Non Fiction
Category: Non Fiction, True Crime
Number of pages: 210
ISBN: 9781781727898
Publication date: March 9, 2026
Price: £12.99
In January 1953, the Welsh town of Laugharne was rocked by a brutal crime. 77-year-old Lizzie Thomas had been viciously attacked at home and died the following day. Local man George Roberts was arrested for her murder. George was Deaf, communicated through his own personal signs and didn’t read or write, yet he was charged and sent to trial based on an alleged ‘confession’ made through interpreters he didn’t know. As the legal arguments raged over his fitness to plead, George was facing the hangman’s noose or indefinite detention at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
In Unspeakable: Murder in Laugharne Simon Tonkin explores the investigation into this unresolved case. How did the local community react? What circumstances led to George’s arrest? To what extent did the police overlook the obvious? And what role did social prejudice and ableism play in what happened?
Highlighting a lesser-known and horrifying story from Laugharne’s past, which involved its famous residents Dylan and Caitlin Thomas, Unspeakable shows how a vulnerable man and woman were wronged by a system which undervalued, misunderstood and failed them.
Simon Tonkin
Simon Tonkin is a writer and artist who has exhibited his artwork in the Swansea Little Theatre and sells his prints in the Boat House and Cwmdonkin Drive. His poetry has been published in numerous publications and he won Liberty’s ‘Be the 80th Writer’ competition in 2014 which marked the Human Rights organisation’s celebration of its four score years of existence. He was the recipient of a South West Arts Writer’s Award for an excerpt of his novel Dylan and Dying, extracts of which have appeared in Litro Magazine and in a podcast for ‘Literature Works’ from the South West Literature Development Agency. He won the Dylan Down the Ups short story competition in 2009. More recently he has had a poem and letter to Dylan published in the Dear Dylan anthology marking International Dylan Thomas Day.
