I gave my mother a blow on the face because Peggy, my wife, cried out that my mother was beating her. My mother fell down under the blow. She did not speak. She groaned for a time. Peggy and two of my in-laws squeezed her throat until she ceased groaning. Peggy asked me to bury her, but I would not. They asked me to keep everything secret.
Thus did Richard Evans, 28, describe to the police the murder of his 70-year-old mother Tamar at their home in Merthyr Tydfil in April, 1842. The only difference was that it was Evans, and not his wife and in-laws, who did the strangling.
Evans, who had a long record of assault charges, was a serial seducer of women and young girls, and two years previously had escaped a murder charge because his mother gave him an alibi.
Tamar Evans was strangled by her son with a handkerchief, after which he fled. He offered no defence when he appeared at Cardiff Assizes, and was hanged on Saturday, July 23rd, 1842, outside Cardiff Prison.