Steeltown Murders Review: DNA Drama Rightly Pulls Focus From the 'Saturday Night Strangler'

From the director of The Pembrokeshire Murders and the writer of Manhunt, Steeltown Murders shows how the first investigation failed through a series of blind spots. Jurisdiction boundaries led to a stubborn refusal to link Sandra Newton’s murder to those of Floyd and Hughes, influenced by the belief that Newton’s previous sexual activity on the day of her murder ‘proved’ that she had not also been the victim of a sexual assault by her killer. A mundane but, it later turned out, key statement was not followed up despite a request to do so, and an alibi obtained under duress went by unchecked. Had these mistakes not been made, the girls’ killer might have been identified at the time, but they were made, as catalogued by this drama. 

Steeltown Murders documents mistakes but isn’t an expose of institutional wrongdoing. Rather, it’s the more human story of perseverance driven by honourable purpose and the desire to correct injustice. In 2002, Glenister’s character pleads to be assigned the newly reopened Llandarcy murders case, and his understaffed, underfunded team work doggedly to achieve the seemingly impossible. How they manage it is shown to be a mixture of police ingenuity and high-tech expertise. 

The investigation is remarkable for involving a number of firsts: Wales’ first recorded serial killer, caught by the UK police’s first use of familial DNA (in which DNA from the crime scene is partially matched with that of a same-sex relative in the police database to approximate that of the culprit) to solve Wales’ longest unsolved case. That alone makes the story worth dramatising, but what makes it truly so is its portrait of the killer’s victims and the devastating effect that their murders had on those left behind.

While Sandra Newton is only seen in photographs, her mother Pat and step-father Dai (played by the excellent Sharon Morgan, and Keith Allen) are featured, as are Denver and Jean Hughes, the parents of Geraldine. In short scenes alongside the police work, real care is taken to explore the parents’ ongoing grief, along with the ruinous shadows cast by suspicion due to the case being unsolved for so long.

Sita, a friend of Geraldine and Pauline invented here but based on several girls they knew – is followed into adulthood. We’re shown her survivor’s guilt and asked to consider the ways that such a violent, unfinished loss lingers over a young person, and a whole community. The threat of the luridly nicknamed ‘Saturday Night Strangler’ remaining at large didn’t only take away the freedom of his victims.

Steeltown Murders presents those victims without over-sentimentality or crass, ominous dread. Pauline and Geraldine are shown as energetic and vital; they’re teenagers having fun, not holy saints, and there’s no sense of exploitation or clumsy emotional manipulation. It’s devastating to watch their scenes because they’re real and made to feel real here, so what was taken from them feels real too.

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