THE shocking case of Tywyn reverend Emyr Owen is to be revisited in a new TV show.

It was back in 1984 that North Wales Police found themselves investigating a series of anonymous, threatening letters.

Just before Christmas, Emyr Owen’s name was suggested as the possible author of them, and when police searched the reverend’s house they found images of severed male genitals.

Owen admitted cutting sexual organs on three bodies awaiting burial in chapels in his care.

This was the start of an incredible story that would shock a nation and make headlines around the world.

Y Parchedig Emyr Ddrwg (The Rev) on S4C next Wednesday, 2 February, 9pm police officers, psychologists, historians, journalists and others who knew Owen will discuss the story that shook Meirionnydd and beyond.

Detective Gwyn Roberts, who led the investigation, said: “I didn’t know Emyr Owen but I went to his house in Tywyn on 22 December 1984.

“I’d gone to ask him about the letters, but looking around the house I opened a box of slides and held one up to the light, and saw a man’s genitals torn off from the body and placed on a plate.”

Owen was taken to Dolgellau police station, marking the start of an unusual and complex case.

“There were rumours Owen had pickled the genitals and kept them in a jar, but those were just rumours.

“He told me he had thrown one out to the seagulls, thrown one into the sea and burned another,” Detective Gwyn Roberts added.

The programme recreates scenes with actor Eilir Jones playing the reverend. We get an insight into the complicated life of Emyr Owen while trying to understand what would drive an individual to commit such an act. We hear about his sexuality and the difficulties of coming out as a gay man at the time.

“I couldn’t try to defend what Emyr Owen did,” said John Sam Jones, writer and former chaplain who visited Emyr Owen in prison, “but it’s important to try to understand why he did it”.

“Emyr at that time would not have been able to understand his identity. But he felt he had unacceptable trends and he saw that it was important that those trends were controlled. I’m sure Emyr Owen in his time would have had terrible difficulty coping with such feelings, and that those feelings would have to be hidden from everyone else and himself.”

Owen died in 2001, aged 78.