Director denies claims reverend used to pickle penises in explosive new doc
Documentary maker Rhys Evans has squashed rumours that a disgraced Welsh reverend “used to pickle penises” in his explosive new documentary, The Rev.
Back in December 1984, Presbyterian minister Emyr Owen was arrested for mutilating corpses of three men in his chapel of rest in Tywyn prior to burial.
When police searched his property, officers discovered a stash of gay pornography, books on cannibalism and human sacrifice, handcuffs, dental extractors and ropes as well as photographs of the severed genitalia.
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The clergyman pleaded guilty to the horrific crime and was sentenced to four years behind bars, after which he lived out the rest of his days in Llandudno before he died in 2001 at the age of 78.
Now, Rhys has taken a deep dive inside the chilling case in his new documentary produced with Docshed in association with S4C, and shut down some of the terrifying rumours that have surrounded the case since his arrest. In an exclusive interview with Daily Star, the director revealed: “So every giggling schoolboy from Wales has heard of this story although it didn’t go much further at the time.
“But I’ve always wondered what was true and what isn’t. There were rumours at the time that he used to pickle penises and put them on his mantelpiece but those weren’t true. People sometimes refer to it but no one’s really made an attempt to look into it so I decided to start researching into it.
“One of the first things that everyone noticed was it’s quite a sad story. We realised that Emyr Owen was just gay and religious which is, in my opinion, not a very good combination. He just felt terrible guilt about his sexuality.” When shooting the documentary, the filmmaker admitted that he didn’t want to minimise Owen’s offences when he uncovered the cause behind his actions.
He went on: “I think my biggest worry that I had was that we weren’t letting him off the hook too easily because what he did was absolutely terrible, abhorrent even. There are still lots of very, very upset families around the Tywyn area.
“What was worse is that they didn’t let the families know. So there’s an entire generation of people in Tywyn now that aren’t quite sure if it was one of their relatives that was mutilated. So we were careful not to let him off the hook too easily, but then we were also sympathetic because once you know the history, it’s a very, very sad story.”
One of the main things Rhys hoped to do with the documentary was to revisit the case with more sympathy than previous programmes produced about the case. The documentary maker continued: “We knew that some people would be upset by this story being resurrected. The only justification for this is that we were looking at it with fresh eyes and with non-homophobic eyes.
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“There was a programme made in 1992 about him, but I think it was quite homophobic, it was filmed through a homophobic lens. So, I think we’re the first people to actually look at his story with modern eyes.”
The shocking case will be revisited in the feature-length film on Monday (October 9) on S4C.
The Rev premieres exclusively on the Icon Film Channel from 9 October. Followed by all major UK digital platforms from 8 January 2024.
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