- Incoming - 24th September 2025
- Abuse of power… - 23rd September 2025
- Foreign affairs - 22nd September 2025
The conviction of a volunteer police officer for raping a child, and revelations by The Eye that a South Wales criminal had also been a special constable, have renewed calls for vetting procedures to be tightened, and mistakes of forces to be examined.
James Bubb, who now identifies as a woman named Gwyn Samuels, groomed and raped a girl he met online, and faced a Crown Court (CC) trial in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. His time as a Metropolitan Police (Met) volunteer officer has come under great scrutiny.
Bubb met his victim on a video chat site in 2018, when he was around 21 and she was 12 years old. They then met in person for the first time at a Christian festival a few months later. He sexually assaulted the girl in public shortly before her 13th birthday, and he was violent towards her when he raped her in her early teens.
This terrible episode comes in the context of another disturbing event revealed by us. Welshman Howard Williams (who changed his name FOUR times, one of which was to ‘James Daniels’, and has ‘run’ cafés or take-aways in South Wales as well as Spain), was a special constable with the police as well.
Williams was a volunteer officer in the early 2000s and, like Samuels, had the authority of regulars in the police.
The College of Policing (CoP) declares that special constables are: “Voluntary officers with the same powers as regular officers, under the command of regular senior officers and with their own rank structure”. And that: “Specials take part in frontline police work. They can spend much of their time on the streets, doing intelligence-based patrols in crime hotspots or taking part in crime-prevention initiatives”.
But after Williams was imprisoned on drug charges, South Wales Police (SWP) changed tack completely from this pronouncement, and declared proudly on Facebook (FB): “Two men behind multiple cannabis factories worth up to 600k have been put behind bars. Following an investigation carried out by the Mid Glamorgan Organised Crime Unit, six large-scale cannabis factories were linked to two men.…Ashley Carter, aged 35 from #Rhondda, and Howard Williams, aged 46 from #Cardiff, were sentenced at Merthyr Crown Court”.
Several years ago Williams/Daniels (who had also branched out into property), was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for conspiracy to supply and produce cannabis. After he and his partner-in-crime were jailed, Detective Constable (DC) Chelsea Barrett, who led the case, said: “We know that many people think it is ‘just a bit of cannabis’ but any production of drugs is linked to wider operations. These large operations are often run by organised crime gangs, who are likely to engage in human trafficking and very serious violence involving weapons”.
Yet this worrying information from The Eye is far from being the first time that Williams has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, as with Samuels.
In the past his behaviour in his personal life as well as in business has been questionable to say the least. Several years ago he announced on social media his engagement to a woman called Danni (or Danielle) Greer while he was still married to someone else. Our journalists have shown as well how Williams had opened a tanning studio in Cardiff, although like many of his ‘businesses’ this one also soon met trouble.
Williams has admitted to being imprisoned, but described it in a Facebook (FB) post as a “short while”, when his convictions in fact total years. He claimed: “…when I was younger I did spend a short while in prison for fraud in the UK”.
However his prison terms did not, in fact, amount to a ‘short while’. Apart from, over 10 years, spending more than four of them in jail convicted of 25 deception counts (even before being put behind bars for the drug offences), he has been made bankrupt three times – in 2002, 2010 and 2015.
But despite these convictions in the future (information about Williams’ behaviour which culminated in them was easily obtainable), he was still made a Special Constable.
During his previous career as an ‘Estate Agent’, the anger of one individual was clear on a property website: “He (Williams) makes you pay circa £10k deposit and then disappears into the sunset”. At a property event in the South of England, The Eye were told that an investor had lost £30,000 to him. His extraordinary exploits have even been the subject of our satirical writer Edwin Phillips and Williams has boasted of owning a boat as well as a jetski, which he has said on FB was for sale.
Plainly life was good for him, although it is doubtful that much was true, and he posted a YouTube interview on his property website where he bragged about his property ‘expertise’.
He claimed he had a “massive” estate agency business, but went from earning £20,000 a week to having just £56 in his pocket and living on the streets. Williams also alleged he drove expensive cars (and photographs have been published), saying in the interview that it took just “24 hours” to turn the £56 into £1,000, yet many critics have questioned this pronouncement. One who is owed thousands of pounds by Williams/Daniels told us: “This is all made up. He lives in a complete fantasy world!”.
Williams has, too, been in charge of marketing for a Spanish wine bar called ‘Blanco’ in Murcia, and he announced his engagement to Ms Greer on the bar’s website. But The Eye have divulged how over one Christmas and New Year, he warned customers on social media that they could no longer accept credit cards at Blanco, even though these periods are the busiest times of year for restaurants and it is almost unheard of for them only to take cash then.
He also ran dance nights at a disco in Spain called ‘Roldan’ but it closed soon after The Eye’s disclosures. Following them, Williams/Daniels asked a specialist company how to “get rid” of The Eye’s “negative” stories about him on the internet. He wrote: “When I google James daniels spain or James Daniels property or James Daniels murcia a load of website links appear for the-eye.wales which are negative reviews and not true (The Eye – nothing is untrue). How do I get rid of these an(d)how much does it cost? Also how long does it take?”.
Williams needed hospital treatment after his legs were broken when an illegal drugs deal went wrong, and it has also been revealed on The Eye, how formerly he had teamed up with another ex-criminal from South Wales, who was also put behind bars for drug offences, to start a ‘charity’. He launched the ‘Crisis Housing Charity’ and asked for donations from the public in a venture designed ostensibly to help ex-convicts find homes. The ‘charity’ gave an address in Cardiff but does not now exist.
There is, however, mounting frustration that only The Eye have covered the exploits of Williams. One who knows him well, told us: “I was totally ignored when I emailed (the mainstream media) I was so hopeful when it was the national police after him. He was also wanted for identification fraud here (Spain). Turns my stomach just thinking of what he is doing. Evil man”.
Our Editor Phil Parry has, as well, been subjected to a torrent of abuse on social media from Williams/Daniels and his supporters, following discoveries by The Eye’s journalists. His friends, wife and children, have been too.
In one tirade he wrote to him on FB: “You write total lies about people (The Eye – we only report facts), bully to the point of harassment and suicide, and will not answer a direct email? This is not journalism this is a mixture of Phil Parry (The ex journalist) and (others) you are pure scum!!!!! Let it be publicly known that The Eye does NOT care about people it just lies to make fictitious stories up. BULLYING, LIES, MENTAL HEALTH ABUSE TO NAME BUT A FEW!!!!!”.
In another he said: “I am have contacted you (sic) numerous times before asking why you consistently, stalk, bully and harass me? … You so far have asked the following for comments:
Thief
Abuser (The Eye have never said Williams is an abuser).
Liar
Sex Offender (The Eye have never said Williams is a sex offender).
Drug user (The Eye have never said Williams is a drug user, just that he has dealt in illegal drugs).
Meanwhile his ex-business partner, Sam McManus (also known as ‘Georgeson’), has first-hand knowledge of his lies. He has admitted he too was conned by him and that Williams/Daniels was a ‘sick man’. Mr McManus explained how he was deceived along with everyone else, and told The Eye: “He (Williams) has fooled many people and I can only be grateful that there are good investigative journalists like you guys who expose greedy people like him. It is embarrassing to admit that I am yet another victim of his greed”.
However it is clear that our stories about the escapades of Williams have served a public interest, and stopped a LOT of people from being duped by a man who was a Special Constable.
The Eye were contacted by a driver for one of his cafés who offered extremely worrying information. He said: “He (Williams) (is) not paying me for the work I did for him and he (is) also not paying the other drivers. Thank god I read your report on him, it save(d) me money and bother. The guy is a joke. I’m now £200 out of pocket, but it could be worst (sic)”.
A text message about Williams said that he had: “…taken everything out AGAIN not paid the staff Owes one of the girls £500 locked up and empty”.
Earlier another staff member at one of his ‘cafés’ warned others on FB: “Nobody work for Crave desserts in Merthyr town, haven’t paid some of their staff for weeks, delivery drivers and kitchen staff, always says it will be in on Friday or Tuesday and I’m still waiting 5 weeks on along with others who worked there. Always got to beg for your money, Absolutely disgusting, you work the hours and expect to be paid! They have blocked me from their page and ain’t answering my messages, fuming!”.
In the light of what has happened the failings of the police generally may come under scrutiny, and South Wales Police (SWP) could become a candidate for the axe, because there has long been controversy about the fact that Wales boasts four forces in a relatively small area.
At a Media Conference (MC) highlighting the number of scandals besetting SWP, our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, stressed this disturbing fact, stating: “It is ridiculous that in a population of 3.1 million people we in Wales have FOUR forces”, adding: “Scotland is much bigger, but only has ONE. London has almost nine million people yet has just TWO. Think of the public money that is wasted duplicating resources, to pay fat salaries to all those Assistant Chief Constables, and Chief Constables!”.
There have been a number of appalling miscarriages the force was responsible for in the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, which include: The Cardiff Three (Five), The Cardiff Newsagent Three, The Darvell Brothers, Jonathan Jones (The Tooze Murders), as well as Annette Hewins, but this shameful list does NOT have on it all those guiltless people who were imprisoned for less important crimes than murder.
Demonstrations have already been staged in support of The Cardiff Three (Five), and a previous media release by the protest group declared that the: “Justice for The Cardiff 5 Campaign launches new initiative to achieve accountability for victims of wrongful conviction”.
Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi, and Stephen Miller were wrongly found guilty in 1990 of the murder of Lynette White, and spent more than two years serving prison sentences having endured the same time on remand, while cousins John and Ronnie Actie were acquitted after being in custody since their arrests. False eyewitness statements, coerced confessions, and more were used in the police ‘investigation’. However on appeal in 1992 the taped interviews with Mr Miller, who had a mental age of 11, were deemed an example of inappropriate interrogation for reference in future cases, such was their intimidating and coercive nature.
It bolstered demands for a judicial inquiry which has been refused.
Three BLACK men had been convicted of the murder (although FIVE, including the Acties, were put on trial), when one WHITE man (Jeffrey Gafoor) was finally caught years later through DNA analysis. He confessed to carrying out the terrible 1988 murder, and even apologised, through his barrister, to the others who had been incorrectly jailed.
The five innocent men, were arrested in December 1988 after detectives had been on the case for 10 months, and were pursuing a suspect seen nearby (who looked EXACTLY like Gafoor), minutes following the murder. But when SWP changed the investigating team, and pressure mounted to make an arrest, attention turned to locals. Despite no forensic evidence connecting the five to Ms White’s murder they were taken in.
This has endorsed the fact that across Wales and England the public’s confidence in the police is at an all time low, and it may support Sir Mark’s comments. A YouGov poll found that only 49 per cent of Britons thought the police were “doing a good job”, down from 77 per cent four years before. In his most recent assessment of policing, Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (HMCIC), described this as one of policing’s “biggest crises in living memory”. He could not remember, he said, “when the relationship between the police and the public was more strained than it is now”.
Anger over miscarriages of justices like this one, has led to the tabling of an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the UK Parliament which was signed by several MPs, emphasising the calls for a judicial review.
It proclaimed: “…this House notes the series of cases since the 1980s investigated by South Wales Police force that resulted in wrongful convictions; further notes the devastating impact that wrongful accusation and imprisonment can have on people subject to miscarriages of justice; expresses concern that many of the perpetrators of these crimes have yet to be found; and calls on the Ministry of Justice to organise a judicial inquiry into all miscarriages of justice that took place between 1982 and 2016”. The motion was immediately signed by three Plaid Cymru (Plaid) MPs, including the party’s leader in the House of Commons (HoC), who tabled the motion, Liz Saville-Roberts.
There were also demands for the judicial inquiry (at least) at the MC to uncover the truth about the miscarriages (it has since been refused, but as the EDM and the apparent mismatch in punishments for police failings show, there is now increasing pressure to hold one).
Following the MC some then marched to the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC), and Welsh Government (WG) buildings, with a number of politicians backing a Statement of Opinion to support the calls for an inquiry. A rally was held as well outside Cardiff Crown Court..
Phil also said to the audience that he was regularly approached by solicitors during the 1990s, who said the police were doing bad things, and that something had to be done. On one occasion he was told to put away his notebook because he was informed that no record should be made of the conversation. He also described how other forces had been put in ‘special measures’ (including the Met), but that this was the least that should be done with SWP.
The MC was organised by Michael O’Brien of the so-called Cardiff Newsagent Three, who talked movingly about how his health had been badly affected after he spent 11 years inside prison, for a crime he did not commit. Mr O’Brien told The Eye: “My health has been ruined, and there has been long-lasting damage. My miscarriage of justice case has caused a huge family rift”. Mr O’Brien, who is now in his fifties, was jailed wrongly in 1988 for the killing of Cardiff newsagent, Phillip Saunders. Another who spoke emotionally of what had happened to him, was John Actie.
Several programmes have been broadcast looking at the events in which the police played such a major part, and a number are in production now. Another was transmitted earlier (although it is still available to be streamed) examining Mr O’Brien’s story in detail.
The promotional material before one of them, proclaimed: “Episode One Monday 23rd May at 9pm Raphael Rowe delves into the brutal murder of Cardiff newsagent Phillip Saunders in 1987. The episode examines the investigation that led to the conviction of three innocent men, which resulted in their wrongful imprisonment. The episode reveals shocking police threats and coercion that led to the arrest and incarceration of Michael O’Brien, Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall. After the men had spent more than a decade behind bars, a court appeal quashed the original verdict, but the unsolved case continues to haunt the city. Plus, for the first time ever, the victim’s sister and nephew break a 35-year silence and reveal exclusive insights into the case”.
Even before these shocking details emerged, Sky documentaries were broadcast, called Murder in the Valleys (MITV), looking into the horrific Clydach murders in 1999, when four people (Mandy Power her elderly disabled mother Doris, and two young children) were brutally beaten to death.
This, too, has been highlighted by recent events, despite the fact it is not (in theory) a miscarriage of justice case, although the man convicted of them (David ‘Dai’ Morris) died in jail still protesting his innocence.
They were nominated for two awards at the BAFTA Cymru ceremony, including one for best Factual Series.
Another television programme on 5Star (which pretended to be looking into ‘cold cases’), though was VERY different. and incurred the wrath of many close to what had happened. 5Star is a free-to-air television channel owned by Paramount Networks UK & Australia and a sister to Channel 5, which specialises in documentaries. One of the daughters of Mr Morris, Janiene Marie O’Sullivan, publicly declared to her dedicated website group: “I am finding it difficult to put into words how it made me feel….Basically it was a whole hour of Martin Lloyd-Evans (who led the investigation into the Clydach Murders) talking rubbish!…South Wales police have done themselves no favours again with this one”.
Mr Morris’s sister Debra Thomas also said on the site: “Can you believe the utter verbal diarrhoea Martin Lloyd was spouting in that cheap channel 5 program…I also know the journalist is on this group so I hope and pray she gets to read this.” And: “What disgraceful journalism!! They should hang their heads in shame”.
The website Mrs Thomas helped set up, along with her niece, questions her brother’s guilt and has almost 31,000 members. On it she published a reply from Channel 5 to her complaint about the programme, but above the letter she wrote: “What research did they do????”.
The successful prosecution case against Mr Morris was that he had gone to Ms Power’s looking for sex, high on drink and drugs, been spurned and beat the entire family to death, leaving his chain there in the process. Yet the evidence suggested Doris had been killed first, NOT her daughter, when presumably it would have been the person doing the spurning who would have died FIRST!
Mr O’Brien appears on MITV saying that he believes the conviction of Mr Morris IS in fact another miscarriage of justice. He told the MITV documentary-makers: “When I was released from prison I remember…saying ‘I’m going to be South Wales Police’s worst nightmare for what they did to me’, and I meant every word of it”.
In a formal interview for MITV (they wouldn’t do one with Phil), Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) of SWP, David Thorne, made a startling admission, about the mistakes that were made by the police in the earlier miscarriages of justice. During filming for the programme Mr Thorne appeared on, a forensic review found traces of DNA on a sock which it is believed was used to hold the murder weapon, that were “more likely than not” to have come from Mr Morris, and SWP trumpeted the finding.
They effectively said: ‘We know we got it wrong in the past, but this time is different. Trust us’. Yet a long-running campaign has been launched to establish his innocence, and after the first trial when Mr Morris was convicted, his sister Debra gave a tearful press conference with her parents when she stressed her belief that he was NOT guilty. She said: “He just didn’t do these things…they’ve got the wrong man”.
ACC Thorne, though, insisted on MITV, that Mr Morris was the RIGHT man, but acknowledged that mistakes had been made in previous police inquiries. He proclaimed: “It’s safe to say we got it wrong (in the past). We absolutely got it wrong. (There were) HUGE errors in the way investigations were conducted (but) we HAVEN’T found that in this case. This is not a miscarriage of justice”.
However Phil had made a BBC Panorama television programme about the shocking Clydach Murders a few years after they had been committed, and he was the first to question the police actions during THIS investigation too. As he said in the opening of the programme: “One police force in Britain has a disturbing record of locking up the wrong people in murder cases”.
During MITV, the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) at the time, Detective Superintendent (DS) (Retd.) of SWP Martyn Lloyd–Evans (who used the word ‘sublime’ when he meant ‘subdued’!), is questioned about the apparent mistake of not releasing to the public a witnesses E-Fit constructed soon after the murders, which, it said, had a 90 per cent likeness. He replies that because the man seen was carrying a bag, and it was believed the killer did not have one, it was not put out.
Mr Evans said: “I didn’t think it was relevant”, but the E-Fit matched almost exactly the face of the first senior police officer on the scene, Inspector (at the time) Stuart Lewis, who (against all procedure) had only stayed there a matter of minutes, or that of his identical twin brother (another police officer, Sergeant [also at the time] Stephen Lewis, whose wife was having a gay affair with one of the victims). Inspector Stuart Lewis, had changed his shift to be on that night, yet at crucial hours during the murders his whereabouts were unknown. He was driving a red Peugeot diesel, and a car similar to this was spotted near the murder scene. So to say the E-Fit was ‘not relevant’, appeared bizarre in the extreme, to critics of the police.
However Mr Evans’ record was considered so exemplary he was later chosen to examine cold cases in the Major Crime Review unit. In 2009, he said: “What we do is use today’s technology on yesterday’s cases which means that offenders who may think that they are safe 20 years after a crime has been committed aren’t any more and could receive a knock on the door any day”.
In the MITV films Mr Evans’ boss as the then head of SWP CID, Wynne Phillips, also said something incredible: “We can’t manufacture evidence”. But events before the murders, showed that SWP have done EXACTLY that.
To take just one of those cases (in which Phil was intimately involved, because he had made ANOTHER programme questioning THAT conviction [The Cardiff Newsagent Three]), the police MANUFACTURED (as Mr Phillips said they DIDN’T do) an overheard ‘confession’ between the young men they had arrested, when an admission was effectively made to the murder of the newsagent, and they presented before the court ‘EVIDENCE’ that the group had run from the scene, but one of the three had bad legs and couldn’t run at all.
Now there is MORE evidence – this time it is about the fact that a jailed criminal was a Special Constable with the police, and that a man/woman convicted of raping a child was another volunteer officer.
The memories of Phil’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which he has charted the criminal career of Welshman Williams from the beginning) as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – how during that 42 year journalistic career for Phil major political stories have always loomed large, so he is intrigued by the advice from Donald Trump to use soldiers in cracking down on immigration, when research appears to show that immigrants (whether ‘legal’ or not) have a huge beneficial effect.
