Cameo Conspiracy

George Skelly

Description

The definitive book on the case which led to a posthumous pardon. A classic within the True Crime genre.

Sujets

• True crime

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 04 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910979877
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Cameo Conspiracy
A Shocking True Story of Murder and Injustice
George Skelly
Copyright and publication details
The Cameo Conspiracy A Shocking True Story of Murder and Injustice George Skelly
3rd Edition (Revised 2019)
ISBN 978-1-909976-71-9 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-87-7 (EPUB ebook)
ISBN 978-1-910979-88-4 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 1988, 2001, 2011, 2019 This work is the copyright of George Skelly. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]; www.gardners.com
North American distributor Ingram Book Company.
Cover design © 2019 Waterside Press.
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained on request from the British Library.
Ebook The Cameo Conspiracy is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Ebrary, Ebsco, Myilibrary and Dawsonera.
Previous Editions First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Avid Publications. Second edn published 2001 by The Upstage Group. Third edn by Waterside Press, 2011.
Published 2019 by Waterside Press Ltd.
Sherfield-on-Loddon, Hampshire, RG27 0JG, United Kingdom.
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Email [e-mail]
The Cameo Conspiracy
A Shocking True Story of Murder and Injustice
George Skelly
Also by George Skelly


Murderers or Martyrs
Foreword by Lord Goldsmith PC QC
Alfie and Teddy had been mates since childhood. There was no material or forensic evidence against them. No bloodstains, no fingerprints, no eye-witnesses, no murder weapon. Nothing was stolen from the home of Beatrice Alice Rimmer. They even had an alibi. But the police said they were guilty of murder. And everyone knows “The police don’t tell lies — do they?”
Like the Cameo Conspiracy , this murder took place in Liverpool — but Alfie and Teddy were in Manchester on the night it happened. The stakes were high. In 1952 you could be hanged. But if experienced police officers in Liverpool said you were guilty who were the jury to argue?
Murderers or Martyrs is the true story of slum-dwellers Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns who were executed side-by-side. Were they guilty of murder — or were they hanged for the bread they stole as kids?
In his inimitable style, George Skelly exposes another horrific injustice.
‘A very powerful case of a miscarriage of justice’ — Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith PC QC.
Paperback & ebook | ISBN 978-1-904380-80-1
For further details, see WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
The Author viii
Dedication ix
Introduction 11
Prologue 16 We’re off to see the Wizard 20 Oh how we danced 29 We are the Brothers Malone 35 The best of life is but intoxication 51 Smart girl, wise guy 56 Calling all cars! 73 An inspector calls 81 Investigations are continuing 93 A dangerous game 101 When first we practice to deceive … 111 In the merry, merry month of May … 118 My brother’s keeper? 124 Fools are made the dupes of rogues 133 The conspiracy begins … 155 The spider and the fly 160 The vilest deeds like poison weeds 169 Some do the deed with many tears And some without a sigh 180 Thou shalt not bear false witness … 187 Heads you win. Tails I lose. 198 In suspicious circumstances 201 Agree to a short armistice with the truth 206 Two plus two equals five 215 A most fantastic case 230 This welter of wickedness 253 The law’s delay, the insolence of office 280 It’s surprising what the law can do to an innocent man 286 “No, no,” said the Queen. “Sentence first. Verdict afterwards.” 294 Suffer any wrong that may be done to you rather than come here 298 WHY? 320
Epilogue 325
Index 333

Photographs and illustrations courtesy of:
The author, Snapscene Ltd, Charles Connolly, Liverpool Daily Post , Liverpool Echo , Eileen and Stephen Connolly, e-architect.co.uk, Ronald Harrison, Lou Santangeli, Syndication International, George Sims, Nigel Cox and Liverpool City Archives.
Acknowledgments
I should like to express my sincere thanks to the following persons who kindly gave information, assistance or support during the five years of research for this book: the late Charles Connolly, James Skelly and John Skelly; Ronald and Audrey Harrison, Thomas Gill Jnr, Hilda Kelly, relatives of George Kelly and Charles Connolly, Iris and Wally O’Brien, Fred Thomella Jnr., Vera Patterson, Brian Aspinall, Harold Jones, Alan Brown, Craig Nuttall, Neville Skelly, Christopher Skelly, Robert “Plumb Bob” Barlow, Jackie Corrigan, His Honour Judge Richard Hamilton, Colin Stebbing LLB, Lord Alton of Mossley Hill, former MP Chris Mullin, Professor Mike McConville (Warwick University), Jean Warburton (Liverpool University) and Tony Mossman (Merseyside Police).
I am also indebted to Liverpool Crown Court, Liverpool Central Library, Liverpool Coroner’s Office, Merseyside Public Record Office, Liverpool Daily Post, Merseyside Police, News of the World Library, The Public Record Office (Chancery Lane and Colindale) London and the Home Office.
In addition there are numerous individuals who provided valuable help and information who for various reasons wish to remain anonymous. I am no less indebted to them.
George Skelly
The Author
Born in Liverpool and the youngest of a family of eleven, George Skelly left school at fifteen and was later educated at Ruskin College, Oxford and Liverpool University graduating with joint honours in History and English. With several short stories published and broadcast and his novel, The Most Familiar Face in the World , he is also the author of Murderers or Martyrs (Waterside Press, 2012) about another miscarriage of justice two years after the Cameo case and only two streets away.
Dedication
For my late mother, Elizabeth, who never lost faith
Introduction
And ye shall know the Truth. And the Truth shall make you free.
John, Chapter 8, Verse 32
O n the Saturday evening of March 19 th 1949, the manager of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, forty-four-year-old Leonard Thomas, and his thirty-year-old assistant, John Bernard Catterall, were brutally gunned down in a botched armed hold-up whilst counting the evening’s takings of just £50.0s.8d.
One year and nine days later on March 28 th 1950, George Kelly, a twenty-seven-year-old unemployed labourer, was hanged for this crime. His co-accused, twenty-six-year-old Charles Connolly had earlier been sentenced, in a separate trial, to ten years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to robbery and conspiracy to rob the Cameo Cinema manager on that tragic night.
Originally Kelly and Connolly had sat in the dock together at Liverpool Assizes for thirteen days. However, when the jury returned to court after a mere four hours’ deliberation, to ask for further information about a prosecution witness, they were promptly dismissed by the judge, Mr Justice Oliver, and separate trials were ordered. This had never occurred before in a case where two persons were jointly charged with murder.
At his second trial, which lasted five days, Kelly was found guilty and on February 8 th he was sentenced to death. Five days later, on February 13 th Connolly was tried and, in order to avoid a similar fate, was urged by his counsel to plead guilty to the lesser charge of robbery.
This tragic conclusion to the Cameo Cinema Case — at that time the longest murder trial in British criminal history — came about despite there not being a shred of forensic or material evidence against either man: no murder weapon, no bloodstains, no fingerprints and no eye-witnesses.
Despite both men steadfastly maintaining throughout that they did not even know each other, they were convicted on the evidence of a prostitute, her pimp, and a mentally-ill convicted conman. To all intents and purposes however, public feeling at the time was that this was the correct legal and moral outcome to the case. The verdicts were fully in keeping with the prosecution evidence and Connolly’s eventual guilty plea.
Public opinion was reassured by this apparent victory of law and order over the post-war tide of gangsterism and thuggery — widely regarded as a legacy of the wartime American influence and the spate of 1940s gangster movies. Indeed, Kelly was described rather melodramatically in the Daily Mail as the “Little Caesar of Lime Street”. And the Daily Express, in an editorial following his execution, proclaimed, “Kelly richly deserved to hang and the world is the better for his removal."
Most of all, the verdicts were regarded as an affirmation of the impeccability of British justice. “These two dangerous criminals” had got their just deserts. Indeed, the public mood was summed-up in that well-worn phrase: “Good riddance to bad rubbish”.
After Kelly’s execution there was an atmosphere of unashamed triumphalism in the Liverpool Criminal Investigation Department (CID)— particularly among the Murder Squad, who received eulogies and commendations galore from the city’s Watch Committee. In this euphoric climate a senior detective involved in the case admitted to a well-known criminal lawyer that Kelly and Connolly had been fitted-up, telling him, “They were only scum anyway”.
Two years later in Manchester, the prosecution’s star witness, the twenty-three-year-old prostitute who had allegedly been racked with disease during the two trials, was sentenced, in the company of her latest pimp, to two years’ imprisonment for robbery with violence.
The families and friends of the two men had been virtually the only ones to assert their innocence. But the general feeling wa