Swansea police are expected to re-open the 18-year-old case of the sex shop murder in which the shops manageress, Sandra Phillips, 38, was raped and then battered to death with a heavy telephone. They now suspect that a known sexual attacker who died in jail some years ago after contracting TB could have been responsible.
Sandra was killed at her Dillwyn Street sex shop on Friday, June 14th, 1985. An attempt to set the premises on fire with petrol erased all fingerprints. But only days later two brothers who lived as down-and-outs in Swansea were charged, tried and in June, 1986, jailed for life for the murder.
Six years later they were released by the Court of Appeal, after it emerged that one of them, who still lives on the streets in South Wales, had a penchant for inventing stories and confessing crimes.
DNA may now be sought from the dead suspects family in a bid to link him to a bloody handprint on a wall, as well as other items taken from the murder scene.