Book review: Murder on Ynys Môn: the Anglesey Crossbow killing by Sion Tecwyn and Meic Parry

Desmond Clifford

Unless, like Bilbo Baggins, you live in a hole in the ground, you’ll likely have heard of the Anglesey Crossbow Killing.

Without, I hope, being crass, it is the standout Welsh murder of the last decade. The choice of murder weapon – the crossbow – immediately set it apart from the ordinary.

In the event, that was the tip of a deep, mysterious and menacing iceberg.

As a drama script, television might have said no; too much, too improbable, the audience won’t believe it.

Sion Tecwyn and Meic Parry have done an excellent job in recording and unravelling this complex web.

Menace

Full answers remain elusive but defining the questions is an achievement by itself and they expose menace lying just below the surface in a seemingly rural retirement idyll on north Anglesey.

The brief facts are these. Gerald Corrigan had retired to a striking but remote corner of Ynys Môn near Holyhead.  Aged 74 in 2019, he lived quietly and seemingly had no enemies.

Late one April night he was watching tv when the picture started to give trouble. He went outside in the dark to adjust the satellite dish, which usually did the trick.

He was shot, as we now know, by a crossbow. In great agony he was taken to hospital and died three weeks later, turning the police enquiry into a murder investigation.

The police made rapid progress. A local man, Terry Whall, was arrested, tried at Mold Crown Court and found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 31 years for his crime. Some accomplices were given shorter sentences for burning the vehicle used in the crime.

Normally a murder trial aims to resolve essential questions: who, how and why?

The first two questions were answered clearly. The murder was carried out by Terry Whall with the crossbow.

Family man

The crossbow is a very rare murder weapon although it was also used in a cruel triple murder in Hertfordshire in 2024. The “how?” was the least mysterious element of Ynys Mon case.

Terry Whall was the “who?”.  Aged 39 at the time of the murder, he had lived in the area for some years and made a living in the fitness/ sports treatment business, running a gym and providing individual services for clients. By all accounts he was well-regarded; polite, professional and personable.

He was a family man with only a short criminal record for minor offences and no history at all of violence; no one’s stereotypical idea of a cold-blooded killer.

Whall was linked to the murder by telematic evidence. Although unseen by witnesses, digital data placed his Discovery near Corrigan’s remote house at the precise time of the killing. By way of defence, in a surprising twist, Whall claimed he’d been having a homosexual triste with a friend. At any rate, the jury found him guilty, and he was duly convicted of murder.

So that’s the “who” and the “how”. The “why?” remains a mystery.

Lesson one on Miss Marple is motive; every murder has one. Whatever Whall’s motive, he declined to tell the police or the court.

Whall killed a man he says he never met – and there’s no evidence they ever did meet – and is serving a 31 year sentence for it. The motive may never be revealed unless Whall, or someone else, presents police with new information.

Corrigan, the victim, and Whall, the murderer, didn’t know each other – but both knew Richard Wyn Lewis, a local conman who intersected with both their lives.

Corrigan, after his arrival on Ynys Mon, was befriended by Wyn Lewis. The conman cheated Corrigan out of some £200,000 and, ultimately – after Corrigan’s death – he was imprisoned for fraud.

Altercation

Wyn Lewis also had a relationship of sorts with Whall. Some weeks after Corrigan’s death police were called to Wyn Lewis’s property to defuse an altercation with Whall about, apparently, money.

The substance of the argument remains unclear. Evidence emerged, in a complicated context described in the book, suggesting that Wyn Lewis was, or at least had been, a police informer. This adds a further strand to the multi-faceted mystery on north Ynys Môn.

Richard Wyn Lewis played no part in Terry Whall’s trial for the Corrigan murder but, as the authors say, he “often felt like a looming presence over the proceedings.”

This complex web of connections is mapped with admirable clarity by the authors.  They describe the known relationships and indicate connections with local criminality. What emerges is a jigsaw with some of the pieces missing; without them the full picture cannot be seen, and the fragments don’t make full sense.

When I was young, we took our family holidays on Ynys Môn: in August laid back, slow, agreeably dozy – I didn’t know the half of it.

‘Murder on Ynys Môn’ is an excellent book.  It unravels a complicated story – actually, a set of inter-linking stories – clearly and crisply. It is well-written, detached and avoids the breathlessness sometimes attached to real crime.

Sion Tecwyn is from Ynys Môn originally and has decades of experience reporting the area, principally for the BBC. Meic Parry, also originally from Gwynedd, has developed a career in sound engineering, production and journalism; he produced and presented the enormously successful podcast ‘The Crossbow Killer’ which I thoroughly recommend as a companion to this book.

The book is well-illustrated with good quality photographs. It’s hard to square the violent crime with the sleepy-looking farmland and striking horizons.

The text mixes some short inserts in Welsh where the quotes arise from interviews clearly carried out in the language, with the English version immediately below. It’s a technique which works well.

It reminds readers that the action happens in a community where Welsh and English sit alongside each other. More than that, the Welsh inserts add a nuance and character to the narrative which would otherwise be missing.

Sensitive

The authors remain sensitive throughout to the family of Gerald Corrigan. They treat the story with seriousness and are respectful of facts and feelings. On this basis, they earned co-operation from the family which, for understandable reasons, is not always available in accounts of this sort.

In his introduction Sion Tecwyn notes the great social changes which have taken place on Ynys Môn during his lifetime.

Running alongside this story is an implied story of the consequences of social change. The rural community of Ynys Môn is atomised in a way unthinkable 50 years ago.

Neighbours don’t necessarily know each other anymore in the ways they once would, and the institutions and ties of community have thinned and fragmented.

The murder rate in Wales is actually very low but we learn a lot about a society from its crimes.

Retiring incomers into rural areas face special challenges. Making new friends without the structures offered by work is often more difficult as people age.

While some people in established rural communities are open and welcoming, incoming retirees can be excluded from – or at least find it difficult to access – the networks of neighbourly support and social structures which provide a degree of protection and solidarity.

Vulnerable

Gerald Corrigan and others mentioned in this book were vulnerable to exploitation for exactly this reason.

Terry Whall, a man without previous convictions for violence, murdered Gerald Corrigan, a man he’d never met, in a gruesome, cruel way.

Why? People may conjecture but we simply don’t know. Whall hasn’t said and, if anyone else knows, they too have remained quiet so far.

The story has yielded many twists since 2019 and others may emerge over time. Sherlock’s comment to Dr Watson comes to mind: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

An updated book may prove necessary in due course.

Murder on Ynys Môn is published by Seren and can be purchased here and at all good bookshops.