Trevor Edwards

Overview

Trevor Edwards and Elsie Cook came from the same Welsh mining village of Cynon Valley.

The offence

On Sunday morning, 17 June, a man rushed to the local police station and told them that he had seen a man bleeding heavily from the neck. Officers investigated. The blood-soaked man told them that he had killed his sweetheart and that she was lying on a nearby hillside. He admitted cutting her throat with a razor.

Investigation

Officers investigated after being told that a man was bleeding heavily from the neck. The man who was found bleeding told them he had killed his sweetheart and pointed to her location on a nearby hillside.

Trial

Trevor Edwards was tried at Glamorgan Assizes before Mr Justice Branson on 22nd November and pleaded insanity.

The court heard that Edwards’s family had a history of insanity, and that his father had died in a local asylum.

Despite the evidence supporting the insanity plea, the fact that Edwards had seemed perfectly sane when he confessed to the murder weighed against him, and he was sentenced to death.

Sentencing

He was sentenced to death.

Execution

The sentence was carried out in Swansea on the 11th December 1928. Edwards was only twenty years old.

Trevor Edwards was hanged by Robert Baxter and Alfred Allen. Alfred Allen was described as a new assistant, participating at possibly his first execution. The account described a dramatic experience: Baxter was described as very quick in noosing the prisoner and pushing the lever. Alfred Allen was not able to get clear of the doors and followed Edwards into the pit. No blame was attached, and the Governor claimed the accident was “a mixture of the hangman's alacrity and Allen's slightly defective vision.”

Outcome

Trevor Edwards was executed by hanging on 11th December 1928 in Swansea.

Other details

The account described Edwards and his sweetheart Elsie Cook as being from the same Welsh mining village of Cynon Valley.