A Milford Haven woman has told the John William Cooper trial from beyond the grave how she and her friends were attacked by an armed, hooded man.

The alleged victim was 15 at the time and gave a statement to police who video taped her.

She died earlier this year but the judge, Mr Justice John Griffith Williams, granted the prosecution permission to play the tape to the jury – even though the defence will not have the chance to cross examine her.

Cooper, aged 66, of Spring Gardens, Letterston, is accused of raping one of the girls, indecently assaulting another and trying to rob all five.

Cooper is also charged with two double murders – of brother and sister Richard and Helen Thomas, aged 58 and 56, who were shot dead at their home, Scoveston Manor, in 1985, and of holidaymakers Peter and Gwenda Dixon, 51 and 52, who were also shot dead four years later.

The witness told police how she and four friends, two girls and a boy, went out to play on March 6, 1996. They were aged between 14 and 16 and headed into woodland near the Mount Estate, Milford Haven.

After playing on a swing in the trees they began to walk back home when they were approached by a man walking his dog.

One of the boys thought it was a friend called Wayne and said, “It’s Wayne.” The reply was, “Do I look like Wayne?”

The girl then realised the man’s face was covered with what looked like a homemade Balaclava, with large holes for his eyes. He was also carrying a short, double barrelled shotgun and shining a torch into their eyes.

He forced the group to walk away from houses on the Mount and further into a field and then to lie on their stomachs. He selected one of the girls, took her a little further away and raped her. Then he returned and indecently assaulted another of the girls.

“He said if we all shut up and don’t move no-one would get hurt. He kicked one of the boys in the head and told him to stop moving and to keep his head down.

“The girl who was raped was crying. Then it all went quiet for about ten minutes.

“He came back over and kicked the same boy again. Then he knelt by the other girl and she began crying.

“If I heard his voice again I would know who it was.”

She said the ordeal ended when he told them to leave – but with the warning that he knew who they were and if they told anyone what had happened he would find them and kill them.

To make his point he fired into the air.

The girl who was indecently assaulted told the court she thought the man had a sack over his head, with holes for the eyes.

She said she heard her friend being raped.

“She was saying ‘please don’t, please don’t’. I guessed what he was doing. He told her to shut up.

“Earlier we could hear the sound of children playing on the Mount but where he took us it was deadly silent.”

Protected by screens from people sitting in the public gallery, she described how the man – still wearing a woollen glove – put his hand up her top and under her bra and felt her breasts. He then put his hand down her tracksuit bottoms and touched her indecently.

Before being allowed to leave the man demanded money from all five, but they told him they had nothing. One boy offered him his empty wallet, another his watch.

She said that when the man told them to go they began to walk away slowly.

“He said that if we looked back he would kill us. One of the boys began crying and running and I told him not to run.”

She said the rape victim walked slowly behind them, sobbing and with her head down.

Cooper denies all the charges and the trial continues.

John Cooper appeared on ITV’s Bullseye less than a month before he slaughtered his final two victims, a court has been told.

The footage of Cooper, now 66, was used ten years later to match him with artists’ impressions of the suspect, it was alleged.

Holidaymakers Peter and Gwenda Dixon were shot dead in June 1989, as they enjoyed a last walk along the Pembrokeshire coastal footpath.

Mr Dixon’s cashcard was used at several cashpoints in the hours after the deaths but before the bodies were found.

Swansea crown court heard how artists later created impressions of a man seen acting suspiciously close to the cashpoints.

Tina Marie Williams, a graphic designer with ITV, told the court how she was approached by detectives in 2009 and asked if she could match the impressions with anyone who appeared on Bullseye in May 1989.

She said she digitised the two impressions given to her and then watched five minutes of footage from the 1989 episode, which was also played to the jury.

Cooper appeared as “John from Milford Haven” and told compere Jim Bowen that his hobby was scuba diving.

He was with friend Harvey Boswell but they walked away empty handed after trying to double their money and losing.

Miss Williams produced a side on image of Cooper which, the prosecution argue, matched the impressions created by the artists.

She said: “I scrolled through the film frame by frame and found this profile. I made the match.”

One of the original images had been made after bakery worker Dionne Jane Mather had described to police a white haired man she had seen acting suspiciously by a cashpoint in Pembroke.

Cooper, of Letterston,, is accused of hijacking the Dixons, from Oxfordshire, at gunpoint and forcing them off the path to a secluded spot only a local man would have known about.

There, it is alleged, he sexually assaulted Mrs Dixon, aged 52, tied up both her and her husband and then killed them both with a 12 bore shotgun.

Cooper is also accused of murdering brother and sister Richard and Helen Thomas, aged 58 and 56, at their home at Scoveston Manor in 1985.

They had also been tied up and shot.

The jury also heard from holidaymaker Alfred Pember, who said he used a Natwest cashpoint in Pembroke at 4.03pm on June 29, 1989. The prosecution say Mr Dixon’s cashcard was also used at the point.

He said after withdrawing cash he saw a man about three yards away wheeling a cycle. He described him as about 45 years old, five feet ten inches tall, with grey or mousey hair.

Cooper also faces allegations that in March 1996 he tried to rob a group of five teenagers of cash. He is alleged to have cornered them in a field near Milford Haven and threatened to shoot them before raping a 16-year-old girl and sexually assaulting her friend.

Cooper denies all of the charges.