How darts commentator Tony Green was involved in the police takedown of the ‘Bullseye Killer’ who brutally murdered four

BULLSEYE star Tony Green has died aged 85, but his career once took an extraordinary turn when he came face to face with a serial killer.

Green, who died Monday after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, with commentary the ITV darts show from 1982 to 1995.

Four years before appearing in Bullseye, John Cooper shot and killed siblings Richard and Helen ThomasCredit: Enterprise

Bullseye star Tony Green has died aged 85, but his career once took an extraordinary turn when he came face to face with a serial killerCredit: Rex

But it was on a May 1989 episode of the show when a Welshman called John Cooper entered the oche as a participant.

Skilled in wielding a flechette, he spoke of the beauty of the Welsh coastline and narrated host Jim Bowen of his love for diving.

But despite his seemingly ordinary facade, John Cooper was a double murderer who would start killing again a few weeks later.

Four years prior to filming, Cooper stormed Scoveston Manor Pembrokeshire and murdered siblings Richard and Helen Thomas.

He then burned down the remote three-story property, while police discovered the siblings’ charred remains.

Just a month after filming Bullseye, Peter and Gwenda Dixon, on holiday in Pembrokeshire, were due to take their last walk along the coastal path.

They were ambushed by Cooper, who had a sawn-off shotgun, who tied them up and demanded their bank details.

After stealing £300 from Peter, he shot the couple in the face at close range and fled.

Their bodies were found in the bushes.

Chillingly, Cooper had spoken about where he would kill the Dixons while on the job appearance on Bullseye.

Some of Bullseye’s best pieces as a show will return to screens

This hint would prove crucial when police re-investigated the Dixons’ murders in 2005.

It is not believed Tony Green – the commentator on Bullseye – was involved in the police investigation.

Nearly a decade would pass since Cooper’s TV appearance before he was jailed for 14 years in 1998 for theft and burglary.

Cooper – who committed 30 robberies and violent attacks and once held a group of teenagers at gunpoint – was released in 2009.

But it was only thanks advances in forensic science who matched his DNA to a shotgun used in his four murders.

He was convicted of the four murders and assaults on May 26, 2011, and given four life sentences without parole – meaning he will never be released.

Cooper would later be given the grim nickname “The Bullseye Killer”.

Now 79, Kuiper may have killed five others in Wales, but he was never convicted.

The story of how police eventually tracked down Cooper, a former farm worker dubbed the ‘Bullseye Killer’, was told in an ITV’s The Pembrokeshire Murders drama, broadcast in 2021.