| The Dream Solution - Extract's |
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On this page you will find a extract from
Bernard O'Mahoney's book The Dream Solution published
by Mainstream Publishing :- |
Window of opportunity
If I'd known how the campaign to free the sisters was
going to take over my life I think I'd have just signed
the petition and left it at that. Instead, only ten days
after the sisters had been sentenced, I found myself in
the back seat of Michelle's white Ford Sierra Estate outside
a pub near her former workplace, the Churchill Clinic.
Del was driving and Uncle Norman was in the front passenger
seat. I'd brought along a video camera to film the journey
from the murder scene back to the clinic to prove the
inaccuracy of the police timings. The prosecution's case
had depended upon a so-called 23-minute 'window of opportunity'
in which the sisters had murdered Alison and returned
to the clinic.
The victim had definitely clocked off work at 5.02 p.m.
The police said she'd gone straight home and would have
arrived around 35 minutes later. Michelle had then been
seen at the clinic around 6 p.m., so there were only around
23 minutes in which she and Lisa could have committed
the murder, cleaned up and driven back.
The police had allowed 11 minutes for the return trip.
But I was convinced that, without a blue flashing light,
no one could complete the journey in that time. Del, Uncle
Norman and I set off for Alison's former address in Vardens
Road, Battersea.
We parked a few hundred yards from the murder house, near
the pub to which Michelle had run screaming after she
and John Shaughnessy had discovered the body. On the dashboard,
secured with a lump of Blu-Tack, we'd mounted a stopwatch.
Uncle Norman stood outside the house.
At my signal he began walking towards the car. At the
same moment Del started the stopwatch and I began filming.
Uncle Norman got in the car and we drove off. Throughout
the journey back to the clinic I focused the camera on
the speedometer, the stopwatch and the road ahead.
We kept within the designated speed limits and obeyed
all traffic signals and signs. However, much to our surprise,
we covered the journey in much the same time as the police.
We were all hugely disappointed; Del looked especially
deflated.
We drove back to Forest Hill and dropped off Norman. Del
and I sat in the car talking. He was more upset than I'd
first realised: he knew the significance of the timings.
I told him not to be too downhearted because, as far as
I was concerned, we'd only just done a dummy run.
We needed to do the journey several times on several different
Mondays to get the real picture. We talked for perhaps
15 minutes, both of us mouthing off about the police.
Then I said we ought to beat the police at their own game:
if the police could bend the rules — and Del needed
no convincing that they had done — then so could
we.
I suggested we ought only to retain video footage of the
runs that took a lot longer than 11 minutes. We could
junk the rest. 'Fuck it,' I said. 'If the police can lie,
then so can we.' Del looked at me and laughed. We had
reached an understanding. For me, this was a turning point.
It was the first time I'd talked about misrepresenting
the facts. The term that we all started using was the
one I'd first mentioned: beating the police at their own
game. I believed then that Del and Ann were unlikely to
disapprove of anything I did to help bring their daughters
home.
Over the next three months we did several more runs and
developed various tricks to extend the journey time by
several valuable minutes. For instance, we would gauge
the changing of traffic lights in order to be caught at
red. This helped us accumulate several tapes which proved
the supposed impossibility of completing the journey in
less than 15 minutes or so.
We also investigated the possibility that there'd been
roadworks on the route on the day of the murder. However,
no matter what we did we still found we frequently managed
to do the run comfortably within the 11-minute time-frame,
sometimes in eight to nine minutes. We had to junk at
least a third of the video footage. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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