Bloody Valentine

I wanted to read this book after listening to the excellent BBC Sounds podcast that covered the same case. This book was written just a couple of years after the murder of Lynette White and, although there is an update from 2020, the story here does not really cover the latterday efforts at exposing the poor working practices of the South Wales Police. For more information about that I recommend listening to the podcast.

What this book does well is it provides a context to the murder, it shows the development of Butetown and its working class roots. Giving flavour is where Williams excels, his writing is almost tongue in cheek but he usually always hits the mark.

Initially his writing smacked me as that of someone slumming it to gain credibility but no, he really dived into the lives of the people involved and affected by the murder and he sticks for the duration of the police enquiry, the trial, the exoneration and the long, drawn out shattered lives of those who were found guilty of the murder.

A simple quote that struck will perhaps give a good flavour of where Williams is coming from.

'Everyone's drinking Super Tennents in this overlit kitchen and the situation looks like it might be desperate if only anyone cared enough to make it so.'

His writing follows this style throughout and, for me at least, it suits the working class environment, the quiet desperation, the nursed grievances and the dramas of all involved.

Although this book is not a forensic dive into the miscarriage of justice (again, refer to the podcast for more information about this) it serves as an excellent snapshot of a unique place and time and gives us, at a thirty plus year remove from the events, an insight into the social situation and the psychogeography of the time.

This book was not what I was expecting, the quality of writing is way better than what is given to the bulk of true crime writing and Williams is a truly great writer who has a unique force to his voice.

My thanks to the publishers, Oldcastle, for an advanced review copy of this book, which contributes an important record of one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated in Britain. It tells in depth and with empathy the stories of the people whose lives were upended by the murder of Lynette White, a sex worker in Butetown, Cardiff. And it tries to lay out the sequence of events which led to the the subsequent arrests of 5 black men by a corrupt police force and the convictions of 3 of them by an all white jury in Swansea, despite clear evidence that the crime had been committed by none of them.

The author, who comes from and has now returned to live in the area, conveys the history and geography of Butetown well and allows the reader to enjoy something of the vitality and hospitality of its people, which I can well remember, having come from Birmingham to support a demonstration by a most remarkable anti racist campaign to free the wrongfully convicted men.

To my mind the book spends a bit too much time on the ‘dirty linen’ of complex relationships between people living in Butetown and not enough on how the brothers of two of the convicted men, Malik Abdullahi and Lloyd Paris, mobilised such a forceful and successful campaign from scratch. It involved them travelling all over the country to tell people about what had happened and garner support and they were not people in the habit of doing that. Their visit to Birmingham, along with their friend Julian, the bus driver, is one of my lasting memories. I can see Lloyd now, clicking his fingers and telling us about Butetown, the melting pot.

There were a number of other anti racist campaigns at this time against deportations of black and Asian people and to defend people charged by the police when they had been defending themselves. The Cardiff Three campaign connected with all of them. They managed to get the convictions overturned on appeal through that pressure in a matter of 4 years. It had taken 16 years for a campaign to overturn the convictions of the Birmingham Six and 14 years to free the Guildford Four.

This is an important book and people should know from it that you can win if you stand up and fight injustice, no matter who you are, no matter what the cost and no matter how unlikely a victory looks at the time.

The reader should also note the aftermath of this shocking case. Vulnerable people on the margins who had been bullied by a corrupt police force into making false statements were tried for perjury and sentenced to 18 months despite the judge recognising the duress under which they acted. The case against the police, on the other hand, whose conviction should have followed, collapsed on the advice of the DPP when some irrelevant documents requested by their defence could not be found. The DPP was one Keir Starmer.

This was a book that really made me think about the conduct of police forces in the past and also in the current climate , they stand for justice but at what cost and is it true justice?

I had heard little of the Lynette White murder , and the description of the aftermath and miscarriage of justice was written adeptly. The writing was easy to read and the case is told from a human perspective, which makes a refreshing change .

True crime books can often read more like a text book than communicating real life , but this is not one of them and it shows compassion and understanding both for the people involved and the area it affected.

A thoughtful, eye opening read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Oldcastle books for this arc copy

A really well researched, honest, and harrowing account of the injustice faced by the Cardiff 3.
As a Welsh girl, I particularly enjoyed the style of writing and dialect.
This is the best told story of the horrific murder of Lynette White that I’ve read.
Worthy of 4 stars and a recommendation for fans of true crime everywhere.

I’ve never heard of this case before but this is a well researched informed read. Nevertheless this story is harrowing and heartbreaking. It’s one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice and i was in utter shock reading the way this was handled and felt so utterly heartbroken for the wrongly accused. This is a must read for true crime fans