On 11th April the prison medical officer noted that as a teenager she had "rheumatic fever, which was followed with arthritis in the fingers of the left hand and of the ankles." Doris Gearys brother, Frank Watson was the Tatsfield "cabbie" for 60 years, and chauffeur to Donald Maclean when he lived in the village from December 1950 to May 1951. Source: History Extra. She recalled that on occasions "Ruth would come in on her own, invariably crying saying David had vanished. They are a multi-awarded LGBTQ+ advocate, genderfluid editorial and runway model, motivational public speaker, performer, clothing designer, actor, singer, host, social media influencer and published author. . Over the years, Desmond Cussen, Ruths so-called alternative lover, has been described as a bit of a drip, an unassuming, docile, father figure. What is even more interesting is an important discovery I made in a Metropolitan Police document recently released at the Public Record Office and has never been made public: the gun broke during testing. It seems that he was . I'd just had a new baby and she said what was he like, and she said she liked the dress I had on. She was the innocent pawn in a game of espionage planned by intelligence officers whose job was to lie and who wanted to get rid of her. He must have known about the gun breaking. "She was clean, smart, and certainly did not have stains down her clothes. Ruth stood no chance. Stevenson could have established what really happened. Ruth with her beau Desmond Cussen. There are 5 other people named Desmond Cussen on AllPeople. 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. Its obvious now; Cussen lied about their friendship to cover the secret world theyd actually been part of for several years; a world that Ruth could have blown wide open if she had lived. Mr Bickford, Ruths solicitor, had evidence but "felt it unwise to call it. She was convicted of shooting to death her lover David Blakeley, a racing driver. Was the gun produced at the trial and now housed at the Crime Museum, the crime weapon or was it the second gun that Andre saw Cussen cleaning on the day of the shooting? Now Desmond shared with Blakely and Ward a love of motor-racing, however, he also shared the affections of Ruth Ellis. Ruth's 27 th birthday on 9 th October 1953 was a particularly memorable one. When he was seventeen he was not in the RAF, he was in the Home Guard working alongside John Steel. His character was best known for his "old African sayings". Her parents Berta and Arthur Neilson, Ruths son Andre and Desmond Cussen arrived on her doorstep unexpectedly. It is standard procedure in all police stations for the arresting officer to make a list of possessions belonging to the prisoner on a charge sheet. He merely said, "To fire each shot the trigger has to be pulled as a separate operation." So too were Desmond Cussen and David Blakely. However the magistrates court papers were listed as FRUSTRATED (not available) at the PRO in Kew; they could not say where they were. Importantly, his statement at the magistrates court "No shot was fired after I came out of the public house" was omitted at the trial. He couldnt remember his partners name, it was a long time ago, but said he was very good with a gun, a "crack shot." It was against a womans dignity. The Ruth Ellis story wasnt 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. Did Stevenson choose not to explain this evidence to the Old Bailey jury? Major Lloyd-George lied in his reply to Mr Hyde. The decision has been kept under wraps for fear of unleashing protests which could embarrass ministers.". The pair frequently visited the Paddock Club, which was a mile or so from Cussens Leatherhead family home, since the late 1940s. Then he lied at the trial saying "approximately three years.". This sensational finding was pivotal in uncovering the real Ruth Ellis story.Most people associate Wards name with the 1960s Profumo scandal. She was hard up, with two children to support. Ruths learned defence counsel Melford Stevenson did not ask. 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. 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. what happened to desmond cussen. He was a member from the late 1940s until 1955. It was a place where the best people from London secretly congregated when there were parties on. The two young men worked together at night-time two to three times a week from summer 1940 until April 1941, guarding bombed places against looters and keeping watch for parachutists. With further research I realised that in the late 1940s Garlands Road was no ordinary road. Her wedding ring was worn on an adjacent finger. The notebook tells a revealing story of its own. how are biotic and abiotic factors related; peterbilt 379 for sale in kansas; rental security deposit interest calculator pa Desmond Miles was born into the Assassin Order, but he ran away from the lifestyle, hoping to pursue his own dreams. The appeal asked that the murder conviction be changed to that of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility . As I leafed through the trial transcript during a visit to the PRO at Kew, the inadequate questioning of witnesses is obvious now for all to see. Desmond ran away; somehow made it on a bus, and went far away. It was the night he and his colleague Guy Burgess defected to Russia. During her comeback at Carroll's, Ruth had made friends with a man named Desmond Edward Cussen. He gave his address as the Atlantic Hotel, Queens Gardens in London where I discovered hed lived for two years. Somewhere hidden in books written about the Cold War, Cussens other identity is waiting to be uncovered. The Cussen and Co microfiches led to another breakthrough in my investigation. 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. Edward married Caroline Alice Cussen in month 1885, at age 21 at marriage place. The authorities still keep some files to do with Ruths trial closed until 2031. She threatened Muriel not to talk to a soul, to look after Andre, instructed her not to allow the boy to talk anyone and left. Two days before the hanging, Ellis's lawyers had submitted evidence, including the testimony of witnesses that Blakely had inflicted repeated beatings on her and that she believed he had caused the miscarriage she suffered just 10 days before the shooting with a punch to the stomach. At the beginning of her performance, which she began without being asked saying, "It all started about two years ago when I met David Blakely at the Little Club, Knightsbridge," Superintendent Crawford had to stop her and ask "Would you like this to be written down? Ruth didnt murder anybody. Her sister Muriel gave birth to a child through incest with her father, a bully who started sexually abusing Muriel when she was six. Constable Thompson was inside the Magdala when he heard "a succession of bangs" outside. Category: Blog Post navigation. 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. 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. The trial in June, only two months after the shooting, lasted just over a day. There was no official explanation.The Donald Maclean connection with Penn illustrates just one of the complicated trails typical of my findings. Forensic expert Lewis Charles Nickolls, Director of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory examined the revolver and bullets. 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. One London address in Kensington stood out. I would have remembered. She told him that she was not the lone, cold-blooded killer she had seemed at her trial. Shut away in a previously closed file is a police statement made by Nickolls on 25th April 1955 along with a further one-page report written on the identical date but on Metropolitan Police Laboratory headed notepaper. Home Office documents released only in 1999 reveal that Ellis made a dramatic death-cell revelation on the morning before her execution to a prominent solicitor, Victor Mishcon. As soon as I read these two sentences in Ruths police statement I knew she was lying and protecting someone: "I took a taxi and as I arrived, Davids car drove away from Findlaters [Blakelys car mechanic friend] address. Using new evidence that Ive uncovered, I say we now need to go back to the scene of the murder, choose a dark evening at about 9.30 pm and reconstruct the crime. So they take him in. The establishment murdered her. Ruth had a gun hanging from her hand. The judge took away power of the jury.". pepperidge farm outlet store locations; marketisation of education sociology; brmp certification worth it; seneca . Much later it emerged that her friend and "sugar. I knew nothing of the background and I didnt care. What happened to Ruths blood spattered clothes? Suspiciously he didnt mention the gun breaking during testing. 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. Bear in mind foreign travel then was fairly limited apart from business matters. Theyd been housed there since 1996. She saw "A lady on the pavement in front of the public house..and saw her chase a man.". He had no idea, until our book was published three years later, that his Home Guard partner was the same man who would play an important role in Ruth Elliss life and death in 1955. He lived in 1881, at address. 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