Who committed the Steeltown Murders?

Joseph William Kappen, also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who raped and murdered three teenage girls near his home town of Port Talbot in 1973.

The girls had gone missing after leaving small towns in South Wales nightclubs. Because their disappearances occurred on different Saturdays, Joseph earned the moniker “Saturday Night Strangler.”

On July 14, Joseph raped and murdered Sandra Newton, followed by Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd just over two months later on September 16.

All three were 16 years old when they were lured into his vehicle on Saturday nights. He raped all of them and strangled them to death.

Newton’s death was not linked to Hughes and Floyd’s at the time. The initial investigations lasted about a year before being scaled back in mid-1974. Kappen was never arrested for his crimes, and died of lung cancer in 1990.

After advances in DNA testing allowed the killer’s DNA to be isolated from their clothing, police reopened the investigation into Hughes and Floyd in the late 1990s.

It wasn’t until 2001 that DNA testing revealed that Newton’s assailant was the same as Hughes’ and Floyd’s. Kappen was identified the same year after police conducted a DNA search for matches with possible living descendants of the killer.

After police examined the DNA of his son, Paul, a car thief whose DNA was already on file, he became the prime suspect. Kappen’s body was exhumed in 2002, and forensic testing proved he was the murderer.