| The Dream Solution
- Articles |
24/06/00
- Why i believe they are murderers
by Jo Ann Goodwin
Daily Mail
THE CHURCH of the Assumption, Piltown, County Kilkenny was a lovely
place for a wedding. It was mid-June, the sun was shining, and,
as the video shows, the bride was a real Irish beauty - her pale
skin and Sparkling eyes set off by a cloud of dark hair. Emerging
from the church beside his new wife, groom John Shaughnessy looked
proud and happy as the newlyweds accepted the congratulations
of family and friends. It was, as the bride's mother remembers:
'A perfect day. There wasn't one thing wrong, everyone was happy.'
Well, not quite everyone, as later became all too clear. It is
exactly ten years today since Alison and John Shaughnessy walked
down the church steps, but there will be no 10th anniversary celebrations.
Just under a year after her wedding, Alison Shaughnessy was stabbed
to death. Two South London girls were found guilty of her murder.
Michelle Taylor, 21, and sister Lisa Taylor, 19, were sentenced
to life imprisonment. The prosecution alleged that when Alison
was butchered in her flat, on June 3, 1991, Michelle wielded the
knife while Lisa stood guard by the door. The motive, they said,
was obsessive sexual jealousy. Michelle was John Shaughnessy's
mistress, and had shared his bed the night before his marriage.
The wedding video captures Michelle Taylor emerging from the church
full of smiles, kissing first Alison then John. The 'Judas Kiss',
as it came to be known. 'I hate Alison, the unwashed bitch,' she
wrote in her diary. 'My dream solution would be for Alison to
disappear as if she never existed and then maybe I could give
everything to the man I love.' BUT less than a year into their
sentence, on June 11,1993, Michelle and Lisa Taylor were freed
on a legal technicality - of which more later -with their convictions
declared 'unsafe'.
Even in triumph, the sisters were bitter and unforgiving: British
justice, they declared, was non-existent. Articles appeared in
the liberal broadsheets castigating the police and sympathising
with the sisters' terrible 'ordeal'. Alison Shaughnessy lay in
the quiet earth of Piltown cemetery. The investigation into her
death was not re-opened. That, it seemed, was the end of that.
So who did kill Alison Shaughnessy? The Daily Mail has obtained
damning evidence which for years the Taylor sisters fought to
keep secret. Evidence which suggests that the original 'guilty'
verdict at the Taylors' Old Bailey trial was entirely correct.
As an investigative journalist, I have dealt with a number of
miscarriages of justice, and have frequently criticised the work
of police and prosecutors. When the innocent are found guilty,
justice is betrayed. What, then, when the guilty walk free? Perhaps
Michelle Taylor was right - perhaps for Alison Shaughnessy and
her family British justice is 'non existent'. The key to the case
is Bernard O'Mahoney, a 40-year-old ex-gangster who makes no secret
of his background, including convictions for violence. Stuck at
the Old Bailey due to the adjournment of an assault case involving
his brother, he wandered into the Taylor trial to kill some time.
Like many men, he couldn't believe the two young girls in the
dock guilty of brutal murder. 'They just did not look capable
of killing,' he recalls. 'They radiated innocence.'
He wrote to the girls and became friends with their parents, Derek
and Anne Taylor. The day after the guilty verdict, Michelle phoned
him from prison and asked him to help win their freedom. He readily
agreed. O'Mahoney's knowledge of how to work the justice system,
and his tireless efforts to mobilise public opinion, played a
key part in securing the successful appeal But scarcely had the
victory been won than O'Mahoney realised he had been duped - and
that the sisters were not the innocent victims he had assumed.
The moment of disillusionment came after the sisters' release,
when O'Mahoney started working with them on a book about their
experiences. Not long after starting the project, he fell in love
with Michelle, left his wife and family, and moved in with her.
All the legal documents from the case were taken to Michelle's
flat, and O'Mahoney began to research the book. Four months later,
in October, 1993, Michelle was visiting her mother while O'Mahoney
remained in the flat, sorting through the paperwork.
In a bundle of documents he eventually came across a legal letter.
He read it, then read it again. But he knew exactly what it meant.
O'Mahoney says the letter was from one of the sisters' legal advisers.
The letter referred to Michelle making 'certain admissions', in
light of which Lisa was being advised to give evidence on behalf
of the prosecution. For somebody with O'Mahoney's criminal background,
the message was clear. Michelle had confessed to murder, and Lisa
was being urged to save her own skin. He says he waited for Michelle
to return, then confronted her. A huge row ensued - followed,
says O'Mahoney, by a tearful, self-serving confession. Yes, Michelle
had murdered Alison, but it was Alison's fault. She'd followed
Alison upstairs, and it all happened in a blur. O'Mahoney was
stunned. All his efforts to free the Taylor sisters had been built
on a lie.
The woman with whom he had fallen in love had ruthlessly used
and deceived him. Furious at the betrayal, he left Michelle and
returned to his family - his book about the Taylors abandoned,
his loyalty to their cause destroyed. Subsequently, fearing that
O'Mahoney would reveal what he knew, the Taylors began a court
action to prevent him publishing any of their letters. The case
- which the Taylors asked to be held in camera -quickly grew into
a dispute as to whether Michelle had confessed to murder. Michelle
Taylor denied that any incriminating letter had ever existed,
or that she had confessed. For more than two years, O'Mahoney
fought the sisters through the courts. Then, in October 1997,
the affair came to a climax when Mr Justice Neuberger made an
order compelling all the Taylors' legal representatives to swear
affidavits that they had no knowledge of the allegedly incriminating
letter. No such affidavits were forthcoming and suddenly the Taylors
attempted to suspend their action against O'Mahoney. However,
the courts insisted on the matter being brought to an immediate
conclusion.
The case against O'Mahoney was struck out and he was awarded full
costs. The obvious question is why did the Taylors and their legal
team decline to comply with the judge's order regarding the disputed
letter? Yesterday the sisters' mother Anne said: 'We weren't prepared
to see the girls put on trial again.' But perhaps the real answer
lies in events which had their germination almost 15 years ago.
THIS story of a sexual obsession that destroyed so many lives
began prosaically enough with the actions of a weak and selfish
man. John Shaughnessy was born in Dublin in December 1961 and
moved to London to work — first as a porter, later as purchasing
manager — at the Churchill Clinic, a private hospital in
Kennington, South London. He soon established a reputation for
being something of a 'charmer'. He met his future wife in October
1986 at the Archway Tavern in North London. Alison was 16 and
worked at Barclays Bank on the Strand in Central London. She was
a shy girl but extremely pretty, with a ready smile and an exceptionally
kind nature. John Shaughnessy was Alison's first boyfriend and
she was dazzled by him.
In the spring of 1989 they became engaged. Shaughnessy had met
Michelle Taylor at the Churchill Clinic, where she was a cleaner.
In February 1989, she invited Shaughnessy to her 18th birthday
party. They began sleeping together soon after. Like Alison, Michelle
was a virgin, and like Alison, she was in love. Michelle was devastated
to learn of his engagement but the affair quickly resumed, with
regular sexual encounters on Monday nights when John worked late,
arranging flowers at the clinic. When the newlyweds returned from
honeymoon, Alison moved into John's room at the clinic. The room
next to John and Alison belonged to Michelle's friend, Jeanette
or 'JJ' Tapp. Michelle spent a lot of time in there, leaning against
the paper-thin walls, eavesdropping on the happy couple. But still
the secret affair continued. On October 1, Shaughnessy took Michelle
to a shed in the grounds of the clinic for sex. 'I hate the feeling
after,' she wrote in her diary. 'I feel sick with myself.' MEANWHILE
John and Alison moved to 41 Vardens Road in Battersea, South London,
in January 1991. They talked about starting a family and moving
back to Ireland. The prosecution argued that this tipped Michelle
Taylor over the edge.
If the Shaughnessys moved to Ireland the affair would be over
- and the man of her dreams lost for ever. On Monday, June 3,
1991, Michelle arrived as usual - though a little late - to help
John with the flower arranging. She offered to give him a lift
home, and they set off in her white Sierra estate at around 8.15pm.
When they reached Vardens Road, Michelle asked if she could come
in to use the toilet. John agreed. He was carrying a bunch of
flowers for his wife. "That's odd,' he said, as his key turned
in the communal front door. The mortice lock was open, although
'Alison always locks it'. Once inside the hallway, John unlocked
the door to the flat and went upstairs, followed by Michelle.
At the top of the stairs lay his wife's lifeless body. Michelle
ran forward and put her arms round the body, pulling Alison towards
her. Shaughnessy, after screaming his wife's name, said repeatedly:
'I don't know what's happened.' Regulars from the nearby Roundhouse
pub came to offer help, but after a quick look decided to wait
outside for the police.
Alison had obviously been murdered, and it was important to preserve
any forensic evidence. Michelle felt differently. She crouched
down over the body a second time, straightening clothing and attempting
to clean up Alison's face. She then washed her bloodied hands
in the bathroom sink. At a stroke Michelle Taylor had destroyed
any potential forensic evidence. Her fingerprints were now all
over the scene. She was covered in fibres from Alison's clothes
and Alison's blood. Washing her hands ensured that it would be
impossible to check to see if the murderer had done the same thing
before fleeing. Before waiting outside, John Shaughnessy checked
for signs of an intruder. There were none. Alison Shaughnessy
had known and trusted her killer. Arriving home from work around
5.35pm, it seemed she had invited the murderer into the flat,
leaving the mortice unlocked in the presumption that the person
would shortly be leaving.
PAUSING to pick up the post, Alison had walked upstairs. As she
reached the first landing the attack began. She had been punched
or 'chopped' in the face, then the killer struck from behind with
the knife. Two fatal wounds - one to the lungs, the other severing
the windpipe -were inflicted as the young woman struggled desperately
with her attacker. As Alison fell dying, the hail of blows continued.
In total she suffered 54 separate stab wounds. When he went to
see his wife's body, Shaughnessy was overcome. He held her hand
and stroked her hair, unable to leave her, and mortuary staff
had to persuade him to go as they were closing for the night.
Unfortunately, such devotion was all too late. MICHELLE and Lisa
Taylor were charged with the murder of Alison Shaughnessy on August
7, 1991, and the case was brought to trial in July 1992. Michelle
Taylor was just 21, her sister Lisa 19. Sitting in the dock, they
looked very young. The evidence was hard to refute. First, there
was the motive. Michelle was John Shaughnessy's mistress, she
was obsessed by him, and terrified of losing him. Her diary provided
ample evidence of her hostile feelings towards Alison. Then there
was the evidence of two witnesses.
One, James Hewitt, remembered seeing a white sierra like Michelle's
parked around the corner from Vardens Road at the time of the
murders. The second, Dr Michael Unsworth White, reported seeing
two young girls hurrying out of No 41 at around 5.45pm on the
day of the murder. The girls were carrying what appeared to be
a large plastic laundry bag. Importantly, there was also one piece
of forensic evidence. In separate statements, Michelle, Lisa and
their mother Anne Taylor were all adamant that Lisa had never
been to the flat on Vardens Road. She had absolutely no reason
to have visited the flat and even told police she thought it was
in Clapham. Yet her fingerprints were found inside the flat door.
These were fresh fingerprints, according to the forensic expert.
But the most damaging evidence was the sisters' attempt to manufacture
a false alibi.
THE TAYLORS told the court that on the day of the murder they
spent the afternoon shopping in Bromley, returning to the Churchill
Clinic at 5.15pm when they saw Jeanette Tapp. As Alison left work
at 5pm, arriving home at 5.35pm, this would effectively rule them
out of the murder. Jeanette Tapp's evidence was crucial. When
originally interviewed by police, she said she arrived at the
clinic at 5pm and saw the Taylors shortly afterwards. However,
she later withdrew her previous statements and stated in court
that she returned to the clinic no earlier than 7.15pm, when she
was immediately accosted by Lisa Taylor, who told her she and
Michelle had been waiting for her since 5pm. They asked to leave
a laundry bag, apparently full of clothes, in her room. Jeanette
Tapp's mother and two sisters both confirmed this later version
of events. Tapp says that Michelle returned to collect the laundry
bag the next day and pressurised her into giving the false alibi,
saying it didn't matter as she and Lisa had been at the clinic
anyway.
If Jeanette Tapp is telling the truth, and it is hard to see why
she should lie, it is a strong indication of the Taylors' guilt.
The Taylors' story of an afternoon shopping in Bromley also ran
into difficulties. They had no purchases to show for their trip,
no one remembered seeing them, and they didn't feature on any
of the CCTV footage covering the streets and precincts. Moreover,
despite insisting she'd been in Bromley from 3pm until returning
to the clinic at 5pm, Michelle's bank card had been used at 3.20pm
to withdraw £10 from a bank on Westminster Bridge Road,
close to the clinic but a long way from Bromley. Michelle had
first stated in interview that she had taken her card to Bromley
but hadn't used it. When confronted with the evidence of the cashpoint
receipt, she accused Jeanette Tapp of stealing the card and using
her PIN number to obtain cash. This bizarre explanation becomes
more dubious when coupled with the undisputed fact that Tapp used
her own card to draw out £50 at 3.44pm - just 24 minutes
later - from a cashpoint on Kennington Park Road, some distance
from the 3.20pm transaction.
Tapp's evidence was indirectly supported by two other witnesses.
Carol Healy, a nurse at the Churchill Clinic, saw Michelle Taylor
driving out of the clinic car park in her white Sierra just after
4pm, with a passenger fitting the description of Lisa Taylor.
She was certain of the time, as she was coming off duty. Another
clinic employee, Valerie McDonald, stated that she saw Michelle
and Lisa returning to the clinic at 6pm. Again, the witness was
certain of the time, as she was also finishing her shift. The
jury unanimously found Michelle and Lisa Taylor guilty of murder.
The campaign began to free the Taylor Two, and Bernard O'Mahoney
suggested they should challenge the police timings. His intention
was to prove that the journey between Alison's flat and the Churchill
Clinic took far longer than the police claimed. Alison arrived
home around 5.35pm. Pathologist Dr Rufus Crompton felt the attack
would have taken perhaps no more than two to three minutes. Police
estimated the drive from 41 Vardens Road to the Clinic took 11
minutes 20 seconds, thus allowing Michelle and Lisa to return
at 6pm when they were seen by Valerie McDonald.
O'Mahoney says that he and Derek Taylor videoed the same journey,
with a stopwatch verifying the timing -but the exercise backfired
spectacularly. He says that they were able to do the journey far
quicker than the police. Even keeping rigorously within the speed
limit, they managed the first run in just 8.23 minutes. 'We looked
at each other and said **** it. If the police can lie, so can
we.' He alleges that over a third of the video timings were destroyed
because the results supported the police case. The remaining footage
was handed over to the legal team to form part of the possible
grounds for appeal. O'Mahoney's strategy was brilliantly thought
out. Even the bank card evidence, seemingly irrefutable, was undermined
when O'Mahoney tracked down a Liverpool solicitor called Dennis
Whalley who specialised in computer banking errors. Never mind
that the odds were so many billion against, if Mr Whalley could
give examples of service tills taking money from the wrong account
then that was good enough. Jeanette Tapp was the real problem,
however, as her evidence was damning.
O'Mahoney decided that she had to be pressurised into changing
her statement. He alleges the Taylor campaign got hold of Tapp's
number via friends at the clinic. He says Jeanette Tapp then became
the recipient of a stream of silent phone calls. The Taylors'
mother Anne then received an anonymous call, which she taped.
The woman caller said she'd been talking to 'JJ', who had allegedly
admitted 'she has lied in court' and was now 'guilty and frightened'.
Oddly enough, despite the potential importance of such a statement,
Anne Taylor showed no interest in tracing the mystery caller.
The real masterstroke of the Taylor Two campaign was the tale
of the homeless man — a story which, like so much else in
the campaign, proved to be entirely bogus. Graham Baldwin, who
worked with the homeless in London, rang police to report that
a down-and-out called David Wylie had told him he'd killed a girl.
Baldwin's call was duly logged. It turned out that Wylie had been
in Spain at the time of the murder.
But by this time the story of the homeless man - along with all
O'Mahoney's other 'evidence' - had been taken up with gusto by
the media. To understand what happened next, it is necessary to
remember that this was the time when miscarriages of justice were
almost fashionable, following the freeing of the Birmingham Six
and Guildford Pour. The Taylor Two campaign had jumped aboard
the miscarriage bandwagon. Their appeal ultimately rested on the
failure by the police to disclose details of a memo of August
4, 1991, which they claimed constituted a 'material irregularity'.
The memo in question was a note of WDC Angela Thomas's initial
doorstep interview with Dr Michael Unsworth White. The Daily Mail
has seen the document. DR UNSWORTH WHITE, having said he saw two
girls carrying a plastic laundry bag, 'stated firstly that the
second woman may have been black and then he retracted and stated
that both were white'. In a second police interview, he was emphatic
that both girls were white, adding that one girl had fair hair
tied in a ponytail — an exact description of Lisa.
In a lengthy third interview the doctor was equally clear. Counsel
for the Crown, John Nutting, told police officers not to worry.
He intended to fight this all this way and was confident of winning.
In a document signed by Nutting, he rebutts the argument of material
irregularity. Within 48 hours he had changed his mind. Police
officers watched aghast as Nutting apologised on their behalf
and made no attempt to defend the murder conviction. Unbelievably,
the four words 'may have been black' were enough. Never mind that
the words were immediately retracted by their speaker. The guilty
verdict was declared unsafe, and due to the 'prejudicial Press
coverage' a retrial was deemed impossible. Michelle and Lisa Taylor
walked free. So was this justice? Perhaps we should heed the words
of Detective Chief Superintendent William Hatfull, who carried
out a review of the murder investigation following the Taylors'
release. 'I found this to be a highly professional, painstaking
and thorough investigation,' he wrote. 'All of the most compelling
evidence discovered ... points to the Taylor sisters. I found
no other credible suspect or line of inquiry ... there is no justification
in re-opening this investigation.' |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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