With special thanks to Monty Dart for researching and writing this article.
Introduction: Pontnewynydd in 1948
Pontnewynydd – a suburb of Cwmbran, South Wales – was a quiet place in 1948. At 11 Wayfield Crescent lived the Parry family: wife Sylvinia, aged 32; husband John, 36; and their 14-year-old son Anthony.
Early on the morning of 8 June 1948, Sylvinia Parry was getting ready to go to work at the Caldicott Lacquer Factory. As she left the house, wearing a pink blouse and khaki overalls under her mackintosh, she joined other women on their way to the factory, which was approximately five to seven minutes away from Wayfield Crescent. The women chatted about the forthcoming day. Sylvinia told her workmates she was going to Newport, a nearby town, to buy a car. Some thought this a rather fanciful statement, but they went along with the story and probably laughed behind her back when out of her presence.
During the day, she asked her foreman if she could take some time off in the afternoon to view the car, and he agreed to let her finish work early at 2 p.m.
Explore more historical capital punishment cases with a free collection of 10 detailed accounts.
Free PDF • Instant access
The Disappearance and Initial Search
As she left the factory, Sylvinia’s husband John was leaving home to start his 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift at a nearby steelworks. He had spent the morning doing housework and had vacuumed two of the bedrooms. He returned the vacuum cleaner to the smallest bedroom in the house, known as the box-room.
When he arrived home some eight hours later, he found his son at home but no sign of his wife. This was highly unusual—she would always be there to cook tea for their son after school and supper for John after his shift. Neither of them knew what to do. John Parry wandered around the neighbourhood looking for his wife, even going into a couple of public houses in case she had decided on a whim to go out with friends.
By 9:45 the next morning, with still no sign of Sylvinia, he decided to go to Pontnewynydd police station. By chance, he encountered Police Sgt Plummer on his beat and told him, “My wife is missing, she didn’t come home last night.”
Police Response and the Discovery
PS Plummer didn’t consider this an emergency. A missing wife who hadn’t been gone for less than 24 hours was hardly a priority. He advised John Parry to contact friends and relatives—maybe Sylvinia had decided to have a break from her marriage.
John Parry returned home distraught. Contacting relatives wasn’t as easy as it is nowadays; few people had a phone at home. He decided to look in all the rooms of the house, hoping for a clue. He had already searched once, but the only room he hadn’t entered was the box-room, a small bedroom with space only for a single bed.
As he entered the room, he thought it was tidier than when he left it, which was strange. Then he saw, sticking out from under the bed, the body of his wife. Parry ran into the street in search of Sgt Plummer, and they both returned to Wayfield Crescent.
Soon, 11 Wayfield Crescent was full of police officers, scene-of-crime photographers, and fingerprint and forensic officers from Cardiff Forensic Science Laboratory.
The Crime Scene
Sylvinia was lying on her front. When her body was turned over, the full extent of her injuries was revealed: she had been savagely beaten about the head and had three deep stab wounds to her left breast. Perhaps the most macabre discovery was that 11 inches of the sleeve of a jacket had been thrust down her throat.
The tools of her destruction were still in the room—a large spanner, which John Parry said he had never seen before, and an Indian knife and sheath.
Sylvinia was wearing cami-knickers, stockings, shoes, and a plastic mackintosh. Beneath her body was a plastic handbag, on which was a clearly defined fingerprint. Police Inspector David Thomas also noted what he described as an empty “rubber preventative” (condom) sticking to her left thigh.
Inspector Thomas searched the house and found a clear shoe print in blood in the bathroom. None of the shoes in the house matched the print.
Dr. Francis Thomas Nolan, a local doctor who attended the scene, stated, “The woman was definitely dead.”
Investigation: The Husband and the Visitor
As usual in domestic murders, the husband was considered the major suspect. However, his alibi was unshakable—workmates confirmed he didn’t leave the workplace during his shift, and the police surgeon estimated Sylvinia’s time of death matched his alibi.
Neighbours reported the Parrys seemed to have a happy marriage. However, gossip revealed that a man named Cliff Wills was a frequent visitor to Wayfield Crescent when John was at work and Anthony was at school. Wills knew John Parry, and Sylvinia was a friend of Wills’ mother.
Cliff Wills: The Prime Suspect
Clifford Godfrey Wills was 31 and worked as an electrician. He lived with his mother at 3 Cromwell Road. At 2:30 p.m. the day after the murder, policemen arrived at his home. His mother told them he was still in bed.
The police found him on his bed in a heavily drugged state.
“I’ve taken about 20 Soneryl tablets. I’m fed up with life… I just want to finish myself off.”
Wills was wearing a blood-stained shirt. He explained this as a result of a “fisty-cuffs” fight with a boxer named George Logan in a Newport pub. (Logan later denied that any fight had taken place.) Rising from bed, Wills had difficulty standing, and a policeman helped him dress. He had small abrasions on his knuckles.
He was immediately taken to hospital to have his stomach pumped. By 7:30 p.m., he was deemed capable of giving a statement and was transported to the police station.
Wills’ Arrest and Statement
After his arrest, Wills was taken to the police station by Detective Inspector Brinley Wheatstone and Detective Harrison.
“What does it feel like to be sat by a killer?” said Wills. “You have got your man.”
He was cautioned. His shirt and shoes were covered in blood—later identified as the same blood group as Sylvinia’s—and the soles of his shoes perfectly matched the print on the bathroom floor.
Wills was frank about his relationship with Sylvinia:
“Our sex life was perfect,” he said. “I met her as usual as she was going to work yesterday morning, and we agreed to meet outside the Romany Café at 4:30 p.m. While I was waiting, Doris_______ saw me and came over to chat.”
He explained that he didn’t want Sylvinia and Doris to meet, so he decided to go home with Doris. He stayed with her until 4 a.m. the following morning, then returned home by bus to Pontnewynydd and went to bed.
Later that day, he met Sylvinia at her home. They had planned to see a solicitor in Newport regarding some land Wills owned. They had intercourse on the sofa, and afterwards she went upstairs to change her clothes.
“Shall I wear my ‘New Look’?” she said, referring to her latest purchase.
“Please yourself,” he replied.
Wills said he left the house for about ten minutes while she was changing, but on his return, Sylvinia was gone. He then decided to go back to Newport to see Doris.
Further Police Statements and Admissions
At Pontypool police station, Wills said to Police Sgt Albert Cook, “I have been trying to break that association for three years.”
“What association?”
“The association with Mrs Parry.”
PS Cook again cautioned him, and Wills gave a detailed statement.
“I have known Mrs Parry since I was demobbed about three years ago. We lived for each other. I tried to break the association on several occasions. She was friendly with my mother. She meant everything to me, there are no two ways about that. For three years, we lived in the same world.
I was in Mrs Parry’s house on Friday morning. I went there about 10 a.m., but she wasn’t in. I went back at 1:45 p.m., and she was at home. She was dressed in a ‘New Look’ two-piece dress and looked lovely, a little gaudy perhaps, but she liked pretty things. I was going to be intimate with her, but I had had too much to drink previously, which had a retarding influence, so we were not intimate although she wanted to be. About two months ago I gave her a silver ring. It was our wedding ring.”
After that initial admission, made in the police car, Wills was adamant he hadn’t murdered Sylvinia. However, the evidence against him was strong—the bloodied footprint, the fingerprint on the handbag identified as his, and blood on his shirt. Nowadays, DNA would automatically prove his guilt or clear him.
The Post-Mortem and Trial
Professor James Webster of Birmingham, who conducted the post mortem, gave evidence that Sylvinia died from shock and hemorrhage due to multiple injuries to the head and chest, where she had been stabbed three times. She had also suffered partial asphyxiation as a result of strangulation.
She was wearing a mackintosh. Professor Webster opined that hearing a knock at the door, she slipped it on over her underwear. There were no signs of forced entry to the house, suggesting she knew her killer.
Inspector Thomas asked Wills why she was wearing a mackintosh over her underwear. Wills said Sylvinia was embarrassed because her left breast was considerably smaller than her right and always wore something over her top half.
“Perhaps she did the same for the bloke who murdered her,” he said.
Conviction and Execution
Wills was tried at Monmouthshire Assizes on 8 and 9 November 1948 before Mr Justice Hallett. He absolutely denied the murder. The forensic evidence told a different story, and he was easily convicted. None of his stories supported his innocence.
At the end of the trial, Mr Justice Hallett donned “the black cap,” a large black square of material—a peculiarity of British trials when pronouncing the death sentence. While the judge was reported as “being emotional,” Wills remained unmoved.
The Political Context of Capital Punishment
The abolition of hanging was a political issue at the time. While in prison awaiting trial, Wills claimed, “They won’t top me even if they find me guilty.” This was because in April 1948, the House of Commons voted in favour of a Bill introduced by Sidney Silverman to suspend the death penalty for five years.
The Labour Home Secretary, Lord James Chuter-Ede, announced he would reprieve all murderers until the future of the Bill was resolved. This resulted in 26 reprieves and no executions between March and October 1948, giving a total for the year of just eight executions.
The House of Lords rejected the Bill in late 1948, but a Royal Commission chaired by Sir Ernest Gowers was set up to examine all aspects of capital punishment.
Execution and Aftermath
Clifford Wills was hanged by Steve Wade and Henry Critchell on Thursday morning, 9 December 1948, a cold grey day at Cardiff Prison—just six months after the murder of Sylvinia Parry.
Wills was buried within the prison later that day.
In late 2003, the remains of Clifford Wills and the five other most recently executed prisoners (William Corbett, George Roberts, Howard Grossley, Evan Evans, and Ajit Singh) were exhumed from the prison grounds and reburied elsewhere to enable construction of a new cell block.
Support the Archive
If you have found this article useful and would like to help preserve and maintain this historical archive, please consider supporting the site.