The Dream Solution: The Murder of Alison Shaughnessy - and the Fight to Name Her Killer

Product Information

Police attention was focused on her and she resolved to shield Lisa from the same kind of ordeal, keeping her out of the picture entirely. Reporters swarmed all over the trial, chewing over the sexual innuendo and the detail of the victim’s wounds, regurgitating the whole affair in stories which presented Crown allegations as though they were fact. After picking up the mail on the doormat, she would have been followed by the sisters upstairs before they attacked her. alison shaghnessy murder - taylor sisters convicted; lms taylor sisters' parents as into red car zoom in alison's father, mother, brother and family. Lisa and Michelle Taylor grew up in Forest Hill in south east London in a stable family in a quiet street.

Little can be determined about the attacker from the nature of the wounds, which depend a great deal on the weapon; and the weapon in this case was never traced. Lisa and Michelle’s lawyers feared that if the trial were evenly poised, the newspapers might tip the balance against them.The pathologist also concluded from the shallow depths of the wounds that the attacker was a woman, since they had not been made by someone of great strength. However, it was said that whilst the police were in the process of handling a complaint by the sisters parents over their use of bad language whilst interrogating her, they stumbled upon her diaries, which for them, it was said, made 'electrified reading' as it detailed in some depth the relationship that the elder sister had been having with Alison Shaughnessy's husband. She had just moved into a new house with her husband and they planned to move back to Ireland to start a family. The prosecution said that only the murderers would have done this, as only they would have known by that stage what specific period of time they needed to cover their tracks for. She and Shaughnessy had undoubtedly cheated on Alison as that expression is commonly used in a sexual relationship".

Michelle - who had been having an affair with Alison's husband - had been found guilty of murdering Alison in a jealous rage, and her sister, Lisa, was convicted of aiding her in the brutal attack. A whole host of deeply unpleasant characters parade through the pages of this book, starting with the John Shaunessy, who announced two months into his courtship of Michelle Taylor, in the course of a dinner date, that he was getting engaged to another girl but saw neither this nor his subsequent marriage as any barrier to their continued sexual involvement. On these grounds, and after concluding that the press may have influenced the trial, the Court of Appeal acquitted the Taylor sisters and they were released after spending one year in prison. The social worker explained that he had often seen Derek Williams sleeping rough around the Strand and that more recently he had come across him in a squat in Battersea.Filmmaker Bernard O'Mahoney, a man who had originally campaigned for the release of the Taylors and who then had an affair with Michelle, has since claimed that she confessed to the murder to him and has campaigned for the sisters to be re-convicted. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. From the outset the case was surrounded by inordinate, inaccurate and somewhat hysterical publicity. There was no scientific evidence to link the girls to the crime, no skin under the dead girl’s nails, no tell-tale hair on her clothes, no footprint in her blood and, perhaps most surprising of all, not one spot of blood from any of the 54 wounds on either girl or on their clothes.

The 27-year-old man is alleged to have told a social worker shortly after the death that he had killed a woman in Battersea. Eric Milne, one of two professional witnesses, indicated in the witness-box that Lisa’s fingerprint on the Shaughnessys’ front door was recent, and Professor Rufus Crompton, the pathologist, said that the violence suffered by Alison was probably inflicted by a woman: ‘it would suggest the capability of a female.It was said that the media was as much to blame as the police in this leading to a miscarriage of justice.