When I was compiling evidence for our book, I spoke to John Ross, curator of the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard. She went round to the flat on Good Friday and made a scene, only leaving when he phoned the police. The employer name is FANDOM, INC.. At the end of January 2003 Muriel and I met Ross at the Museum to view the weapon used to kill Blakely. Newcastle West History & Heritage. Miss Gleeson went to the police twice, and a solicitor, but they disregarded her evidence. He was the pimp and smooth, society osteopath whose patients included Winston Churchill, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret.He introduced Christine Keeler to John Profumo, the Conservative Secretary of State for War. Desmond eventually escaped the Templars' grasp and went on to help the Assassins and fulfill his destiny. However I strongly suspect he grew up in a family that was used to deception. Go and have a chat with her.". Statements Mrs Yule made between 11th April and 20th June were inconsistent. The latter, 31, was a bachelor. The decision has been kept under wraps for fear of unleashing protests which could embarrass ministers.". I struck lucky. I recently came across a question in parliament dated 8th December 1955. She claimed at the time to have been given the gun by an American serviceman as security for a nightclub debt, and to have taken a taxi to the pub. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Getting Started | Contributor Zone Contribute to This Page Edit page Desmond Cussen Personal Details Biography Other Works Philip Dewey tells the story of Ruth Ellis, whose death paved the way for capital punishment to be abolished. At her trial, her hair freshly dyed platinum and wearing a well-cut black suit with astrakhan collar and cuffs, she seemed unnaturally cool. I met Mr Wallis, a retired Leatherhead dentist with an interesting story to tell about the very private Paddock Club at the end of a long gravel drive in the Surrey village of Ashtead. But Ruth lied. Ruth had protected Cussen in her police statement, claiming a man gave her the gun in a club three years previously. But she was certain about what happened. They knew each other for nearly six years, regularly visiting a risky club together in Surrey from the late 1940s. The former hostess had tracked her inconstant and abusive lover David Blakely to a Hampstead pub a few months before getting the ride, and the murder weapon, from her unrequited hanger-on Desmond Cussen and shot Blakely dead on the street. So too were Desmond Cussen and David Blakely. What else was there to hide?In our book we set out evidence that the court in 1955 never got to hear. Evelyn spoke to me following the publication of our book. But there was more to the story than came out at the trial. After picking his way through legal language with Stevenson and Humphreys, Justice Havers found an excuse not to allow a verdict of manslaughter and decided not to leave the issue to the jury. Why werent samples taken from the accused as well as the deceased? Registration Number: 2333870 : Full Name: DESMOND CUSSEN : First Name: DESMOND : He groomed her; a fact previously unknown to the public. The appeal asked that the murder conviction be changed to that of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility . Her counsel, Melford Stevenson, had wanted to argue provocation as a defence. I was so alarmed at my findings on 9th May 2002, I wrote in my diary, "Papers at the Royal Court of Justice have been adjusted; gun, police, timings.". He said, "Ive remembered the young mans name, it was Cussen.". I'd just had a new baby and she said what was he like, and she said she liked the dress I had on. Phone numbers and addresses of Berta and Arthur Neilsons friends, also notable journalists of the time Peter Grisewood, Jimmy Reid and Duncan Webb and other contacts that shed scribbled in fifty years ago, became important clues. It stated he achieved pilot officer status in the General Duties Branch on 10th April 1945 and left on 10th October 1945. If the gun had a long-standing defect, why did it not break on the first firing at the scene of the murder? A publicity still showed a beauty queen line-up. Finally, in Ruths letter dated 12th July 1955, to Mr Simmons, her original solicitor, she refers to remarks made by David Blakelys brother in a newspaper article following her trial. Cussen and Co microfiches led to another vital discovery, more proof of Ruths connection with Dr Stephen Ward, who was a key player in the Profumo affair in the 1960s, and circumstantial evidence of Cussens connection to the secret service. Melford Stevenson QC, also overlooked this important detail. She suffered a nervous breakdown and moved to Australia where she later became a midwife. I suspect that forensics were not carried out on Ruth, and the gun conveniently broke during testing because the results would have saved her and proved she could not have killed Blakely. Ellis, her lawyers argue with backing from a leading forensic psychiatrist, was suffering from post-miscarriage depression. Like Ellis, Challen was subjected to decades of abuse at the hands of her husband and this was recognised in her appeal, which took into account the insidious nature of coercive control. She wrote, "The charge was murder and the case had yet to be heard. However, I am unaware of the slowly building campaign to which you have referred. Statements from new witnesses had one thing in common. 27,814: At other times they were taken in a lorry to Bisley to practise with Sten guns. I can only guess there was an unwritten law that exempted them from being properly cross-examined. He was the marksman that killed Blakely - and got away with it. The statement was changed to read "The accused was firing the gun into his back," not the same. Then he lied at the trial saying "approximately three years.". It was all too quick. He said, "No scaffold was erected in Holloway prison before the execution of Mrs Ellis. Service records for RAF personnel after 1921 are MOD property. ", At her second court appearance on 28th April she said that she saw a lady in front of the two men. Nothing was made of this at her trial. She was holding a gun, pointing it at a dying man. "I kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. In his autobiography he described her hands as "small and limp. That impression was untrue. Somewhere hidden in books written about the Cold War, Cussens other identity is waiting to be uncovered. Sometime between the committal proceedings at the magistrates court in April and Ruths trial in June 50 years ago, words had been mysteriously crossed through in key witness statements; other words had been inserted, giving totally different meanings. The story about spying and the shadowy characters in Ruth's circle continued to unravel by an extraordinary twist of fate. The shooting outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, London on the evening of 10th April 1955 was described as an open-and-shut case of cold-blooded murder. Five bullets: the last, a coup de grace. On Easter Sunday, she told Mishcon, she had been drinking Pernod for many hours with Cussen, who had handed her the loaded gun and driven her to the scene of the murder. During an interview in August 2005 on BBC Radio London, Vanessa Feltz was curious to know what Cussen was doing between 1941 and 1945. Ruth said she shot David Blakely in a jealous rage, believing he was having an affair. With her tiny hand she couldnt have even thumbed the trigger guard back. Nickolls evidence went unchallenged. I can confirm that an application for a posthumous free pardon, limited to sentence, was considered and rejected earlier this year.". Desmond Napoles is a teenager who is changing the world. Jakubait revealed only four years ago that their father had raped her at the age of 14, producing a son who was brought up as her brother, and had abused Ellis as well. However the magistrates court papers were listed as FRUSTRATED (not available) at the PRO in Kew; they could not say where they were. She claimed at the time to have been given the gun by an American serviceman as security for a nightclub debt, and to have taken a taxi to the pub. As far as I am aware, they have not previously been made public. They had to be tight. The business address is 130 Sutter St Fl 4, San Francisco, CA 94104-4003. He turned his attentions to Ruth when she was 11. The Castle itself dates back to the 13th Century but the main . Originally he described Ruth pursuing Blakely and pointing the gun at his back. To pull a trigger of 10lbs requires definite and deliberate muscular effort.". Had she discovered the shady world in which Ruth was involved?Or was this interesting evidence just another coincidence? He gave the prosecution an easy time, subjecting prosecution witnesses to a minimum of cross-examination. Desmond Cussen was an expert liar, disguised as a boring businessman and usually portrayed as Blakelys rival for Ruths attention. She recalled that on occasions "Ruth would come in on her own, invariably crying saying David had vanished. If not, why not?". Hed been sent there during the war from south-east London suffering from a cerebral thrombosis following an injury sustained in the London Blitz. It seems odd therefore that twenty-three days after the start of my research I began uncovering alarming inconsistencies to the accepted story about him.Was it just poor research by commentators over the last fifty years or had those writers been fed misinformation, part of the big lie being spread, to hoodwink the public about the real Ruth Ellis story? Mr Steel told me how he teamed up with a young man, an only child, about eighteen years old, with straight fair hair, about 59", of muscular build and handsome. Andre didnt say much to Muriel that day except that hed seen Uncle Desmond cleaning and oiling two guns in his Goodwood Court flat the day before. He drove Ruth to Hampstead - that is not in doubt. However as we know now that Ruth lied at her trial from start to finish, it would be fair to assume she lied when she claimed shed only known Blakely for two years. Andre held explosive information but was not interviewed by the police during the investigation into the crime. The wistful, sad-eyed young woman with neat short hair and a single strand of pearls in the sepia-tinged photo could have been snipped from the pages of Country Life. In a postscript he added, "I should be interested to know from a medical point of view, the present state of her joints.". Ruths defence counsel made nothing of this at her trial. By early June 2002 I had pieced together quite a dossier of first hand evidence about Cussen; a bigger picture was developing. In her letter to Muriel Jakubait she wrote, "When Cussen, as I believe he is named, appeared behind her I was frightened. It was not a defence in 1955 but was enacted two years later, largely as a result of Ellis's case. Andre secretly taped their three-hour conversation at the Buddhist Society in London.Just weeks later Andre, aged 38 committed suicide.Humphreys was blinkered; for it was exactly what was going on in the background, amongst the shady characters in Ruths circle, that led to the shooting of her ex public schoolboy lover David Blakely outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead in 1955 and to Ruths execution three months later.Ruths friends, some were prosecution witnesses at her trial, were more complicated than you would imagine from simple statements they made at the Old Bailey.As I read the transcript of the trial and police statements it was clear that nobody was interested in witnesses backgrounds. If they had known the full story, Ruth would not have been convicted of murder or hanged. The day after our first interview I had a call from Mr Steel. Why didnt he ask Nickolls about the distance from which the other bullets were fired? Berta told Muriel that Ruth had shot and killed Blakely. He was usually portrayed as Blakely's scathing rival for Ruth's affections. It would appear that he was doing nothing. An early draft of RUTH ELLIS, MY SISTERS SECRET LIFE contained this information, but our publishers felt it was complicated and the whole section was dropped. I knew nothing of the background and I didnt care. Her wedding ring was worn on an adjacent finger. A firearms expert advised me that accuracy with a .38 Smith and Wesson would have been hopeless except in trained hands. On the evening of Friday 25th May 1951, Watson drove Maclean to Woldingham station. It strikes me as strange, that Ruth Elliss mother had this address in her notebook 50 years ago. I wrote to the Home Office for further details about the passport but after "thorough searches" nothing could be found. 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