| The Dream Solution
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13/06/93
- Freed sister falls for black widow son
By GARY JONES, Crime Reporter
News of the World
ONE of the sisters cleared of killing bride Alison Shaughnessy
has found love with the son of a murderess known as the Black
Widow. Lisa Taylor, 19, walked free from the Appeal Court with
her sister Michelle, 22, on Friday, their convictions quashed.
She fell for 19-year-old Neil Calvey when they met while she was
being held in prison. He was visiting his mother Linda, who is
serving a life sentence for blowing her robber lover Ronnie Cook's
brains out with a shotgun in 1990.
The platinum blonde East Ender was terrified he would find out
she had squandered all his cut from an £800,000 raid, and
that she was having an affair with his best friend. Calvey was
dubbed the Black widow after her husband was shot dead by police
in 1978, Last night Lisa and Neil, who has a conviction for assault,
kissed and cuddled at her family's home in Forest Hill, south
London.
The sisters have pledged to help others they think have been wrongly
convicted, and Lisa has now promised she will campaign for Linda
Calvey's release at an Appeal Court hearing.
A family friend said: "Lisa and Neil are very close, although
some members of the family are not very happy with the relationship.
"Neil has been in trouble with the police and the family
made sure he kept a low profile in the campaign to free Michelle
and Lisa.
"But Lisa refused to give him up. She says he's been very
supportive to her. She now wants to help him and his mother."
Lisa and Michelle, who both claim to have found God during their
two years in jail, have agreed to campaign for the release of
Winston Silcott.
A member of the Silcott family was invited back to the family
home to take part in celebrations. Silcott was cleared on appeal
of killing PC Keith Blakelock in the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots
in north London. He is still serving life for knifing to death
exboxer Tony Smith.
He claims he was acting in self-defence. A senior detective said:
"We always knew we didn't have a watertight case against
the sisters at the Old Bailey trial. "There was only ever
circumstantial evidence. The jury gave a guilty verdict, but now
we have to accept they were wrong in their judgment."
In the Appeal Court Lord Justice McGowan spoke of Michelle's .feelings
of "hatred" for Alison and her sexual relationship with
Alison's husband John. He said the "crucial" witness
in the case was surgeon Michael Unsworth-White, who said he saw
two blonde girls run down the steps of Alison's flat in Battersea,
south London.
"This was the only evidence that the appellants were at the
scene of the crime," he said. But the Appeal Court heard
that Dr Unsworth-White had earlier said one girl was black. The
sisters were charged with murder after allowing their friend Jeanette
Tapp to give them a false alibi.
Michelle told the Old Bailey she and Lisa were with Tapp in Bromley,
Kent, on the afternoon of the killing. Tapp said they were playing
Monopoly, but she later admitted her alibi was a lie. Michelle
claimed that Lisa had never been to Alison's fiat, but Lisa's
fingerprints were found there by police.
The victim's mum Breda Blackmore now accepts she will never know
who killed Alison. Alison's husband John Shaughnessy has told
how he regularly goes to visit her grave in Kilkenny, Ireland.
John, now living near Killarney, Co. Kerry, said he is now trying
to piece his life together.
He denied he had been involved in a full-blown affair with Michelle.
"It was just an attraction. There was nothing more to it,"
he said. |
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