A BRITISH PENSIONER has been accused of “executing” four people in the 1980s, and of raping one teenager and indecently assaulting a second girl in 1996.
John Cooper, 66, of Letterston, near Fishguard in west Wales, has denied four charges of murder and separate charges of rape, sexual assault and attempted robbery, the BBC reports.
Prosecutor Gerard Elias QC described Cooper today as a “cold and calculating killer”, and cited 11 separate offences with which Cooper is charged – all of which occurred within seven miles of his home.
Cooper faces charges of murdering brother and sister Richard and Helen Thomas in Wales in 1985.
The pair lived in a Pembrokeshire farmhouse which, the court heard, Cooper had broken into on the evening of 22 December 1985 for the purposes of burglary – possibly knowing that 54-year-old Helen Thomas was home alone.
Elias alleged that when Richard Thomas, 58, disturbed the burglary, Cooper shot them both with a shotgun before setting the house alight.
Swansea Crown Court was also told that Cooper had killed holidaymakers Peter and Gwenda Dixon in 1989.
It was claimed that in Cooper attacked husband and wife Peter and Gwenda Dixon from Oxfordshire, who were holidaying at the time near Little Haven.
Cooper was accused of intercepting the Dixons as they walked along a coastal path in the area, threatening them with a shotgun and forcing them to disclose details about their bank account. It is claimed that he then shot them and covered their bodies in foliage.
The court hears that money was withdrawn from Richard Thomas’s bank account, using the correct codes, following his death.
Several years later, in 1996, Cooper is accused of approaching a group of five teenagers who were crossing a field by the Mount Estate School in Milford Haven. He allegedly threatened them with a shotgun and forced them to lie face down on the ground before raping one 16-year-old girl at knifepoint. He is accused of then indecently assaulting a 15-year-old girl before firing the gun in the air.
The Western Telegraph reports that Elias told the court the teenagers had been “put through a terrifying ordeal by a man prepared to hand out sickening violence” and who “had no compunction about ending the life of a victim if it increased his chances of escape”.
In December 1998, Cooper was sentenced to 16 years in prison for 30 counts of burglary and robbery, the Oxford Mail reports.
The trial continues.
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