On March 6th, 1952 41-year-old Lily Volpert was murdered in her shop, the murderer split her throat for £100 cash.
Volpert
Laura Williams was 17 years old when she fell in love (1945), she was working in a paper factory in Cardiff. Within three months of falling in love she married the man and three children followed. Her husband often went to sea to earn money but left after the birth of their third child as he wanted to see his children grow up, he found work in the local steel works.
Her husband was Mahmoud Mattan, he was a British Somali therefore, they had a lot of prejudice against them, walking along the street together led to insults and assaults from men and women. They both had three sons together but lived separately as it was hard to find somewhere that they could live together, they ended up living on the same street but in different houses. Laura’s family was very upset with her husband as he was not British.
Mahmoud Mattan
Lily Volpert and her family ran an outfitters shop on Bute Street not far from the docks. On the evening of March 6th, 1952 Lily Volpert was found dead in a pool of her own blood, her throat was cut with a razor and a sum of £100 (this is equivalent £3,000 today) had been stolen.
The police questioned many people including Mattan. He had told police he had not been on the Bute Street that day and had been at the cinema until 7:30pm. No one could give a confirmation of his whereabouts at 8:15pm when the murder had taken place. Police had received a statement to say that a man had been seen leaving the shop, the man was a Somali with a gold tooth and no hat or coat. Mattan had no gold teeth also before and after the cinema he was wearing a hat and coat. Harold Cove, who made the statement, changed his first statement and said it was Matten he had seen leaving the shop at 8:15pm; he changed his statement when the Volpert family offered a £200 reward. Police arrested Mattan.
Police never disclosed why they did not reveal that four others had been by the shop at the same time and all had said Mattan was not the man they had saw. Mattan was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was refused appeal and was hanged in Cardiff on September 3rd, 1952. Mattan’s wife, Laura, did not know about his execution until she went to visit him in prison, she spent decades after this battling to clear his name.
Harold Cover was later jailed for life for attempting to murder his daughter by slashing her throat with a razor.
“I still believed right up to the end that they would let him go, but they didn’t, they hung him. When they did that I just locked myself away in my room with my kids, and then for some time afterwards I used to think I could see him walking down the street towards me. He was a very good husband and father. All he wanted to do was go to work and he went to sea to earn money until I was having the third child when he said he couldn’t go and leave me any more and wanted to see the boys grow up.” – Laura Williams/Mattan
Initial attempts by the family to have the conviction overturned were denied but the case was the first to be referred to the Criminal Case Review Commissions after it was set up in 1990s. The conviction was finally overturned in 1998. Mattan’s family was awarded £1.4 million. Laura Mattan died 10 years later, and all of his children have later died.
In 1996, Mattan’s body was removed from a felon’s grave in Cardiff Prison and moved to a Cardiff cemetery. His gravestone reads “KILLED BY INJUSTICE”.
