The clue that authorities missed in the mysterious Richey Edwards case
Dear reader, for a long period of time, there was barely anything in my life that mattered to me more than rock music, Richey Edwards or the Manic Street Preachers.
In my late teens, my priorities were my blood relatives, my partner, a few of my friends, and then Wales’ favourite sons. After that, everything else in my life took a pretty distant second place. I’m not proud of it, but who among us hasn’t been all in on a rock ‘n’ roll band when we were still in the midst of working ourselves out? Especially a band like the Manics, one of the ultimate cult bands.
I was so all in that despite the fact that Richey Edwards disappeared over a decade before I’d ever heard of the band, and a full 12 years before I was ever a card-carrying fan, his loss still hit surprisingly hard. Principally, this is because the remaining members of the band, singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield, bassist Nicky Wire and drummer Sean Moore, have all been pretty explicitly reckoning with his disappearance ever since.
After all, what happened to Richey wasn’t as conclusive as death. It almost certainly was death, but the idea that he could still be out there, that he could return, played on every fan’s mind. Thus, we were all stuck in an extended loop of the first three stages of grief, with no way of processing something we didn’t know for sure had happened. How could we? The band put Richey’s share of their royalties in an account for him in case he returned decades after his disappearance. If they were still holding out hope for his return, surely we could, too?
This made the 2018 discovery that a crucial part of the investigation had been a false sting something fierce. Infamously, Edwards’ car was discovered by the Severn Bridge that connects England and Wales. He had driven across it, which necessitated the purchase of a ticket from a toll booth – this ticket had been found in the car, and at the time, the ticket was understood to read that Edwards had crossed the bridge at 2.55pm on February 1st, 1995.
For decades, the investigation had focused on everything that had happened after that time and in the following days – it wasn’t until 2018 that Edwards’ family discovered the toll booth of the Severn Bridge operates on a 24-hour clock. Therefore, if it had actually been a PM time, it would have read 14.55 instead, so for nearly 20 years, the investigation had been focusing on the wrong time of day entirely.
At the time, Edwards’ sister Rachel told ITV Cymru Wales, “We were appealing to people to have seen him at certain times that day when actually those times are meaningless now, we are hoping that it will establish a new line of enquiry because this is vital information that changes everything and turns it all on its head.”
More importantly, it gives serious heft to the claims made by writer Simon Price, who literally wrote the book on the Manic Street Preachers (It’s called Everything, it’s a great read), that the investigation into Edwards’ disappearance was, in his words, “far from satisfactory”.
It might seem like holding out false hope for his grand return, but it’s not that. Not anymore. Anyone invested in the Manics gave up hope on his return long ago. At this point, it’s closure that we’re after, and perhaps that’s something that this discovery could lead to.
Nearly a decade after the fact, though, I won’t hold my breath.