Language English Pages 223 pp Preceded by -- Country United Kingdom Genres Crime, Post-war, Fact | Publication date 1999 ISBN 1-872568-60-2 Originally published 1999 Publisher Bluecoat Press OCLC 46432379 | |
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) | ||
The Cameo Murders is a book by Barry Shortall, first published in the United Kingdom by the Bluecoat Press in 1999. The book details the brutal and baffling murders of the manager and assistant manager at the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool in March 1949, subsequent investigation and miscarriage of justice. The book effectively lead to quashed convictions of two co-offenders, post-hanging.
Contents
Background
The Liverpool City Police launched a massive manhunt and over 9,500 houses were visited and 75,000 people were interviewed. Over 1,800 fingerprints were taken and handwriting samples were obtained from 1,841 women. The subsequent conviction of George Kelly and Charles Connolly made legal history.
Trials
The first trial was the longest trial in England and George Kelly became one of the few men to be tried twice for a capital offence. The conviction and execution of Kelly is one of the milestones which led to the eventual ending of Capital Punishment in Britain.
The gross miscarriage of justice which resulted in the hanging of George Kelly forms part of the gripping account of the Cameo Murders book by Barry Shortall. However, in George Skelly's book, The Cameo Conspiracy - The Real Story Of The Cameo Cinema Murders (Avid 1998 and Upstage 2001 editions) it is stated that in 1950 far from Kelly's Execution prompting abolition, it was in fact met with widespread public approval. And the author quotes the Daily Express editorial of 29 March 1950, which stated,
Kelly richly deserved to die. The world is better for his removal.
Quashed convictions
Rather was it the hangings of Timothy Evans (1950), Derek Bentley (1953) and Ruth Ellis (1955) which precipitated abolition. Skelly's book, together with the efforts of his friend, retired businessman Luigi Santangeli who caused the case to be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, (See Court of Appeal judgement October 2003), was responsible for the quashing of the convictions of both Kelly and his co-accused, Charles Connolly in 2003.