Cameo Murder - Controversy

Controversy

The case caused considerable disquiet in legal circles for many years and there were a number of attempts to have it re-opened. The evidence put forward by the prosecution had emanated from witnesses who could hardly be described as being of sterling character. Dickson was a convicted prostitute and thief who, two years after the Cameo trial was sentenced, with others to a lengthy prison term for the violent robberies of a number of her clients. Northam had been a criminal since the age of 14 and had spent much of the 1940s in and out of prison. Graham shared a similar background. All three stood to gain by their testimony. The detective who led the investigation, Chief Superintendent Herbert Balmer had difficulty in coroborating much of the prosecution evidence during the trial and many prosecution witness statements bore the sign of police coaching. Employer's timesheets, which detailed Connolly's movements on the day of the murder, had been amateurishly tampered with. Witness statements that favoured the accused men were held back by the police, a fact later discovered by a local businessman, Luigi Santangeli who set out to investigate the crime on behalf of Connolly in the 1990s and was given access to the case files by Merseyside Police.

Most importantly, scant attention was paid to the fact that another Liverpool criminal, Donald Johnson, had demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the crime after being arrested for a street robbery in Birkenhead and had been charged with complicity in the murders prior to the arrest of Kelly and Connolly. Johnson had been transferred to Walton Prison from Birkenhead, where he admitted to another prisoner that he had been involved in the cinema shootings. This man was Robert Graham - the same criminal who would later tell a court that Connolly and Kelly had admitted being the murderers. During questioning, Johnson admitted being in the vicinity of the cinema at the time of the murders and had, in fact been stopped by a police constable, suspicious of his loitering, who had demanded to see his identity card and then taken his name. Johnson, during police interrogation, referred to the murder weapon as being an automatic - which was correct but a fact known only to the police, the gunman and his accomplices, if any. He further stated that one of the dead men had been shot whilst on his hands and knees - again, a fact that only the police knew. He also told police that he knew the identity of the gunman but had taken a religious oath not to reveal his name.

Because Johnson's entire statement was ruled inadmissible, after the presiding judge decided that the police had obtained it by threats and inducement, an attempt to try him as an accessory failed and he was freed. Liverpool City Police were then left in the position of having lost their most likely suspect - who could not be even questioned about the case again. Given the magnitude of the crime, reputations and careers would no doubt have been in jeopardy and the investigation team were in desperate need of fresh suspects. Donald Johnson later claimed that he had lied about what he knew of the shooting in the hope that he could get the police to dismiss his Birkenhead offence. Confessing to even peripheral involvement in a brutal double murder however, simply to have a mere mugging charge dismissed, would seem an unlikely course of action for an experienced criminal like Johnson to take and he clearly had a detailed knowledge of what had occurred in the cinema office. There has been speculation in the years since that a close relative of Johnson's may have been the gunman and that was the reason he refused to name him to the police. Johnson died in 1988.

Eventually the case reached the Court of Criminal Appeal in February 2001 and in June 2003 Kelly's and Connolly's convictions were judged to be unsafe and were duly quashed. Kelly's remains were taken from their burial place in Walton prison by his family and he was given a dignified funeral after a service in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.