This, I feel, is unlikely. I would have remembered. 1940 is a long time ago. ", In 1955, Ruth Ellis was hanged for murder. On the evening of Friday 25th May 1951, Watson drove Maclean to Woldingham station. Suspiciously he didnt mention the gun breaking during testing. Over the years, Desmond Cussen, Ruth's so-called alternative lover, has been described as a bit of a drip, an unassuming, docile, father figure. I should have demanded to hear the defence if I was the jury. Dapdune was coincidentally just 300 yards from Leatherhead hospital where Arthur Neilson, Muriel Jakubaits father, was an in-patient for a year. He must have known about the gun breaking. where so many protested Ruth's execution. He was perfectly placed when the Profumo fiasco broke in 1963.This discovery opened up a new line of investigation, which in turn led to the infamous spying activities of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.The convincing story, spun and repeated for fifty years, disguised the real Ruth Ellis. Firstly, all her letters (photocopied from the originals at the Public Record Office) were written in pen. Moreen Gleesons encounter with Ruth and Cussen and Ruths subsequent hanging, troubled her. I am rather confused. It followed my discovery of Desmond Cussens signature on a business document in 1964 while he was lying low at a London hotel. With many theories about what really happened, this account attempts to lay out the facts, rather than speculating on hearsay and unprovable notions. However the magistrates court papers were listed as FRUSTRATED (not available) at the PRO in Kew; they could not say where they were. He looked like a spiv with dark, greased back hair; with a round boyish face and an unnatural looking thin moustache. Ruth asked what they were for. Jakubait believes that her sister protected him during the trial because he had promised to look after her family. I contacted anyone who might spread the word about our new findings, from editors of parish magazines and village newsletters to local newspapers in areas connected with the story.Three years of detective work has taught me there will always be more to discover. The jury taking 23 minutes to find her guilty. More than 17 books and the 1985 film Dance with a Stranger have looked at the events leading up to Ellis's execution, but answers to some of the puzzles that remained unsolved have emerged only in the past few years. After months of research and trawling through electoral registers and directories I realised I hadnt just found a safe house, Id found a safe street! Top people lived there in houses of substance. Therefore she was guilty. 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? I was baffled. I wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair for a reaction about the Home Secretarys decision; and to HM the Queen. Mr Hyde, MP asked Gwilym Lloyd-George, the Home Secretary if he was aware that prisoners and staff were disturbed by the noise of scaffolding being erected for Ruth's execution just before she was hanged. At the magistrates court in 1955 Cussen stated hed known Blakely, "Just over two years, maybe three." The Castle itself dates back to the 13th Century but the main . Mrs Gladys Yule was a prime witness for the prosecution. The two men were of the same height, were of a stocky build and had a round face framed with greased-back dark hair. So they take him in. The business address is 130 Sutter St Fl 4, San Francisco, CA 94104-4003. So too were Desmond Cussen and David Blakely. She shot her lover, David Blakely, outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead on the night of Easter Sunday, 1955, felling him with one bullet and pumping four more into him before an off-duty policeman removed the revolver from her hand. Her son, Andy, then nearly 10, killed himself in his 20s. As far as I am aware, they have not previously been made public. The imposing Desmond Castle and Banqueting Hall in the centre of Newcastle West is the town's obvious historical landmark and a must-see for any visitor but there are also many other wonderful places of historical significance worth checking out. Mark Frost threw fans a bone and expounded on Annie's fate in his new canon novel Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, although her ending isn't exactly a cheery one. DesmondCussenFalls for Ruth. Are they going to charge him? In the 90s, however, judges softened the law on provocation, opening it up to battered women and others whose self-control was affected by despair or depression. I received three replies. If they had known the full story, Ruth would not have been convicted of murder or hanged. Desmond Cussen was an expert liar, disguised as a boring businessman and usually portrayed as Blakelys rival for Ruths attention. This was Cussens one and only trail left anywhere since 1955. "In effect she signed her own death warrant. Desmond Cussen died a lonely alcoholic, as did her solicitor John Bickford, who remained haunted by the case for the rest of his life. No one seeing that face framed on the mantelpiece of a pensioner's bungalow near Woking would identify her as Ruth Ellis, the cool platinum blonde from the postwar London nightclub demimonde who shot her lover dead and won enduring fame as the last woman to hang in Britain. For the past six years, since her brother died, she has carried on the fight alone. It was important. The procedure for estimating the range of fire of a weapon had been used for some years. Available for both RF and RM licensing. In the spring of 1969 Ruths widowed mother, Berta Neilson, was found unconscious in a gas-filled room in her flat in Hemel Hempstead; she never fully recovered and did not speak coherently again. Edward Cussen was born in month 1863, at birth place, to John Cussen and Helena Frances Cussen. A further new discovery is that Ruth occasionally visited Tatsfield, a village north-west of Westerham and home to Soviet Super Spy Donald Maclean. Fandom General Counsel. "She was clean, smart, and certainly did not have stains down her clothes. Education. Muriel had wondered for years about the names in it. Evelyn told me categorically that "No prisoner in the condemned cell was allowed to use a pen, everything had to be written in pencil and was strictly supervised.". Service records for RAF personnel after 1921 are MOD property. Andre held explosive information but was not interviewed by the police during the investigation into the crime. Cussen seemed to be following Ward around.When the names Ward, Keeler and Profumo cropped up later in the Atlantic hotel, I realised that Cussen whod been staying there for two years was not there by accident. (Another missed entirely and winged a passerby.) Ruth stood no chance. 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. There are many unanswered questions about who Cussen really was; very little is known about him. what happened to janelle on all of us; faith hedgepeth crime scene photos; why does spawn have one big boot. He said, "Ive remembered the young mans name, it was Cussen.". She went round to the flat on Good Friday and made a scene, only leaving when he phoned the police. 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. This was Cussens one and only trail left anywhere since 1955.After Ruths death, Cussen and Ward moved from their Devonshire Street flats where they were close neighbours, to Bayswater addresses in London; Cussen to Lanterns Hotel in Craven Road, Ward to Orme Square. In 1955, at the age of 28, Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in the UK after she shot her lover dead outside a pub in Hampstead two months earlier. Fiona Mactaggart MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State replied to Sir Paul Beresfords letter: "The case of Ruth Ellis has always attracted interest over the years and more particularly in this the fiftieth anniversary of her execution. OK 100%100 56 50 669/10 221AW 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. Ruth had a gun hanging from her hand. 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. It can be no accident that Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, John Profumo and osteopath Dr Stephen Ward were frequent visitors there at the same time as Cussen. Nothing about Cussen was quite what it seemed. 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. Why werent samples taken from the accused as well as the deceased? Hanged killer Ruth Ellis has been secretly denied a pardon by the Government, documents reveal. Cussen had one gun and gave another to Ruth. Edward had 6 siblings: George Cussen, Cornelius Cussen and 4 other siblings. "Someone was being protected. 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. Ruth Ellis did not kill David Blakely. If the gun had a long-standing defect, why did it not break on the first firing at the scene of the murder? In 1989, Desmond Cussen completed a Master of Law at Cornell University. According to a Home Office note, Ellis told Mishcon: "I didn't say anything about it up to now because it seemed traitorous, absolutely traitorous." 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