| The Dream Solution
- Articles |
27/02/93
- WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE
by Bob Woffinden
The Independent Magazine
The Daily Express called them the "evil sisters". The
crime of which they were convicted was, even for these traumatised
times, unusually savage: Michelle and Lisa Taylor, then aged 21
and 19, were found guilty last July of stabbing to death the 21-year-old
wife of Michelle's former boyfriend.
The pathologist had counted 51 separate wounds. Plainly the Taylor
sisters were destined to be ranked alongside the most notorious
of murderesses. Theirs was one of the most high-profile court
cases of recent times.
The tabloids, despite their preoccupation with royal and ministerial
romances, found a huge number of column inches to devote to Michelle
and Lisa's three-week trial at the Old Bailey. Inspired by details
from the prosecution's case, they concocted a heady cocktail of
amorous adolescent adventures, infidelity, jealousy and murder.
Yet the evidence supplied by the prosecution was, at best, circumstantial.
Michelle and Lisa continue to protest their innocence, and on
12 November last year were granted leave to appeal against conviction.
Their appeal will probably be heard this spring.
Alison Shaughnessy was murdered between about 5.30pm and 8pm on
Monday 3 June 1991, after returning home to her flat in Vardens
Road. Battersea, from Barclays Bank in the Strand, where she worked.
The exact time at which Alison reached the flat has never been
established, and is a critical element in the case against the
Taylor sisters. Her body was discovered at about eight o'clock
by her husband, John Shaughnessy, and Michelle Taylor.
John and Michelle both worked at the Churchill Clinic, a private
hospital in Lambeth, opposite the Imperial War Museum (she was
on the domestic staff, he was the purchasing manager) and, as
police investigating the murder quickly learned, there had been
a long relationship between them.
Michelle, like many of the Churchill's staff, had a room at the
clinic; there, detectives discovered a notepad which she had used
as a diary.
It revealed an infatuation with John and consequent antipathy
towards Alison: "The ideal solution would be for her to disappear
as if she had never existed." In that one sentence, police,
believed, they had located the key to the murder of Alison Shaughnessy.
There were other reasons for the police to suspect Michelle. She
and her sister claimed that on the afternoon of 8 June they had
been shopping in Bromley, and had returned to the Churchill to
watch Neighbours in the rooms of Jacqueline ("JJ") Tapp,
a colleague at the clinic.
Although JJ initially confirmed this, she later withdrew her original
corroboration of the girls' alibi. The sisters' honesty was again
called into question when the Shaughnessys' flat was examined:
one of Lisa's fingerprints was found on the front door, yet she
and Michelle at first adamantly denied that Lisa had ever been
there.
Then Michael Unsworthwhite, a surgeon living in Vardens Road,
told police that at about 5.45 on the afternoon of 3 June he had
seen two girls running down the steps from the flat. It also seemed
suspicious that Michelle had found Alison's body, since this would
render meaningless any forensic evidence of her presence in the
flat that the police might find (she said that she had gone home
with John so that she could collect two heavy plant-pots for the
clinic and take them back in her car).
The jury at the sisters' trial last July found them guilty, and
they were sentenced by Mr Justice Blofeld to life imprisonment.
Today Michelle and Lisa Taylor are inmates of Bullwood Hall, a
prison in the Essex countryside near Southend. Last month I accompanied
the girls' parents, Ann and Derek Taylor, and their sister Tracey,
who is 14, on a visit to the prison.
Both girls are attractive and personable: Lisa, bubbly, talkative,
grabbing whatever food is available; Michelle, more demure, reserved,
and uneasy, but forthright when she has a point to make. There
was a period, last autumn, when they asked their parents not to
visit the leave-taking after just two hours was too painful. Now,
Ann and Derek Taylor visit the girls regularly, and the family
is clearly very close.
Ann and Derek Taylor live in Forest Hill, south London. Derek,
known as "Del" to his family and friends, runs a commercial
cleaning business, and both Michelle and Lisa used to work for
him. Michelle left home when she started work as an accounts clerk
at the Churchill in July 1987.
Towards the end of that year, Michelle started to go out with
John Shaughnessy, the clinic's purchasing manager, who was then
in his late twenties. They had been together for almost two years
when, in September 1989, John took Michelle to a Harvester pub
in Dulwich and told her that he had met someone else, Alison Blackmore.
Michelle says she walked out, leaving John and her meal, and drove
home. "Michelle was very upset," recalls Ann Taylor.
"He was her first boyfriend." The family grew increasingly
to dislike John, but Michelle inevitably saw him when at work.
Although she had a couple of other relationships, her affair with
John continued fitfully. However, in June 1990, he married Alison,
and Michelle accepted an invitation to the wedding in Ireland.
She later helped the couple move into their flat in Vardens Road.
In the spring of 1991 Michelle transferred from the accounts department
of the clinic to the domestic staff: the hours - 3.30pm to 8.30pm,
four days a week - were more convenient, because they allowed
her to earn extra money by helping out her father.
On 3 June 1991 Michelle met her father and sister at 5.30am and
went to clean windows at the Arndale Centre, in Wandsworth, and
to strip and repolish a floor at Sanderstead fire station in South
Croydon. "They got back about 1.30," says Ann. "Michelle
gave her dad the signed docket for the job; and Lisa fed her face,
as usual.
They were going shopping with Tessa Jordan [a neighbour of Lisa]."
Tessa recalls, "Lisa had asked me to go with them, because
we wanted to look for some party dresses, but that lunchtime my
mum said it would be best if I didn't go, because we had to deliver
some door-to-door cab cards for my dad's office."
The sisters decided to go shopping anyway, and went to Bromley,
returning to the clinic at 5.20, in time for Neighbours. "Lisa
rang about 5.30", continues Tessa, "to say they couldn't
get any dresses in Bromley, and said she'd see me tomorrow."
At 6pm, several people at the Churchill saw Michelle arranging
flowers. She did this for the next couple of hours, only stopping,
for 30 minutes or so, to help a colleague sort out an income-tax
problem.
Then she went with John Shaughnessy to his flat. "Michelle
phoned at about nine o'clock," Ann remembers. "You'd
already gone up to bed, hadn't you, Del? She was so hysterical,
I couldn't even tell whether it was Michelle or Lisa. I ended
up shouting at her, and Del came running down the stairs.
Then she did calm down, and told me that John's wife was dead."
Ann went to see her daughter at Battersea police station, where
Michelle had gone to make a statement after finding the body.
"She was white as anything. John was there, and Michael Casey,
a neighbour, who kept saying it was a terrible thing.
I asked John if there was anyone I could phone for him, and he
said his brother in Ireland... After I'd done that, he asked if
he could come home with us. I didn't particularly like the bloke,
but what can you do? We brought him back here, and sat up all
night with him."
Since suspicion is, as a matter of course, thrown on people close
to a murder victim, John Shaughnessy was probably a police suspect
to begin with. However, his alibi - provided by "Buster"
Edwards, the had sold him flowers from his stall at Waterloo Station
- proved convincing.
On 24 July Michelle, Lisa and their parents spent the day being
questioned individually at Battersea police station. "They
finally let me see the girls at ten to seven that evening,"
says Ann.
"Lisa was obviously upset. She asked if I could go in with
her when she signed her statement. The policewomen said, 'Would
you like me to read it for you?' but Lisa said she'd read it herself."
Lisa signed it. "The way they'd been interviewing me,"
she says, "I was only concerned about getting out of there."
Two weeks later, at 5.40am, Michelle, Lisa and JJ Tapp were arrested.
On 8 August 1991 Michelle and Lisa Taylor were charged with murder.
The case against Michelle and Lisa Taylor was hardly overwhelming.
It was, in fact, almost impossible in practical terms for them
to have killed Alison Shaughnessy. On that Monday, Alison clocked
off work at Barclays at 5.02pm: the first crucial undisputed timing.
To reach home, she would have walked from the bank in the Strand
to the bus-stop, caught a bus to Waterloo, then a train to Clapham
Junction, and walked to her flat.
The police timed that journey at 35 minutes. At 6pm, Michelle
was seen at the Churchill by several witnesses: the second crucial
undisputed timing.
So, according to the police case, the two girls had at most 23
minutes in which to get into the flat, confront Alison, stab her
54 times, remove any signs of their having committed the attack,
return to their car, drive to the clinic, pass through the barrier
there, park the car, and for Michelle to re-emerge so completely
composed that not even close associates could detect anything
untoward about her manner or behaviour.
That timetable, unlikely as it is, actually depends on three further
improbable conditions. Firstly, that the girls would have been
able to park their Sierra estate car in a heavily populated, narrow
side-road at a busy time, without anybody noticing.
Secondly, that they could then have driven from the murder scene
to the clinic in 11 minutes, the police estimate of the time it
would have taken, Derek Taylor has since made the journey at least
five times, with a video camera and a stop-watch, and says he
has never managed it in less than 15 minutes, and that, in any
case, on 3 June 1991 traffic in the area was particularly slow
moving because of road works.
The third improbability is that Alison did. There is strong evidence
to indicate otherwise. At 4.30pm Alison telephoned her husband
from the bank to say that she had to do something on her way home
from work.
Michael Casey, the Shaughnessys' upstairs neighbour, who used
the same front door as Alison, remembered that the mortise-lock
was still on when he returned at 5.45pm (indicating that Alison
herself had not yet got home). Christina Wright, who lives in
the basement of the house, said she saw Alison return that day,
and was able to provide an accurate description of what she had
been wearing.
She said it was definitely after 6pm, because the BBC Six O'Clock
News had started. Michelle, according to unchallenged statements,
was at the clinic at 6pm.
However, Ms Wright is 73, and was reduced to a state of acute
anxiety about the murder and the police investigation.
As a result, she did not want to enter the witness box, and her
statement was read to the court. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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