The man known for his books about Newport and his stream of stage productions has turned his hand to chronicling the city's notorious murders.

Murder stories are lent credibility when the writer knows the victim.

When you find out that he has known two victims the interest is doubled and at three there is a distinct frisson.

When he tells you that he knew four people who have subsequently been done to death the impulse is to start backing towards the door.

In fact Terry Underwood, author of Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths Around Newport, is one of the gentlest men you could meet.

"And yet death and violence have a riveting appeal," he says.

Terry Underwood was born in Clytha Square, Newport, in 1928 to Victor Underwood who was gassed, bayonetted and shot at while serving with the 3rd Monmouthshires at Ypres, and his wife Katie who was in service.

It was when the family moved to Caerleon Road that young Terry had his first brush with murder.

One day the butcher asked his mother where she lived. "When she told him he replied 'Did you know there was a murder there? A son poisoned his seriously ill mother as an act of mercy'.

"The name of the family was Morgan and they had a business in the Market.

"We left soon after that. That particular story doesn't appear in my book but I'm sure that's what sparked off my fascination with murder."

The first meeting with a murder victim was in 1946 when the young Terry was a member of the Odeon cinema's Mickey Mouse Club and used to see the cinema manager, resplendent in tails and a white tie, welcoming patrons to Saturday matinees.

"Mr Robert Parrington-Jackson was a tall, handsome man who, it was said, had taken a part in Errol Flynn's Robin Hood film.

"He was also a ladies' man who entertained women in his office, which probably had something to do with his being transferred to the Bristol Odeon.

"One day in 1946 he was found dead in his office. He'd been shot during a James Cagney movie so that the sound track would obscure the gunfire." His killers were never found.

Thirteen years after that Terry was working as a delivery boy and shop assistant and regularly dropping in at the Dock Street shop of 'Uncle' Gussie Roberts who was a bachelor, reputed to be very rich and who on February 19, 1959 was found dead.

Two men were later arrested and escaped the gallows only because of the outcry that had followed the notorious Craig/Bentley case.

His third encounter with violent death was in the case of Carol Brand, who lived in Caerleon Road, Newport, who as a little girl he had smiled and waved at. It was not until July, 1965 he read of her tragic story.

"She had gone into a local timber yard with a boy called Colin Murdoch who beat her to death with a length of wood before giving himself up at Maindee police station.

"He was jailed for life and astonishingly, given another life sentence after being released, marrying, and killing his wife by stabbing her 10 times. I believe he is still in jail somewhere."

Many living in Newport remember Danny Denbury, a courteous and gregarious man battered to death by drifter Paul McGovern in Malpas, Newport in January 1988.

For many years Terry Underwood worked for Standard Telephones where Danny also worked.

On January 18, 1988 Danny and another man were seen drinking together. McGovern, having initially inventing a story about a third man being at Danny's home, admitted attacking him and leaving him to die.

The publisher of several local history books, Terry Underwood, who lives in Christchurch, has directed 74 shows, most of them put on by the New Venture Players of which he is president.

He is already working on another local history book and an autobiography.

* Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths Around Newport is published by Wharncliffe Books at £9.99.