There was to be no welcome in the hillsides for businessman Malcolm Heaysman when he set out from Islington, London, to renovate a cottage he had bought at Gwynfe, near Llangadog. For on SEPTEMBER 30th, 1971, his mother found him beaten to death in his new home.
Police thought at first it was a contract killing, for one of Heaysmans pals was a man named Frederick Sewell, who had killed a police superintendent during a Blackpool robbery the previous month.
But it was no such thing. The killer was Heaysmans stepson Roy Searle, 23. After a series of family disputes over money, Searle went to South Wales, killed his stepfather, then went back to London. On January 30th, 1972, he was convicted at Swansea Crown Court and sentenced for what Mr. Justice Talbot described as a cruel and brutal murder.