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21/07/92
- Husband's mistress tells of her jealousy as wedding guest
By Peter Victor
The Times
THE woman accused of stabbing to death Alison Shaughnessy entered
the witness box for the first time yesterday and described her
feelings of jealousy when her boy friend told her he planned to
marry Alison. Michelle Taylor told the jury at the Old Bailey
that she had slept with her alleged victim's fiance the night
before their wedding in June 1990, Miss Taylor said the couple
had paid for her trip to Ireland for the wedding. She stayed in
bed and breakfast accommodation and then at Mr Shaughnessy's hotel
at his suggestion.
After a party the night before the wedding, which the victim did
not attend, Mr Shaughnessy invited Miss Taylor to his room, she
said. " i stayed there the night," she said. Asked what
happened, she said: "We slept together." Miss Taylor,
21, and her sister Lisa, 18, of Forest Hill, south London, deny
murdering Mrs Shaughnessy at her Battersea flat on June 3 last
year. She earlier told the jury she had first slept with Mr Shaughnessy
in March 1989.
She had made an entry in her diary for that day, "SWJ"
— "slept with John". "I was a virgin before
that," she said. She also went on the pill after discussing
it with him. Miss Taylor said she had joined the Churchill Clinic,
a private health centre in Lambeth, south London, in July 1987
when she was 16, working as a sales clerk. Mr Shaughnessy was
already a member of staff.
In 1989 she had an operation on her knee at the clinic and received
visits from other staff, including Mr Shaughnessy. After that
there was a change in their relationship. "We became very
close," she told the jury. "John would always be around
and came to see me. Some time in January he asked me out for a
drink and I went. After that, things just seemed to progress."
She said Mr Shaughnessy was "making the running". He
wore a ring on his engagement finger, but when she asked him about
it he said he "just wore that ring on that finger".
After they began sleeping together in March 1989, she went on
holiday with her family.
When she returned she went out to dinner with Mr Shaughnessy.
"Whilst we were there, he told me he was getting engaged
and married the following year," she said. "I walked
out and went back to my mum. I was very upset and hurt. I didn't
speak to him for a couple of months. He called me at work but
I avoided the phone calls."She told the jury: "John
was my boy friend and I was his girl friend and I loved him."
Asked what her feelings were towards Mrs Shaughnessy at the wedding,
Michelle said:"I liked her but at that time I was jealous."
She had been very upset when she first learnt of Mr Shaughnessy's
engagement. She changed her job at the clinic, however, and she
and Mr Shaughnessy had to work closer together. "First of
all it was just friends," she said. "Then it seemed
to go back to being how it was — it involved having sex."
Asked why she returned to the relationship, she said: "Because
I still loved him, still cared for him." Her feelings changed
after the wedding.
She was asked by Richard Ferguson, QC, for the defence, about
the diary entry in which she referred to her hatred for Alison,
describing her as "an unwashed bitch" and the "dream
solution" of her disappearing from the scene. "This
has been put forward as a declaration of you wanting Alison out,"
Mr Ferguson said. "That is not true," she said. "I
just meant for her not to have been there from the beginning."
Miss Taylor conceded that at one stage she had been very jealous
of Mrs Shaughnessy, but added that she had hated her only "for
a couple of days".
Asked about another diary entry, when she had written "Sick,
sick, sick", after hearing Mr Shaughnessy sing happy birthday
to Alison and declare his love for her, Miss Taylor said: "I
just could not understand how John could tell her he loved her
and be going on with me at the same time." She agreed she
was still having sex with Mr Shaughnessy at the end of 1990. Questioned
by Mr Ferguson on her feelings about the Shaughnessys' relationship,
she said: "I did not think he loved Alison but he cared for
her and they got on really well together."
She denied thinking that she and Mr Shaughnessy would get together
or that he might divorce his wife. Miss Taylor said that by the
time of Mrs Shaughnessy's murder she felt Mr Shaughnessy was "just
a friend". They had not made love for months and she considered
their affair over. Earlier she described events on the day Mrs
Shaughnessy died. Miss Taylor and her sister went shopping in
Bromley, arriving between 3.15 and 3.20pm. She said she had not
taken her credit card.
It had been used at 3.20pm at a bank near the clinic but not by
her, she said. She went to arrange flowers in the clinic with
Mr Shaughnessy and gave him a lift home after he asked her to
pick up some heavy pots from his flat. When they went in, he was
ahead of her, she said. "As he reached the first landing
he started shouting "Alison, Alison". "I could
seeing Alison lying there. I went up to her and tried to pick
her up. At first I thought she had collapsed, but when I could
not pick her up I went to feel her pulse and there was no pulse.
She was really cold just like stone.
I cannot remember how I reacted. "I went to the pub and asked
them to ring the police. I went back to the flat with a lady and
some men from the pub." She rearranged Mrs Shaughnessy's
skirt, she said. Asked how she had felt, she replied "sick",
adding that she had opened a window to get some fresh air.
Miss Taylor said that three weeks after his wife's death, Mr Shaughnessy
tried to have sex with her, while she was staying with his family
in Ireland. Cross-examined by Baroness Mallalieu, for Lisa Taylor,
she said her sister did not like Mr Shaughnessy and would not
have encouraged their relationship.
The trial continues today. |
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