Joseph Kappen

Joseph William Kappen (30 October 1941 – 17 June 1990), also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who murdered three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his hometown of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.

Kappen's confirmed victims were all sixteen-year-old girls whom he lured into his car on Saturday evenings in Briton Ferry and Swansea. All three were driven to rural locations where they were subsequently raped, then killed by strangulation. Kappen was never arrested for his crimes and died of lung cancer in 1990.

Kappen is notable for being the first person to be posthumously identified as a serial killer via familial DNA profiling. He was also the first documented serial killer in Welsh history.

Background Joseph Kappen was born on 30 October 1941 and had six siblings. His parents' marriage broke up when he was young and he was raised by his stepfather in Port Talbot, a heavily industrial town in Wales dominated by its large steelworks.

Kappen began attracting police attention for petty offences at age 12. Three days later her body was found raped and strangled in a rural location some miles away. Newton had been abducted after trying to hitchhike home after visiting a nightclub that night. She was strangled with her own skirt and dumped in a ditch near a coal mine in Tonmawr. Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd, both aged 16, hitched a lift home after a Saturday night out at a nightclub in Swansea. The next morning they were found dead, their bodies being found raped and strangled in Llandarcy woodland five miles away. 35,000 persons of interest were initially identified for DNA testing, but a psychological profiler was employed to reduce the number to a priority list of 500.

Historical significance of the case The Kappen investigation was the first in the world to use familial DNA tracing in order to posthumously identify a serial killer, and to solve a previously unsolved murder with familial DNA. In 2004 another similar attempt to identify a serial killer through familial DNA was made by Strathclyde Police in the Bible John case when they announced their intention to test a number of men after the discovery of a DNA sample at a minor crime scene in 2002. This sample showed an 80% match to the profile they had of the killer, which implied that the offender was a relative of Bible John.

Other suspected crimes Murder of Maureen Mulcahy

It is not known if Kappen ever killed again after September 1973, but he remains a suspect in the unsolved murder of Maureen Mulcahy, aged 23, in February 1976. after learning that Kappen had worked as a lorry driver in Scunthorpe and had lived in lodgings in the Humberside area soon after the girl vanished. After he was finally imprisoned in 1994, police announced their suspicions that Black had committed a number of other murders and their intention to investigate him for murders including Markham's. In 2016, another documentary on the case was released on ITV Wales as part of the Crimes Files series. In 2018, a series 2 episode of Sky UK's Robbie Coltrane's Critical Evidence featured the case. The episode was titled "The Saturday Night Strangler: Joe Kappen". Also in 2018, a series 1 episode of Evidence of Evil was released that focused on the case titled "The Saturday Night Strangler". In 2019, a series 1 episode of Jackie Malton's documentary series The Real Prime Suspect was released on CBS Reality which covered the case, titled "The Saturday Night Strangler". In 2020, BBC One Wales released its documentary on the unsolved murder of Maureen Mulcahy in Port Talbot in 1976 and the suspected links between the case and Kappen. The documentary was part of the Dark Land: Hunting the Killers series. In 2022, the case was featured on Sky UK's series Forensics: Catching the Killer. In May 2023, the BBC aired a prime-time drama series about the solving of the Kappen case, titled Steeltown Murders.