Judge demands answers after Llandudno death threat bail

A senior judge has ordered North Wales Police to account for its handling of a case in which a man told officers in a custody suite that he would find the woman accusing him of rape and dismember her – and was then bailed, going on to walk the streets of Llandudno with a knife.

Sentencing

Martin Edwards, 41, of no fixed address, was sentenced at Caernarfon Crown Court after admitting making death threats, affray and having a knife in public.

He was jailed for three years and eight months. Judge Simon Mills, the senior circuit judge in North Wales, described him as “very dangerous” and imposed a further five years on his licence period. A restraining order lasting 15 years was also made.

What was said in custody

Prosecutor Selda Krasniqi told the court Edwards had been detained in March after a woman reported a rape. What followed inside the police station formed the basis of the charges he later admitted.

“In custody the defendant made comments to the police, ‘I’m not having her saying I raped her’, ‘as soon as I get out of here on bail I am going to find her and chop her into little pieces’, and he would ‘bury her’,” Miss Krasniqi said.

The threat to “chop her into little pieces” was made more than once. Officers cautioned Edwards against repeating it. His answer, the judge later recounted, was: “I don’t care.”

No further action was ultimately taken over the rape allegation. Edwards was never charged with any sexual offence.

A knife in Llandudno

Despite what he had said in the station, Edwards was released on bail. He then made good on the threats at Llandudno, arming himself with a large kitchen knife and stating his intention to murder the woman.

What stopped him was the intervention of a former soldier, who spent roughly 20 minutes talking Edwards down before taking the weapon off him. The judge said the man had acted in a “very public-spirited” way and had “quite possibly saved the target of Mr Edwards’ behaviour from serious harm”.

The report that went unanswered

Having disarmed Edwards, the ex-soldier rang police to report what he described as a threat to life. According to the prosecution, officers did not attend for more than 24 hours – leaving the witness holding what Miss Krasniqi called “a potential murder weapon”.

He felt “ignored”. The court heard that the gravity of what he had walked into, combined with the absence of any police response, led him to lodge a formal complaint with North Wales Police and to raise the matter with his MP.

In his own words, the episode had “affected my confidence in relying on emergency services where there’s an immediate threat to life”.

Background and mitigation

Edwards has 36 offences on his record, among them offences of violence.

Defence counsel Simon Killeen said his client has paranoid schizophrenia, and that the condition shapes how he responds to perceived slights. The court also heard Edwards has a brain injury.

The judge’s remarks

Passing sentence, Judge Mills returned to the moment Edwards stood in the street with the blade.

“You said ‘I am going to murder her’, while holding the knife. You repeated that multiple times,” the judge told him.

He then turned to the conduct of the investigation, saying he could not reconcile the threats made in custody with the decision to let Edwards walk out.

“There seems to have been a wholesale failure in this case,” Judge Mills said. “I can’t understand how this man came to be released from custody, having said he was going to murder a person who was alleging rape.

“What did he do? He went around, within a short time of making those threats in a police station, with a knife.”

The judge demanded an explanation from the force.

“A person alleging rape needs to be protected and shouldn’t have people free to walk from a police station having said to a police officer: ‘I am going to kill them’,” he said, adding: “I need to have some satisfaction that nothing like this can happen again.”

North Wales Police respond

Deputy Chief Constable Nigel Harrison said: “We are aware of the judge’s comments in this case which are clearly concerning, and we are actively reviewing the full circumstances surrounding this incident.

“We will reply directly to the Court in due course, and as such it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”