good afternoon and welcome to true crime mysteries if you're new the channel hello
and welcome and if returning welcome back today we're discussing a serial killer from wales that
has recently been identified solving the cold case murders from the killer previously known
as a saturday night strangler let's get into it it was september of 1973 in neath wales a
quaint community eight miles outside of the city of swansea when the bodies of two year old girls
geraldine hughes and pauline floyd were found in the early morning hours dumped in a wooded area
near their homes the girls had been hitchhiking from a nightclub in the city of swansea around 1
30 am on september 1st but the girls never made it home that night
the girls had been picked up and despite what should have been a short drive home the girls were
driven to a grove of trees near where they lived there geraldine and pauline were both sexually
assaulted then apparently allowed to redress as indicated by dirt and debris on the soles of
their feet and inside their tights they were both killed within yards of each other sustaining head
wounds and strangulation marks it was determined that strangulation by rope was the cause of their
deaths how their killer managed to control and murder both girls simultaneously is unknown
and likely never will be the homicides left two families grief stricken and the local community
afraid and outraged to make matters worse this was not the only recent murder of a local teenage girl
just a few months earlier in july of 1973 16 year old sandra newton had been found dead in neath
her body dumped in a culvert near the mountain roadway like geraldine and pauline sandra had
been hitchhiking home from a nearby nightclub when she was picked up sexually assaulted and
strangled to death with the hem of her chiffon skirt since all the girls had been hitchhiking
when they were picked up and killed it's easy to look at a case like this from a modern perspective
and wonder why such young girls would have been getting in a car with a strange man alone at night
but in the 1970s hitchhiking was normal it was part of the culture even for young women
there also often wasn't another option when the girls were going out
there weren't any buses running at one or two am and none of the victims had cars of their own
taxis also would have been much too expensive so this really only left hitchhiking when going out
miles from home with the hitchhiking the assaults and the strangulation in common
the connection between the murders seemed obvious to local citizens news outlets and police at first
but became complicated by the fact that sandra had a married boyfriend who she'd been out with the
night of her murder who seemed a likely suspect in her murder investigation her boyfriend claimed
they'd walked home in opposite directions and that was a last he saw of her on the night of her death
suspicion was cast on him but he didn't have a car or license and since her body
was found miles away from where they had last been together he was eventually ruled out as a suspect
so an alleged connection between the murders was established once again
following the murders of geraldine and pauline in september the welsh police quickly assembled
a huge team to catch the man that local papers began to call the saturday night strangler over
150 detectives were dispatched to go door to door to see if anyone saw anything suspicious
on the night of the murders this case was about to become the largest murder inquiry in welsh history
in 1973 when the investigation was just beginning the term serial killer had not yet been coined
little was known about this type of repeat killer the personality or motivations of
serial killers were not understood and criminal profiling and psychology were fairly new concepts
it would take another 10 years before dna evidence would first be used in a criminal trial
therefore the police understandably had little to go on with the exception of one lead a white car
passing drivers had reported seeing this vehicle parked near pauline and geraldine's murder
site between 1 45 to 2 15 am on september 16th similarly others had reported a similar same color
making model of the car going like the clappers or very fast in neath at the time of sandra's murder
they narrowed down the make and model based on witness statements to likely be a white
austin 1100 which at the time was an incredibly common vehicle it had been
britain's best-selling car for almost a decade with over a million vehicles sold in the uk
the police felt confident that their killer would own or at least have been using that car so they
went right down the list of registrations questioning anyone in the area who owned a
white austin 1100 car the result was thousands of names that led to hundreds of interviews
and an overwhelming amount of suspects and information police simply checked each austin
1100 owner for an alibi and crossed each name off a list there were so many people
to comb through that the killer could have easily avoided suspicion and slipped through the cracks
and slipped through he did after several years without new information the case went cold
it would be nearly three decades before new information gave the case any real traction
and warranted its reopening in the meantime the families and communities were left without answers
in 2001 forensic science had really advanced to a point that the girl's clothing could be tested
for dna evidence the girl's clothing was removed from an evidence box that had spent decades in
sterile storage full dna profiles were able to be pulled from the clothing articles that
had been worn by pauline and sandra samples from the two cases could be tested against one another
hopefully proving that the murders were committed by the same person dna taken from the two separate
crime scenes were exact matches finally showing that these three deaths had been the work of
a single serial killer this new evidence was compelling enough to reopen the case detectives
began scouring the national databases for a match using the new dna evidence while they weren't able
to find an exact match they did find a near match which likely belonged to a relative of the killer
the similar dna was at a paul cappin a local car thief which led back to a man who had
been questioned for owning a white austin 1100 as part of the initial investigation in 1973
his name was joseph cappin and he was now suspect number one joseph cappin was a local to the neath
area he had been born in port talbot in 1941 going on to live there his whole life those
who knew captain described him as a man of violent disposition as early as the age of 12
kappa had come to the attention of the police by the time the murders were committed he had a
record of more than 30 criminal offenses including robbing gas meters car theft burglary and assault
he was frequently in and out of prison and he had never been able to hold down a job for long
but worked as a bus driver and a bouncer at local clubs on and off giving captain
the unique opportunity to commit the murders he could have followed the teens right from the club
captain's ex-wife christine is partially to blame for why he was overlooked she provided his alibi
on the knights of the murder joseph and christine kaepernick met when he was 20 and she was 17.
they married quickly after christine discovered she was pregnant with their first child their
18-year marriage got off to a rough start when joseph kappan was sent to prison for three years
for breaking into houses and robbing gas meters 10 days into their married life but even when he got
out of prison and became a father of two it was never a happy household money was always tight
since captain couldn't hold down a job and they barely made ends meet with his short-lived gigs
christine also admitted to thinking it was normal for men to hit their wives in an interview
christine said i thought all men were violent he used to sexual assault me every two weeks
it was against my will i never wanted it joe would say come on come on and then he would insist
on his conjugal rights in one incident captain terrified his son paul when he was just a child
while they were walking a beach they found a dog captain decided it was too old and proceeded to
pick up a wire and strangle the dog in front of his son this was also around the same time that
the murders were being committed when the police came knocking in 1973 to inquire about the murders
christine had not put two and two together she was young and naive and did not believe her husband
was capable of murder furthermore because captain was always committing petty crimes
christine had learned to agree with him if the police showed up at the house so like
she often had she alibied him for the night of the murders and the police checked him off their list
three years went by before the dna evidence had landed captain back on the police radar
and made him their top suspect in 2002 yet another obstacle stood in the way of
the killer being brought to justice kaepernick died of lung cancer at only 48 years old in 1990
though capping could never be punished for ending the lives of the three young women
the police hoped they could still find a way to prove his guilt and bring a sense
of finality and peace to the families of the victims in 2003 police found a way to do just
that when they received permission to exhume captain's body extract a sample of his dna
and test it against the samples found on the girls when they did so they received the answer
they had been looking for and finally proved that joseph kappen was the man who sexually assaulted
and killed sandra newton geraldine hughes and pauline floyd in july and september of 1973.
captain was the first person to be identified after death as a serial killer through familial
dna profiling the conclusion of this case was not only a milestone in dna profiling
but it brought answers to the three families of the girls who had never thought they would
live to see their daughter's killer identified geraldine hughes's father said of he and his wife
we have relived what geraldine must have gone through every night for nearly 30 years now we
know for certain who killed our daughter and we can finally find some peace we took flowers to
geraldine's grave and had a few quiet words with her and we felt we had put her to rest properly
in addition to the murders in 1973 captain is also being investigated for the murder of maureen malki
who was aged 23 and was strangled and killed in 1976 there were also several sexual assaults in
areas he lived in and worked in that are being investigated to see if there's a connection
joseph cappin had been wales's first serial killer cold case detective dr
colin dark said in a statement to media after all these years of questions suppositions and
heartaches to the girls families we got our man at last well that is it for this video
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