. 10pm, a group of young boys were playing in the park, when they discovered Jerzy's body in a plantation of rhododendron bushes.

The victim was laying on his back with his face covered in blood and the boys ran for help. They headed towards a nearby street where they found a woman. The woman who greeted them was astounded by their discovery and she followed them to the park where they pointed out the body. She then told a number of staff in the park and they also went to see the body.

One of these men noticed that a wallet laid next to the deceased and that there was an identity card visible. They also noticed a brown paper bag which contained a registered envelope and a roll of brown paper. There was also a piece of white paper that was later identified as Jerzy's pay packet. At this point, the park superintendent was informed and a call was placed to Aberdeer Police Station.

At 1. 30pm, The local sergeant arrived and he better described the location of the body. Quote, The body lay as in the photographs and was 24 yards from the Gland Road boundary wall of the park and 13 yards from the pathway leading from the park to Gland Road. End quote. It was apparent to everyone that Jerzy had been dead for a little while because his body was cold and while a local doctor did attend it was only to certify death.

The body was not touched at any point. The plantation was then searched but the only item found was an alien's registration card. A really ugly way of saying that a person was from overseas. Unfortunately this card was registered to Yersey and so it offered nothing more than just the identity of the body.

A number of senior officers from Glamorgan Constabulary attended and they took images of the scene. You might hear the term Glamorgan referenced a few more times in this episode, but the area is now known as the Rhondda Cynon Taf, the county having changed name a few times since. At 5. 30pm a doctor arrived and examined the body in situ and shortly after the body was removed.

It was then taken to the mortuary at East Glamorgan County Hospital. On the 21st of April the post mortem examination was undertaken. It found that death had been caused by shock following multiple stab wounds. The doctor suggested that the wounds had been caused by a very sharp and pointed knife, which would have had two edges and a blade of between half and one inch in breadth.

He estimated that it was roughly six inches in length. He claimed that the weapon had been used at least three times and that the injuries had been inflicted with great force. The deceased had also received substantial defensive injuries to his hands and forearms. That afternoon, the police called the Metropolitan and asked for their help with the investigation.

This is something I wholeheartedly admire, and it's something I wish more police forces would do. There are so many incidences of police forces struggling to investigate under the weight of extraordinary circumstances and in those conditions it is so easy to make mistakes. I'm specifically thinking about the murder of Jessica and Holly, for example.

It took far too long for a more experienced force to be asked to assist. In this case, it wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome. But the killer would have been caught earlier and there's a possibility that some of the evidence would not have been destroyed. The Metropolitan Police agreed and RH Fabian responded.

Just one day later on the 22nd of February, Fabian and a handful of other detectives arrived in Aberdare and were briefed on the circumstances of the murder. The assisting Metropolitan detectives hit the ground running. visiting the park just hours after they'd arrived. The inquest report notes that Fabian found the location to have been far from ideal, commenting that the plantation in which the body was found was overgrown in the same way that the others around it were.

According to his comments, the ground beneath was several inches deep in dead leaves, and it was his opinion that the wastes had likely been there for years. For this reason, while a search of the area had been undertaken, the Met was sceptical about how thorough the search could have been. And so, the Metropolitan decided to have another attempt to search the area more thoroughly.

Consequently, local officers were put to work with hooks and other implements to thin the plantation and the whole area was thoroughly raked in an endeavour to find the weapon used to commit the crime, which it was thought might have been thrown away. or any other evidence likely to lead to the murderer.

The police then sought to bring in mine detectors or metal detectors, as it was believed that these might help uncover the knife. Fabian was also advised that there had been a thunderstorm the night prior, meaning that the body and any evidence had likely been affected by those adverse weather conditions.

It is therefore probable that some evidence had been washed away. Despite this, Fabian reported that there was still some blood evidence present. A considerable quantity of blood could be seen where the body had lain, and there were blood spots on the undersides of the leaves in the bushes in the immediate vicinity, indicating that a considerable struggle must have taken place.

Samples of this blood had already been taken away by what was then the Glamorgan Police. The officers had also conducted door to door inquiries, visiting a number of cottages that sat around 20 yards from the scene of the murder. However, nobody had seen anything. The Met officers, including Fabian, and then attended the mortuary, where they met with the doctor who had undertaken the post mortem.

It was discovered that Gheorghe had received 44 stab wounds, most of which were superficial. Three of them had been far more damaging, with these causing considerable blood loss. All of the injuries were to the upper part of his body, with his torso, arms and hands being the most affected. The blood loss had been severe, with doctors discovering that his heart and blood vessels had contracted and that they'd been entirely emptied of blood.

They were able to estimate that Yeoju was killed between 8pm and 12pm on the 19th of April. Quote, It was known that the deceased had last taken a meal at the hostel at about 5pm on the 19th of April and from the state of digestion of stomach contents, the temperature of the body at the time it was found and the rain washed conditions of the bloodstains following the midnight storm on the 19th of April.

The examiner estimated that Strasdor had met his death sometime between 8pm and 12pm on the 19th. End quote. As most of us are painfully aware, the vast majority of murders are personal in nature, meaning that the murderer is very often known to the victim. To that end, the police wanted to know as much about Jerzy as was possible.

But they were not able to find out much about him because colleagues revealed that for the most part he had been a man who kept himself to himself. He had no close friends and Fabian described him as having been a secretive type. He admits that finding a motive was difficult and very little information was available about what possessions he might have had on him at the time of the murder.

It was learnt that Jerzy had had a wristwatch, but descriptions of this watch varied greatly and there was no consensus about exactly how the watch had looked. It was also reported that he often carried a fountain pen. The brown paper bag earlier mentioned, which contained a registered envelope, was found at the scene.

This bag, which was the kind used by grocers, was bloodstained on one side, and was also found to have a number of partial fingerprints. These prints were compared to the prints of Yeoji, but they didn't match. Later testing also ascertained that they didn't match any of those who had been at the scene either.

That said, the quality of this sample isn't said to be particularly brilliant, because the bag had been affected by rain that had fallen the night before. They were regarded to have too few indicators to have been of any real value. Quote,

And although small portions of fingerprints are visible, there are far too few characteristics to classify. It is a matter for conjecture whether an identification could be made from a set of fingerprints of a suspect. On the 24th of April, an appeal was published in the Polish Gazette, with the description of the wristwatch and the fountain pen having been included.

However, based on the information provided by the person who last spent time with Jerzy, It's evident that he also had a sum of money on him. And according to other sources, this tended to be standard for him. He was widely known to have been someone who carried cash, often between 10 and 20. However, in the hours before his murder, the report suggests that he only had a few shillings on him.

That's, that's contrary to what the younger miner said, and so, based on what we know, it's likely that money had been stolen. Jerzy was a sober man, said to never consume alcohol or smoke, and it's believed that much of his money was spent on people back home. It was said to have been common knowledge that he often purchased items of clothing that he would then send back to Poland.

And it was in this information that the police found their first potential clue. One source, a fellow Polish miner, told the police that he had conversed with Jerzy on the day before the murder. According to him, that afternoon, Sunday the 18th of April, Jerzy had told him that the following afternoon he was going to Aberdare to purchase a clothing coupon from another man.

You may remember the relevancy of clothing coupons from the earlier Fabian case, because this was a practice that was left over from the Second World War. According to this witness, Jerzy was to meet the man outside a public house near to Aberdare Park. I find this really interesting, especially when we consider what Jerzy had purchased while in Aberdare Town Centre.

He had bought a registered envelope The decision was taken to wider their inquiries. First was the short and stout man who was witnessed in the park, with it now being presumed that the second figure was probably Yeo Ji. The second action was to contact dryers and laundrettes in the hope that they might have been tasked with cleaning bloodied clothing.

on or around the date of the murder. The police also asked for people to watch out for blood stained money. Fabian outlines the process that was taken to circulate this information. Quote, Because of the mountainous nature of the country, ordinary wireless broadcasts are difficult to receive, and South Wales is covered by landlines of a broadcast relay service, which has an office in Aberdare.

We were thus able to arrange for information concerning the murder and a request for information and assistance to be broadcast to the whole of the Aberdare Valley. In addition, full particulars of the missing property and the request for information were published in the various local and county newspapers, and both the press and the broadcast announcements asked for information concerning blood stained money.

While a handful of leads were eventually to come in, the report criticises the lack of interest in the local area, claiming locals, nor polls, showed much interest in seeing the case solved. It describes how very few people responded. The next part of the report contains one specific detail that has been entirely missed from any media coverage that I've found on this case, but I thought it was a rather interesting one.

Because alongside the concentration camp theory, the second most widely reported is that this was a robbery gone wrong. These reports always reference the watch, suggesting that it was one of the few items that was missing. However, the report reveals that actually, at least a part of the watch was located.

In the days following the murder, a detailed search of the area was conducted. In the debris, not all that far from the body, the strap of a wristwatch was found. It was identified from its, quote, peculiar nature. Specifically, the police were able to identify the wristwatch as Jerzy's because it had been severed with a sharp instrument.

Cuts on Jerzy's wrists seemed to match those on the watch strap, suggesting that the watch had been cut from his body. That means that the rest of the watch and the money were missing. The area was eventually cleared, and despite the use of metal detectors, the knife was never uncovered. The large lake that still sits in Aberdeer Park to this day was also drained, and the detectors were used along its base.

Again, nothing was ever found. The report recognises that some people did hand in blood stained notes to the local police officers. And while these were forwarded to the forensic teams, they tended to only carry animal blood. And the same thing seemed to have happened with clothing items. Somewhat at a loss, the police turned back to Jerzy's private life, and specifically, a number of letters that they had paid to have translated.

Most of these letters were between Jerzy and his relatives in Poland. However, there were some letters that were written between Jerzy and a young woman whose name has never been made public. It is recorded in the report that her dress was unknown at this time. But they also discovered a second letter linked to this young woman that gave the police pause and they started to wonder if they had found a motive.

Quote, There was also an unsigned letter written in Polish and obviously addressed to Strasdora, postmarked Kielce 5th 8th of October 1946. Which, on translation, proved to be an extremely abusive nature, and in which the writer cautioned Strasdurbar against seeing some unnamed girl again, as it would be very bad for him.

After further obscene abuse, this letter finished with the phrase, quote, to our pleasant next meeting, end quote. The police recruited the Chief Constable of Perthshire and asked for their forces assistance in uncovering the letter writer and the young woman in question. On the 7th of May, police in South Wales received a phone call.

The unnamed woman had been found. According to enquiries, she had become friendly with a number of the Polish soldiers whom had been stationed at Turf Hills Camp, the location where Jerzy was, between 44 and 46. For that reason, it was presumed that there may be interesting information located within that camp.

On the 8th of May, Fabian and Detective Inspector of the Glamorganshire Constabulary travelled to Kinross to interview the woman. It was revealed that she was 22 years old and was a shop assistant in a drapery store. She told the police that she had met Strasdour in around September 1945. When a local church had hosted a dance, she had been working in the canteen and was handed a letter by a different Polish boy who indicated that Jerzy was the writer.

The letter expressed an admiration for the girl and asked to meet her. Interestingly, the letter signed off with a different surname, Kowal. According to this report, it was pretty common at the time. Quote, it should be mentioned here that the use of two surnames is not uncommon among Poles who, like Strasdorfer, were at one time taken prisoner by the Germans and later escaped.

The alias was adopted to safeguard relatives in Poland from German reprisal, end quote. Both names are actually linked to Jerzy in his army records. The young woman then told police that she had never actually met or been introduced to Yaraji, but that he tended to follow her and to sit near her whenever he was able to.

However, she made it clear to the investigators that while this had felt inappropriate, he had never tried to touch her. Let's be clear here. This behavior is not okay. And while we only have one version of events, we advocate for believing women. Yeah, she was out of order to continue this attention when it was clearly not wanted.

The young woman told police that she was also friendly with another Polish soldier and that on one occasion she had showed a letter from Strasdor to this other individual. But that is where the police hit a snag. She told them that the Angry Letter writer had left the Turf Hills camp in August 1946 and that he had then moved around the country for a short period of time.

However, in April 1947, he had left the UK and had gone to live with his parents in France. Helpfully, she had received a number of letters from him from France and these were a direct match to the writing on the Angry Letter that Jerzy had. within his possessions. He had definitely written that letter but what were the chances that he had been in Aberdare at the time of the murder?

The police contacted Interpol and asked that he be located and interviewed immediately however based on the report this was never done. What the police were able to uncover was that he had not been living at his home address in France at the time that he guessed she was murdered. But, evidence also suggested that he was likely still on the continent at the time, because Home Affairs records put him as having left the UK on the 2nd April 1947, and there is no record of him returning, but particularly not around the date in question.

Back at the camp and police were able to locate a small number of Polish soldiers who had known Jerzy. Whilst he was at the camp. However, they were not able to provide any more information that assisted. One of these men remembered Yerzhi very well, as he had been the camp's medical officer while Yerzhi was the medical orderly.

This lieutenant was unique, because he seems to have forged a closer relationship with Yerzhi than anyone else with whom the police had spoken. For one thing, it was he who taught Yerzhi to write letters, as well as and is said to have assisted him in the English language. Interestingly, he had also helped him in writing one of the letters to the young women they'd interviewed.

This letter was in Jerzy's possession because it had been returned to him due to the fact that the address had been written incorrectly. He further reflected much of what other people had said about his nature, that he was a good person but that he was secretive. For reasons that are only touched upon in the report, the police officers decided to show the lieutenant the images of Jerzy's body and he offered an opinion, stating that based on the photos he believed that another Polish man had likely committed the murder.

The report outlines that there was roughly 2, 000 Polish men living in South Wales at the time, with most of them falling within the Canaan Valley due to the mine. Quote, There was at one time considerable resentment of the Poles by the local people, but this has now somewhat died down and they are tolerated.

End quote. Immigration into South Wales is something that I am very familiar with and is a topic that I studied as part of my undergraduate degree. Surprisingly, there has been a fair amount of immigration into South Wales since the early 19th century. Largely because of, of course, the coal mining industry.

At first it was the Irish, then the Italians came, and then more recently it was the Poles. The Irish specifically were treated pretty badly by those in the South Wales Valleys, as there was a perception that they were taking mining jobs, particularly when the other miners were on strike. They faced a huge amount of racism in the Valleys, and there were numerous reports of racist incidents.

The Italians, on the other hand, tended to open cafes and ice cream parlours, a legacy that has left its marks on our towns. Almost every principal village in South Wales has at least one Italian cafe, and Italian names remain prominent. Then there were the Poles. a group that faced a huge amount of prejudice at first.

The Polish miners were often underpaid and the report records that this had started to cause some resentment between Welsh miners and Polish. The Polish miners found it hard to accept that they were being paid less. for essentially doing the same job. Quite right, I fully understand why they'd feel that way.

But even more so when you consider the circumstances under which so many of them found themselves here. They had escaped a war. There were three hostels for Polish miners within the area and many chose to reside in these because of convenience. However, a number had also found private lodgings and a significant amount had even married locals.

The pits worked on a three shift schedule, and so the police asked the local collieries to provide information on the shift patterns for all aliens. They believed that this information might help them to ascertain who had had the opportunity to commit the murder. meaning which members of staff were working the same shift patterns as Jerzy.

Once identified, these people were then interrogated and their personal possessions were searched. The police then turned back to the Polish miner who had seen Jerzy with another Polish man. They showed this witness the alien registration certificate photographs for those on the same shift pattern.

hoping that he might be able to pick out the man he saw. They also arranged other lineups with all the residents of Hidderwine Hostel presented in batches to the witness who saw the two men arguing. There is no information on if any of them were able to identify anyone, but the assumption is that they did.

that he couldn't. The police also confirmed that they had checked with all mental health hospitals within the local area, using wording that is outdated and which doesn't need to be repeated here. However, from what they could tell, there was no one missing from any of these institutions on the night of the murder.

The report closes by saying that there are still lines to investigate and that Fabian intended to return once all those lines had been followed. I was unable to find anything further, but considering this case is unsolved, it seems unlikely that there was much more. From what we know, there have been no major developments in the case in the years since, and to all intents and purposes, the case is now cold.

I'm sure there will be some of you wondering if there is any point in even discussing a case as old as this, with its age making it highly unlikely that anyone will ever be convicted. Indeed. After all, there is a huge risk, and some would say likelihood, that the person who committed this murder has already passed.

But regardless, in my opinion, Yeoji's story deserves to be told. And while it's unlikely that anyone will ever face justice, it is possible that maybe one day his killer could be identified. Just Nottingham announced that they had identified two suspects in an unsolved murder from the 60s. In this case, the murder was only realised last year when human remains were discovered in a field on farmland in the April of 2023.

They were identified as having been Alfred Swinscoe, a 54 year old father of six who vanished following a night out with friends on the 27th of January 1967. It has since been reported that he had been drinking with two of his sons and a few of his friends. He was last seen giving money to one of his sons, Gary, to purchase a round of drinks.

He then stepped outside of the pub to use the toilet, but was never seen again. Like Gergy, Alfred was also a coal miner. Having started his job at Langton Colliery, aged just 14 years old. He was a cutter, a person who operates a machine that cuts large chunks off the cold surface for other miners to then break apart.

He was a keen supporter of pigeon racing and had been given the nickname Sparrow or quote, Champion Pigeon Man of Pinkston. The skeleton remains revealed that Alfred had received a stab wound as well as blunt force trauma and his hand was found to have been broken. The police also found that it was unlikely that Alfred had been killed in that location.

In fact, they believed it was probable that he had been killed and initially concealed elsewhere. It was their belief that he had been moved to that location, quote, at a much later date. Despite the age of the case, the police thoroughly investigated and they have now revealed that two suspects have been identified.

Unfortunately, both are now deceased and they will never be prosecuted for their crimes. One of the suspects had a history of violence and he had previously been convicted of an assault in the April of 1966, a year prior to the murder of Alfred. The injuries caused by the suspect in this case were of a similar nature to the ones that Alfred was found to have received.

Based on what they had discovered, the police also believed that a car had to have been used in the cover up. Their rationale for this was that the distance between the pub and the location of where his body was recovered was a fair distance. However, in 1972 in the village of Pinkston, car ownership would have been incredibly rare.

Interestingly, a pair of socks was found on the body, and Mr Swincoe's grandson, Russell Lowbridge, was able to positively identify them as having belonged to his grandfather. The socks having been surprisingly well preserved. He told the BBC that the news had come as a shock, that they had not realised that Alfred had definitely been murdered, and that it had taken some time for the news to sink in.

Alongside his grandchildren, four of Alfred's six children are still alive and they deserve to know what happened. This is the best the police could do. In 2012, Gary, the son who had last been seen with his father, died, with Russell telling the BBC that Gary had been forever tormented. by his father's disappearance and that he had never gotten over it.

Russell finished by telling the BBC that, quote, Anybody that knew anything, they've kept a secret. It would be wonderful if people did come forward. It would help our minds rest. It will always haunt us. We'll always be left wondering. We have got some closure, but not full closure. There are still questions to be answered, end quote.

It's unlikely that those questions will ever be answered. And while we can speculate, We may never know why Alfred was killed, but the family have a name, and while that is not the full truth, it is something. A few days after his death, Jerzy was buried, with his funeral said to have been attended by numerous fellow miners.

There is actually a picture online of the casket surrounded by men in suits. Whether due to a sense of camaraderie or genuine friendship, Jerzy received a good send off. The route to the St. Teresa Church in Hillrine was lined by mourners who wanted to pay their respects and he was eventually buried in Aberdare.

As of 2024, the murder of Jerzy Strasdorfer remains unsolved, and it was one of the few that outwitted R. H. Fabian.