| The Dream Solution
- Articles |
14/01/93
- Guilty until proved innocent?
by Lisa Collins
Standard Recorder
A BASILDON man is leading a campaign for the release of two jailed
sisters he claims are innocent of a brutal murder. Michelle and
Lisa Taylor are serving life sentences in Hockley's Bullwood Hall
for the knifing of a woman who police described as a love rival.
But campaigner Bernard King, a doorman from Basildon, is convinced
they are innocent and has helped get an appeal for the two young
sisters. "I have no doubts that they are innocent and will
not rest until those two girls are free, "he said. In November
the sisters were granted leave to appeal.
Michelle, 22, and Lisa, 19, were convicted last July of murdering
Alison Shaugnessy in June 1991. She had been stabbed 54 times
in a shockingly violent and frenzied attack.
The trial was sensational — a classic crime of passion, alleged
the prosecution. Alison's husband, John, was Michelle's first
and only lover. She had begun a relationship with him in 1989
when they worked together at a private health clinic in south
London.
She did not realise then that he was seeing another woman, nor
that he intended to marry her. On the eve of the wedding, which
Michelle attended, John slept with Michelle and continued a brief
affair with her afterwards.
Distraught and confused by what was going on Michelle confided
in a diary that was later to prove lethal in the prosecution case
against her. She wrote that Alison was an "unwashed bitch"
and later, "My dream solution would be for Alison to disappear
as if she never existed."
But one reader was not convinced — Bernard King. On the last
day of the trial he sat at the back of the court intent on what
was going on. "By that stage," he says, "the press
had had a field day. Everyone believed they'd done it." He
had never met Michelle or Alison, or their family, but he did
not believe they were guilty.
He sent letters of support to Michelle and her family, was instrumental
in launching the 'Justice for Lisa and Michelle Taylor,' and has
offered practical and emotional support as best he can ever since
"Something just rankled. I never thought they did it and
that's why I got involved.
There never was any evidence other than circumstantial factors
but sadly the jury accepted what the prosecution said. How many
other girls Michelle's age have written that they wished their
rival in love would disappear?" His support is deeply appreciated.
"Bernard has been absolutely wonderful," says Michelle's
mum Ann. "Terrific," adds her husband Derek. At their
home in Forest Hill there are 'Free Michelle and Lisa Taylor'
posters single out there house from the others.
The back room has been completely given over as an office for
their campaign — a fax where the table would have been, newspaper
cuttings and campaign slogans all over the walls.
Ann and Derek are open and friendly, despite the bashing they
have undoubtedly been meted out at the hands of the media —
the sisters' first ground of appeal was prejudicial media coverage
of the trial.
They visited the girls in Bullwood this weekend and are glad they
are together but they miss them and cannot accept they have been
locked away for a crime they are adamant their daughters did not
commit.
The case for appeal is certainly a strong one. Michelle's friend
Jeanette Tapp, gave three statements to the police saying that
the girls had been with her at the clinic (where Michelle and
Jeannette had live-in dawn and told, that she would be charged
with conspiracy to murder.
Ann Taylor believes Jeanette is a well meaning but weak girl who
simply changed her story underpressure. Even if the girls had
not been with Jeanette the timing of the murder makes their involvement
virtually impossible.
Alison left work on the day she was killed at 5.02. At the earliest
she could not have arrived home in Wandsworth until 5.37 —
the police accept this. Witnesses saw Michelle and Lisa Taylor
at the clinic in Lambeth at 6pm.
That leaves 23 minutes for the girls to get into Alison's flat,
stab her 54 times, get rid of all the forensic evidence, change
and dispose of their clothes presumably bloodsoaked after such
a savage attack and drive, through rush hour traffic, four miles
to the clinic where incidentally Michelle then arranged flowers
with John Shaughnessy.
Nobody mentioned that the girls behaviour seemed in the least
bit strange. "The whole case is crazy," says Bernard.
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| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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