Crimescribe

For most crime buffs the name ‘George Kelly’ inspires memories of rattling Tommy guns, bank robberies and the kidnapping of Charles Urschel, all attributed to American crook George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. Kelly, a second-rate gangster at best, was made out to be far worse than he actually was, spending the remainder of his life in Leavenworth and Alcatraz before dying of a heart attack in 1954.

For residents of Liverpool, however, that name reminds them of a double murder, a rigged trial and a fast hanging in 1950. Like his American namesake, our George Kelly was also made out to be far worse than he really was. A petty crook, he didn’t deserve to title of ‘gangster.’

He didn’t deserve to go to the gallows, either. For a double murder he didn’t commit.

But, at 8am in Liverpool’s Walton prison on March 28, 1950, he did exactly that. When the time came Albert Pierrepoint and assistant Harry Allen walked into the condemned cell, strapped Kelly’s arms, led him the few short steps to the gallows and justice, so it seemed, had been served.

It hadn’t, by a long way.

Kelly’s alleged crime, armed robbery of Liverpool’s Cameo Cinema on the night of March 19, 1949, also resulted in a double murder. Cinema manager Leonard Thomas and assistant manager John Catterall were shot dead. Local gossip blamed Kelly and his alleged accomplice, local strong-arm man Charles Connolly. If tried and convicted, the pair would almost certainly be hanged. They were arrested on September 30, 1949 on the basis of an anonymous letter.

Enter local hoodlum Robert Graham who came forward and blamed the pair. He claimed that, while in Walton with them, Kelly had admitted the shootings and named Connolly as his partner. According to Graham, Kelly was the shooter and Connolly the look-out. Under the rules governing common purpose, that made both men equally responsible for the shootings and, therefore, equally likely to hang if convicted. In return for his information, and likely for his own safety, Graham was immediately released from his prison term.

A prison term for dishonesty…

First, Kelly and Connolly were tried together. The jury were unable to reach a verdict, but only an acquittal would have barred the Crown from a arranging a retrial. The fact that neither could be proved as having ever met, that both offered sound alibis and that the evidence of both Graham and fellow prosecution witnesses James Northam and Jacqueline Dickson, a pimp and prostitute respectively, was less-than-stellar, probably saw the collapse of the first trial. Dickson was also outed as writing the anonymous letter. Faced with prosecution witnesses of such low character, the jury couldn’t agree a verdict against either defendant.

Second time around the pair were set to be tried separately. Connolly, warned that a murder conviction would probably see him hang, accepted ten years for robbery and conspiracy while Kelly was awaiting both his own appeal and execution.. He died in 1997, still protesting his and Kelly’s innocence. His chance of a reprieve effectively destroyed by Connolly’s deal, Kelly remained in Walton’s condemned cell under 24-hour suicide watch.

Kelly’s trial was, by modern standards, a dubious affair. It was also Britain’s longest murder trial at that point, lasting 13 days of February, 1950 with Mr. Justice Roland Oliver presiding. The prosecution’s case was riddled with flaws, allegations of police coaching prosecution witnesses, the prosecution withholding evidence from the defence and of Kelly generally being railroaded to the gallows.

It also saw the first appearance of a woman as lead counsel in a capital case. Rose Heilbron had become a King’s Counsel (a senior barrister) in the same month that Kelly and Connolly supposedly murdered Thomas and Catterall at the Cameo. With Kelly facing the rope if convicted, her first murder case as lead counsel couldn’t have been any more challenging.

Inexperienced in capital cases, she did as much as anyone could. It wasn’t enough. The jury convicted her client, Mr. Justice Oliver donned the traditional Black Cap and sent Kelly back to Walton under sentence of death. Under the law as it then stood, George Kelly had only a minimum of three Sundays between sentencing and execution. With that in mind, letters from the Prison Commissioners went to Albert Pierrepoint and senior assistant Harry Allen offering them a morning’s work.

Rose Heilbron, however, had other ideas. She lobbied hard to have Kelly’s verdict and death sentence overturned. She went to the Court of Criminal Appeal, Kelly beside her as she listed 11 error’s in Oliver’s summing-up of the case. She also pointed out that a man named Donald Johnson has been tried and acquitted of the crime.

Johnson (also represented by Heilbron) had given police two statements. One admitted Johnson’s role as an accessory, which was ruled inadmissible and caused his trial to collapse. The other, not rediscovered until the 1990’s, had been withheld from the defence.

Johnson, a career criminal with a lengthy record, had also been stopped by a police officer near the Cameo Cinema before the crime. The shooter was also described as being left-handed. Johnson was left-handed, George Kelly wasn’t. Northam and Dickson’s statements appear to have been withheld from Kelly’s lawyers, Kelly was tried separately from Connolly without legal cause, Connolly’s guilty plea was obtained by threats of execution and Robert Graham’s first statement had been withheld from Kelly’s legal team as well.

The case against him was also based entirely on circumstantial evidence, without even forensic evidence linking Kelly to the crime. All told, the defence had plenty of grounds for appealing a conviction that should never have occurred in the first place.

None of it did any good at the time. Kelly’s conviction was upheld, his sentence approved and he duly went to the gallows. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that local man Lou Santangeli, a friend of Connolly’s, began a campaign to prove Kelly’s innocence. Digging through old files and using Connolly’s own memories, he pushed the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in 2001. In 2003 the court ruled; George Kelly’s conviction had finally been quashed. Connolly’s robbery conviction went with it. According to Mr. Justice Rix;

“There was in these cases a breakdown in the due administration of justice and a failure to ensure a fair trial, we consider that the consequence was a miscarriage of justice which must be deeply regretted.”

Before his death in 1997 Charles Connolly expressed regrets of his own;

“If capital punishment had not been in force and George Kelly had not already been sentenced to hang I would never have pleaded guilty. i would have shouted my innocence whatever the consequences.”

Shortly after the ruling Kelly’s body, buried within prison walls in accordance with the law governing hanged prisoners, was finally returned to his family. Daughter Kathleen Hughes stated;

“I have waited a long, long time for this day. I hope now I can give him a decent Christian burial, which I have previously been thwarted from doing.”