Joseph Kappen Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

The outcome of the case created hopes of solving other unsolved historical murders through DNA testing, and South Wales Police subsequently embarked on DNA screening in order to solve the murder of Lynette White, which was subsequently solved in 2003 when Jeffrey Gafoor was convicted in the killing. In 2004, another similar attempt to identify a serial killer through familial DNA was made by Strathclyde Police in the Bible John case when they announced their intention to test a number of men after the discovery of a DNA sample at a minor crime scene in 2002. This sample showed an 80% match to the profile they had from the killer, which implied that the offender was a relative of Bible John.

The findings of the DNA testing led detectives to apply to Home Secretary David Blunkett to exhume Kappen’s body in order to confirm through DNA that he was the murderer, which was granted. In 2002 the body was exhumed from Goytre Cemetery on the outskirts of Port Talbot, with it being said by witnesses that a thunderstorm suddenly passed over as the exhumation began and that a large thunderclap was heard when the ground was first dug up, suggesting to them that they had “unearthed evil”. Kappen’s family consistently denied that he could have been responsible for the murders and claimed he was innocent despite the evidence.

Around this time there was media speculation linking serial killer Fred West to the murders as he once worked in Llandarcy, but this was swiftly ruled out by police after the DNA was checked. 35,000 persons of interest were initially identified for DNA testing, but a psychological profiler was employed to reduce the number to a priority list of 500. Fifty of these were witnesses, relatives of the victims, stepfathers, boyfriends and anyone who had featured prominently in the initial investigation, and the others were known criminal suspects. Kappen was listed as suspect number 200, and detectives visited what was believed to be his address in Port Talbot in August 2001 but found that he had died in June 1990 of lung cancer, although his former wife still lived at the address.

Police hoped that advancements in DNA testing would help solve the murders, and in 1998 there was a significant development when a profile of the killer’s DNA was isolated via testing on the clothing of Hughes and Floyd. In 2000 the profile was uploaded to the DNA database to see if it matched any person arrested or charged since 1995 (the year in which DNA started to be taken from people arrested of crimes), although no match was made. However, the developments in DNA led to a full reinvestigation of the murders, titled Operation Magnum. In January 2001 the Llandarcy murders were reconstructed on BBC One’s Crimewatch.

The Kappen investigation was the first in the world to utilise familial DNA tracing in order to posthumously identify a serial killer, and to solve a previously unsolved murder with familial DNA. It was also reported that the exhumation of Kappen’s body made history as the first time a serial killer was exhumed to ascertain his guilt. In 1996 a deceased suspect had been exhumed in the Bible John case for DNA testing, but he was subsequently found to not have been the perpetrator. Kappen is also considered the first documented serial killer in Welsh history.

Kappen’s confirmed victims were all 16-year-old females whom he lured into his car on Saturday evenings in Briton Ferry and Swansea respectively. All three were driven to rural locations where they were subsequently raped, then killed by strangulation. Kappen was never arrested for his crimes, and died of lung cancer in 1990.

On Saturday 14 July 1973 Sandra Newton, aged 16, went missing after a night out in Briton Ferry. Three days later her body was found raped and strangled in a rural location some miles away. Newton had been abducted after trying to hitchhike home after visiting a nightclub that night. She was strangled with her own skirt and dumped in a ditch near a coal mine in Tonmawr. Little attempt had been made to hide the body, with it being left at the entrance of a culvert. Police suspected a local man was responsible due to the detailed knowledge of the area the killer would appear to have needed to be aware of the remote dump site.

Two months later in the early hours of Sunday 16 September 1973 Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd, both aged 16, hitched a lift home after a Saturday night out at a nightclub in Swansea. The next morning they were found dead, their bodies being found raped and strangled in Llandarcy woodland five miles away. It appeared that one girl had attempted to escape from her attacker and had made it yards from the road near to where her father had worked, but had been caught by her attacker and killed. The murders created a sense of fear in the community over whether the attacker would strike again. Although they occurred nearby, at the time the murders of Hughes and Floyd were not linked to the similar murder of Newton.

It is not known if Kappen killed again after September 1973, but he remains a suspect in the unsolved murder of Maureen Mulcahy, aged 23, in February 1976. Mulcahy was similarly strangled after a Saturday night out, being found dead the following morning in wasteland very close to the Sandfields estate, where Kappen was living at the time. Witness testimony points to Kappen having abducted her in a manner similar to the 1973 murders. As soon as Kappen had been identified in the 1973 cases, detectives announced their intention to speak to Mulcahy’s family. However, there was no available DNA evidence to examine or potentially link to Kappen and thus prove or disprove his involvement.

Police also reexamined the 1973 disappearance of nine-year-old Christine Markham from Scunthorpe, after learning that Kappen had worked as a lorry driver in Scunthorpe and had lived in lodgings in the Humberside area soon after the girl vanished. However, serial child abductor and killer Robert Black remains the prime suspect in the Markham case. After he was finally imprisoned in 1994, police announced their suspicions that Black committed a number of other murders and their intention to investigate him for murders including Markham’s.

Kappen was known to regularly pursue local teenage girls during the marriage, with his job as a bouncer giving him an opportunity to interact with them. When working as a bus driver he was known to use his rest breaks to approach teenage girls on the village green at Llandarcy. In 1964 Kappen attempted to force himself on a 15-year-old schoolgirl in his Sandfields housing estate, but she escaped. In February 1973 a man resembling Kappen picked up two female hitchhikers and drove them to a nearby isolated road before attempting to rape both of them, but they also managed to escape; the victims did not report the incident as one thought she would get in trouble with her father.

In 1962 Kappen met his first wife, 17-year-old Christine Powell, and they married in February 1964. Ten days after their nuptials, Kappen was sent to prison for burglary. Christine then gave birth to a daughter and then to a son, Paul, after she was raped by Kappen after his release from prison. Christine would later testify that Kappen was physically abusive towards her and would rape her every two weeks. At one point he fatally strangled the family dog in front of his son while walking it on a nearby beach because it was “too old”.

Joseph William Kappen (30 October 1941 – 17 June 1990), also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who committed the rape and murder of three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his home town of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.

Joseph Kappen was born in 1941 and raised in Port Talbot, a heavily industrial town in Wales dominated by its large steelworks. His parents’ marriage broke up when he was young and he was raised by his stepfather. He was one of seven siblings.