A quiet Cardiff community was devastated in 1959 by the abduction of six-year-old Carol Ann Stephens, last seen getting into a car with a mysterious, dark-haired stranger. A nationwide recovery effort was launched, but two weeks after her disappearance, Carol Ann’s body was found in a brook, 60 miles from where she’d been taken.

It was a shocking murder that left her family distraught, and one that also had wider ramifications for a nation still basking in the twilight of the prosperous 1950s. As automobile ownership boomed, it brought with it a new set of dangers – and a terrifying new kind of predatory killer, one who prowled the streets preying on vulnerable children.

Carol Ann’s killer was never caught, but her death alerted authorities to the sinister reality of modern Britain. In this episode of Dark Land, the team reinvestigates the murder of Carol Ann Stephens, making one bombshell discovery that leads them to identify a new prime suspect, and takes them to the brink of cracking a cold case that has long cast a shadow over Wales’s capital city.