I first became interested in the murder of Thomas Thomas at the Garnant branch of Star Stores after reading the excellent A Long Time Between Murders by Owen Harries in American Scholar magazine.

As a freelance journalist based in south Wales with an unhealthy interest in historic crime, the brutal killing of the timid half-deaf shopkeeper instantly caught my attention - not least because my discovery of the article occurred less than a month before the 93^rdanniversary of the incident and the village of Garnant lies within the area covered by the South Wales Guardian, a weekly newspaper for which I regularly work.

A retelling of the murder to coincide with the anniversary seemed a straightforward and obvious feature idea, so I put together a piece of 600 or 700 words on the crime; the only still-unsolved murder to have taken place within the Amman Valley.

Often in such cases, that would have been enough. However, the case of Thomas Thomas intrigued me. The more I looked, the more the murder hooked me.

The story of the murder at the Star had previously appeared in a number of places not least Dave Michaels excellent Cwmamman History website. However, its various incarnations including my original - are all based on the same two reports from the Amman Valley Chronicle the local newspaper of the time. Everything currently accepted regarding the killing comes from the Chronicles contemporary report and the coverage of the inquest into Thomas Thomas death a few weeks later.

While it is true that both editions of the Chronicle dedicated an unprecedented amount of news space to the reports of each, neither could offer a complete insight into what had taken place and the subsequent investigation.

What struck me most about these reports was the number of clear contradictions they contained particularly between comments made by individuals to the newspaper in the days immediately after the event and the testimony offered by those same people at the court hearing.

Therefore, I kept digging. Soon after publication of the original article I came to realise that the story I had written for the local weekly, while covering all the key elements of the crime and adhering to the accepted version of events, omitted as much as it included.

As my collected files began to mount I decided that the murder of Thomas Thomas deserved far more than just a single-page feature some 93 years after his death.

It also became clear that the events of that fateful night in February 1921 were not merely the story of one doomed individual, but the story of a village, a community and perhaps even the story of Wales during a period which shaped and defined the nation for generations to come.

No one ever stood trial for the murder of Thomas Thomas, but the whisperers and gossip-mongers of the village settled as they always must on a culprit. With the passing of the years the guilt of that one man has entered into valley folklore as all but fact.

My research, while still far from complete, has led me to one undeniable truth: the rumour mill was almost certainly wrong.

To find out more, visit my blog; murderatthestar.wordpress.com