Not sure if this is the right forum. Anyway,
30 years ago this week two innocent tourists (The Dixons) were killed with a shotgun on a Pembrokeshire coastal path.
The killer turned out to be a local psychopath / burgler / rapist, who happened to appear on Bullseye and also won £90k in a spot the ball competition. Name John William Cooper.
Interestingly, at the same time this local psycho was roaming the coastal path area, a PIRA ASU was hiding rather large stashes of weapons, in pretty much the same area. According to local reports, the IRA men were bringing the weapons onshore to the St Brides Bay area and taking them up to the coastal path area to bury them.
The IRA men were caught when workmen replacing a signpost found some wires and switches. Then a bird watcher told police he'd noticed some disturbed ground. The police (Dyfed Powys / Special Branch / Anti Terror?) laid in wait for months and caught the 2 IRA guys. They were imprisoned, but refused to discuss the Dixons killing.
Now, so what?
Well, there were a few points I found interesting about this story.:
I know this area and lugging weapons up to the coastal path and burying them would be quite a job. I can't imagine the PIRA were the fittest of men. Presumably this was done at night, to avoid tourists. Even so, in my experience farmers etc in these areas are very observant. I am very surprised the IRA managed to do this task undiscovered.
The local killer (Cooper) was a real night prowler. Always roaming the dark for victims and hiding items in hedgerows etc. I'd be very surprised if he and the IRA men hadn't noticed each others activities. Also, the IRA seem to have been busy hiding weapons in the area at the same time that the police were looking for Cooper, using dogs etc. Now as Cooper was armed with a shotgun, presumably these tracker dogs would have been trained to find explosive scent? Yet the dogs tracking Cooper never came across the IRA weapons cache?
The policeman who discovered the Dixons' bodies noted that they had been covered with vegetation in the same manner that the police had been trained to use to construct covert rural OPs, by the SAS.