PART THREE
WHO REALLY FIRED THE FATAL SHOT?
At the Old Bailey on 20th June 1955, Christmas Humphreys assisted by Mervyn Griffith-Jones and Miss Jean Southworth, instructed by the Department of Public Prosecutions, appeared on behalf of the prosecution. Melford Stevenson QC, assisted by Mr Sebag Shaw and Mr Peter Rawlinson instructed by Messrs Cardew-Smith and Ross appeared on behalf of the prisoner Ruth Ellis.Christmas Humphreys opened the case for the prosecution. He said Ruth took a gun which she knew was loaded, and shot David Blakely dead by “emptying that revolver at him, four bullets going into his body, one hitting a bystander in the hand, and the sixth going we know not where.”Ruth’s defence counsel, Melford Stevenson, stated categorically that Ruth was guilty. “Let me make this abundantly plain: there is no question here but this woman shot this man….You will not hear one word from me – or from the lady herself – questioning that.”
Looking at the transcript of the trial released over forty years after Ruth’s death it’s clear how Ruth Ellis, who pleaded not guilty, was given scant help by our judicial system. Her trial for murder was pushed through in just over a day. The jury taking 23 minutes to find her guilty.
It appeared to be an open-and-shut case of cold- blooded murder. There was no need for forensics on Ruth or her possessions or for investigating the case properly. Apparently nobody else was involved.
Ruth had a gun hanging from her hand. She was pointing it towards Blakely’s dead body. In the press she had already been portrayed as a peroxide blonde tart. Therefore she was guilty.
There was no need to consider if 28 year-old Ruth, the 5’2,” 7-stone woman with tiny bird-like hands, one gnarled as a result of rheumatic fever, with poor eyesight and suffering the after effects of a recent miscarriage, was physically capable of shooting anyone. Let alone repeatedly pull the trigger on a heavy man-size .38 Smith and Wesson gun that required a 10lb pull for each shot fired; it would have been impossibly large in her hand, its recoil would have knocked her backwards. All these aspects were left unsaid at the trial.
In a Prison Service file, recently opened for public scrutiny, I read that Ruth told the medical officer at Holloway prison hospital that her left hand and ankle had been affected by rheumatic fever. Nothing was made of this at her trial.
Ruth lied in court. She calmly admitted murdering Blakely. She had been brainwashed and “shielded those people who’d picked her…..The ones who promised her she wouldn’t die.”
According to their police statements, Cussen dropped Ruth and her son Andre at her flat in Kensington at 7.30 pm on the evening of the shooting and didn’t see her again until she was in prison. We now know it was a pack of lies.
As soon as I read these two sentences in Ruth’s police statement I knew she was lying and protecting someone: “I took a taxi and as I arrived, David’s car drove away from Findlater’s [Blakely’s car mechanic friend] address. I dismissed the taxi and walked back down the road to the nearest pub where I saw David’s car outside.”
She could have followed Blakely in her taxi if murder, “was on her mind.” She hadn’t spoken to him for over two days, she would not have known where he was going and she couldn’t have seen where he was going. It’s a long walk from Tanza Road to the Magdala which is the nearest pub.
Stevenson had a golden opportunity to get to the truth. Yet he did not ask Ruth what made her take a twelve-minute walk in the dark when she could have taken the taxi that she was in.
Instead he summarised, “We have heard the evidence about your taking a revolver up to Hampstead and shooting him. Is that right?” Ruth replied, “Quite right.”
At about 9 pm on the night of the shooting Moreen Gleeson, a Hampstead resident saw Ruth and Cussen outside 29 Tanza Road in Hampstead, where Ruth believed Blakely was conducting an affair with another woman. In her letter to Muriel Jakubait she wrote, “When Cussen, as I believe he is named, appeared behind her I was frightened. He was definitely intending to take charge….”
Miss Gleeson went to the police twice, and a solicitor, but they disregarded her evidence. It would have been crucial in confirming that Cussen was near to the scene of the crime.
The authorities appear to have ignored any explanation of events other than the one that would lead to Ruth’s execution.
Moreen Gleeson’s encounter with Ruth and Cussen and Ruth’s subsequent hanging, troubled her. She suffered a nervous breakdown and moved to Australia where she later became a midwife. She read something about Cussen and the murder in a national paper but dismissed it as “ill-informed.” She said, “I had been there and knew this was all wrong.”
Ruth didn’t murder anybody. Cussen, her “alternative” lover, wound her up like a spring, got her drunk, drove her to the scene of the crime and put a gun in her hand. Although appearing to fire shots at Blakely she did not fire the gun which killed him.
Desmond Cussen was an expert liar, disguised as a boring businessman and usually portrayed as Blakely’s rival for Ruth’s attention. At the magistrate’s court, when asked how long he’d known Blakely, Cussen lied saying just over two years. Then he lied at the trial saying “approximately three years.”
I have evidence of their long-term friendship. They knew each other for nearly six years, regularly visiting a ‘risky’ club together in Surrey from the late 1940’s.
In the early 1970’s, Mr Bickford, Ruth’s solicitor, made a statement to Scotland Yard from his home in Malta. He was recalling what Cussen told him in 1955: how Ruth lied at the trial and how he (Bickford) had hidden that information.
After Bickford’s confession a police investigation followed but no further action regarding Cussen was taken.
I dug deeper into Public Record Office (PRO) documents. As part of my research, I wanted to compare magistrate’s court statements with the trial transcript. However the magistrates court papers were listed as FRUSTRATED (not available) at the PRO in Kew; they could not say where they were.
Eventually I was permitted to view the file that contained Christmas Humphreys’ set of magistrate’s court documents at the Royal Court of Justice in the Strand. They’d been housed there since 1996.
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.” It was an understatement.
Sometime between the committal proceedings at the magistrate’s court in April and Ruth’s 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.
I only have photocopies of six witness statements. Altogether there are 33 subtle changes.
Where did the instructions come from, for Christmas Humphreys to make those changes?
It’s obvious now; Ruth was being set up. Before she reached the Old Bailey her fate was determined. The case would be guaranteed open-and-shut.
A statement made by Police Constable Thompson caught my eye. He was an off-duty policeman who happened to be in the Magdala that fateful evening. He arrested Ruth after the shooting which happened outside the pub. His words “She was holding the revolver loosely” (crossed out) “pointing it downwards at a slant” (crossed out) became “she was holding the revolver in her right hand pointing it downwards.”
PC Thompson was inside the Magdala when he heard “a succession of bangs” outside. Importantly, his statement at the magistrate’s court “No shot was fired after I came out of the public house” was omitted at the trial. This key witness did not see who shot Blakely, “but listening to him being questioned by Humphreys” you’d think he did.
All Melford Stevenson had to say was “No questions.”
I noticed this statement made by Clive Gunnell who called himself a Mayfair car salesman. He was Blakely’s drinking companion at the Magdala on the night of the shooting. Originally he described Ruth pursuing Blakely and pointing the gun at his back. The statement was changed to read “The accused was firing the gun into his back,” not the same.
Again Stevenson had “No questions.”
Stevenson stuck to his word. He gave the prosecution an easy time, subjecting prosecution witnesses to a minimum of cross-examination.
I can only guess there was an unwritten law that exempted them from being properly cross-examined.
Mrs Gladys Yule was a prime witness for the prosecution. She and her husband Donald Maclean Yule (who was not called to give evidence) were walking to the Magdala for a Sunday evening drink.
Statements Mrs Yule made between 11th April and 20th June were inconsistent.
At her first court appearance she saw a youngish man run out of the saloon bar of the Magdala, “followed, almost on his heels, by a blonde woman.”
At her second court appearance on 28th April she said that she saw a lady in front of the two men. “I could see her hair was very blonde and she wore a light coat.” Then she admitted she would not recognise “the blonde woman again who shot Blakely.”
At the Old Bailey on 20th June Mrs Yule was not asked if she recognised the prisoner. But she was certain about what happened. She saw “A lady on the pavement in front of the public house…..and saw her chase a man.”
Again Ruth’s barrister had no questions. He failed to raise any of these discrepancies.
The more I read the transcript, comparing it to witness statements prior to the trial, the more I saw the skulduggery that took place. Ruth stood no chance.
At the end of the first day of the trial, Melford Stevenson, with no jury present, gained a new lease of life. He discussed at length “unlike his near silent performance in court” the question of provocation; a peculiar contrast to his court appearance.
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.
Justice Havers directed the jury; he was “judge, jury, defence and prosecution.
The trumped up murder charge protected people at the heart of the establishment. Ruth wasn’t sentenced to death. The establishment murdered her.
The Ruth Ellis story wasn’t about a crime of passion – it looked that way though.
The shooting of Blakely obscured the truth about the country in the grips of a spying scandal. Ruth was hanged to protect the shadowy characters she mixed with and took her secrets to an unconsecrated grave at Holloway prison.
I found a letter at the Public Record Office from a Mrs Robinson of Ealing to the Home Secretary. It summed up the case to a tee. She wrote, “The charge was murder and the case had yet to be heard. I should have demanded to hear the defence if I was the jury. The judge took away power of the jury.”
