A JURY has found that a convicted murderer from Shrewsbury killed two other men.
A jury decided that 59-year-old Robin Stanislaw Ligus had beaten Brian Coles, 57, to death with an iron bar at his Higher Heath home in Whitchurch 17 years ago.

Following a month long trial at Birmingham Crown Court the jury also found that he had killed 53-year-old Ludlow antiques dealer Trevor Bradley in April, 1994.

But the jury cleared Ligus of involvement in the death of Bernard Czyzewska, whose body was found in the River Severn.

The court had been told that Ligus, who is already serving life for bludgeoning a pensioner to death, was declared unfit to plead because of his mental state and the jury was instructed to determine if the defendant had been responsible for the acts that led to the deaths of the three men.

Ligus, a father-of-three, who was jailed for life in 1996 for killing 75-year-old Robert Young in Shrewsbury in October 1994, is due to be sentenced later this month.

After the trial Mr Coles’s family demanded an apology from police describing the initial investigation as a “debacle”. Peter Coles, Mr Coles’s cousin, said: “Brian’s death was deemed not murder, then days later it was murder, then weeks later not murder.

“We, the family, expect an apology from those who were responsible for this debacle.”

Ligus was charged by West Mercia police with the murders of all three men in September last year after a cold case review and police described the 17-year investigation as “long and complex”.

Detective Inspector Andy Parsons, who led the inquiry, said it was hoped the outcome went some way to help the families of Brian Coles and Trevor Bradley to come to terms with their loss.

The court had heard that Ligus made “wholesale confessions” to cell-mates, police and a psychologist.

“The result has proved that Robin Ligus was, in fact, a serial killer and not a serial confessor.

“His victims were vulnerable and were brutally killed in horrific circumstances,” he added.

Mr Bradley’s remains were found in a burnt out car at Melverley, near Oswestry, in April, 1994, and Mr Czyzewska’s body was recovered from the River Severn at Shrewsbury in November that year.