The evil that men do lives on and on and the act of murder is a stain on the pages of history. Although it can be covered up, whitewashed, absorbed, forgiven, or forgotten, it will never run clean. Its terrible taint is there to remind us that every murder victim demands a reckoning that the laws of man cannot account for.

When a person takes another life, they are murdering a past, present, and future. Murder diminishes us all, but it diminishes the broken and damaged individual whose hand commits the deed the most.

The need for justice is strong in the human heart and although it cannot compensate or heal the wounds of those left behind, or bring those who are murdered back from the cold quiet of the grave, it can restore a little balance and a measure of faith in the order of things.

This is why the spectre of the killer who steps out of the shadows to perpetuate their outrages, and whose identity and motive are cloaked indefinitely in a veil of anonymity, is infinitely more unsettling and unnerving to our sensibilities.

If Jack the Ripper had been caught, it is extremely plausible that the identity of the man behind the cloak and butchery would have faded into obscurity before the last gaslight had gone out in the Victorian era.

Yet over a century later, Jack’s knife and wickedness stalk our imaginations in much the same way the man behind the myth stalked the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel.

Unsolved murders haunt us with the melancholy of those whose eternal rest is troubled. These voiceless victims have had grievous wrongs done to them which have never been righted.

Unsolved murders also taunt us with the gleeful mockery of those who killed without remorse or punishment.

When those who seek to play God remain free of man’s justice, it throws the scales off-kilter and strikes a chord of discord crying out for its natural resolution.

Such is the case of William Alfred Lewis.

On the morning of May 23, 1939, the world, and in particular, the UK, was preparing itself for a conflict promised by the dark storm clouds gathering over Hitler’s Germany.

Like many in the town of Pontypool, where he was a wealthy but popular and well-known figure, William was collecting his gas mask on that fine spring day which would prove to be his last.

The gas masks were being distributed from George Street School, and during his fitting, William had difficulty with the uncomfortable contraption, and was heard to mutter, “I hope I shall never have to wear this thing.”

Little did he know some savage hand would grant his throwaway wish that very night.

After leaving the school and walking the short distance to his 17-room, ramshackle Plasmont House, William was home by 8.15pm and closed the door on the day, the world, and as it would transpire his very existence.

The man who owned some 200 homes and shops within the town was never seen alive again.

The 59-year-owner of Plasmont House was one of Pontypool’s wealthiest individuals. He started his career as a draper in Ebbw Vale but has worked his way to own a portfolio of properties throughout Pontypool. However, the rich bachelor was not exactly flash with his cash and lived a relatively solitary and modest lifestyle.

To the inhabitants of Pontypool, William Lewis was also known by the nickname ‘Dripping Lewis.’

How he came to earn such a peculiar moniker isn’t exactly known, some have put forward the theory that he was literally ‘dripping with wealth,’ but in her 2012 book on the case, author Monty Dart put forward another explanation.

She suggests that throughout the 1920s, when Pontypool like many towns was suffering from the Depression, the Lewis family stepped in to help feed the starving inhabitants by using the dripping acquired from their butcher’s shops and slaughterhouses.

Whatever the case may be, the alarm bell was first raised that not all was as it should be in Plasmont House on the morning of May 24, when William, a notoriously early riser, had failed to make an appearance long after dawn had wrested control of the skies from midnight’s grip.

When the milkman arrived at William’s residence, he found the door hanging ajar and yesterday’s milk curdling on the kitchen table. Unsettled that one of his most chatty customers was nowhere to be seen, the milkman visited Mrs. Barnett in the cottage next door and gave voice to his concerns.

Agreeing it was curious, Mrs. Barnett decided to investigate. Fearing for her safety, the neighbour asked local builder Tom Brimble, who was digging ditches nearby, if he would enter the house with her. Brimble agreed, and so the unlikely pair ventured forth into the house of horror.

Both Barnett and Brimble’s initial calls enquiring after the welfare of Willam were met with a deathly silence. Fearing the worst Mrs. Barnett refused to venture any further into the house’s hushed stillness. Brimble on the other hand was caught in the vice-like grip of curiosity and roamed ahead - his tread one of dread as the adrenaline coursed through his veins.

The terrible tension and creeping quiet that appeared to flow through the very fabric of the house was eventually broken by a lone voice crying, “Oh dear God no!”

Brimble and found poor William’s battered and bloodied corpse.

His lifeless body lay sprawled at unnatural angles on the bed which lay in the middle of his ransacked bedroom.

The man who was small in stature, well past his prime and who was often described as ‘shy and nice’ had been beaten to death.

His head had been caved in with a blunt instrument and a pillow had been placed over it. Whether this was an act of suffocation or because the killer couldn’t bear to look at what his butchery had inflicted upon a fellow human being was for the police to decide.

A shell-shocked and clearly distraught Brimble had already fled the macabre scene and the boys in blue were on their way.

Upon arrival, the local plod decided this was a job for Scotland Yard and hence the big wigs from the big smoke were called in.

Led by the formidable Detective Chief Inspector Rees, the investigation turned the usually quiet Plasmont House into a hive of activity.

Interestingly, considering Pontypool was a largely English-speaking town during this time, Detective Chief Inspector Rees and his three detectives were handpicked, not just because of their powers of deduction but because they could all speak Welsh.

Nevertheless, Detective Chief Inspector Rees was a copper who knew a thing or two about solving crime and immediately set to work.

Due to William’s great wealth, it was initially assumed that money was the motive behind this particular murder. However, a thorough inspection of the house revealed that mere inches from the body was a tin box containing a princely sum of £100 in sovereigns. Why did the killer discard such a substantial amount?

The two safes in the house were both open and although they contained property deeds and other documents, there was no cash or other valuable items within. Yet there was no indication that they had been rummaged through.

Alongside the house keys, the safe keys were also missing from the premises, as was the murder weapon.

A press conference was called and Detective Chief Inspector Rees informed the reporters that he suspected that both the house keys, the safe keys, and the murder weapon had been taken by the killer when he had fled the scene of the crime.

Somewhat embarrassingly for Chief Inspector Rees, the keys were later found in a briefcase that belonged to William and had been stored in one of his many rooms.

At the inquest on Thursday, May 25, held at Coed-y-Gric Institute in Griffithstown, the pathologist Dr Webster found a contused wound to William’s left temple and one behind his left ear. It was also discovered that the fingers on William’s left hand were badly bruised.

Dr Webster gave a verdict of “Death due to shock from injuries received.”

William had been beaten to death whilst he slept.

When questioned about what possible weapons the murderer could have used, Dr Webster explained that the deceased’s injuries were consistent with those being inflicted by a shoe.

The pathologist believed in all likelihood, that the assailant took off their own shoe to murder the victim.

It was a strange murder weapon in a strange case that was never solved.

Speculation in the town remained rife as to who exactly committed the crime. The extremely wealthy bachelor was rumoured to have been contemplating marriage and possessed a personal fortune of £50,000 when his days were cut prematurely short.

His sister stressed there was a total of £300 missing from her brother’s residence. The exact amount in rent money William had collected a few days prior to being murdered.

A message pleading for information about the murder was met with a wall of silence.

Cinema screens in Pontypool Town were also used to screen messages appealing for information but to no avail.

One David Henry Williams was put in the frame by two men he had shared a prison cell with, but despite interviewing him and hundreds of others, the police were still unable to dig up anything substantial.

As often happens in these circumstances, the police also received an avalanche of mail from people climbing to know the identity of the killer but all proved to be groundless.

Two clairvoyants even offered their services to the police, but Inspector Rees poured scorn upon the idea.

The only tangible leads the police had were vague sightings of two young men hanging about suspiciously in the vicinity of Plasmont House the night before the killing.

The lead led to a dead-end and the hunt for the killer or killers became something of an exhausting but nevertheless fruitless wild-goose chase as they dug up the garden and re-searched the house.

Police speculated that William may have met someone on the way home, or the killer was waiting in the shadows of his sprawling house, waiting to end the owner’s days for whatever cold-hearted and callous reason.

Even with the legendary Frederick Cherrill aka The fingerprint Man on his side, about whom Monty Dart wrote, “His evidence sent a number of men to the gallows and many others to long terms of imprisonment. It was said that he was responsible for solving more murders than any other policeman of the time,” Inspector Rees and his team kept drawing blanks.

The ammunition factory that had opened up in nearby Glascoed in service of the coming war didn’t help matters. Pontypool had suddenly been saturated with strangers who took jobs there, and many of these strangers had murky and troubled backgrounds.

Local newspapers gave no quarter in their reporting of the unsolved murder and headlines such as ‘Again; the murderer has walked away’ reflected the public’s view that the police were somehow incompetent and indifferent.

As time ticked on, both local gossips and lawmen continued to chase rainbows and the only thing that everyone could agree upon was William was in his grave and a killer walked free.

It was a crying shame and a moral outrage but as the threat of war in Europe became a harrowing reality, people turned their attention to the promise of butchery on a far bigger scale.

When William was buried on Whit Monday, 1939, the identity of his killer was buried with him. That secret has laid, festering, and rotten in the dark places beneath the soil for over 90 years. It looks unlikely that it will ever be unearthed.

William’s earthly abode, Plasmont House, also went the way of rack and ruin and was later demolished. Its colourful history and the murderous act it bore witness to became little more than dust absorbed and absolved by a silent and watching earth upon which all our history is destined to be staged.