The Cameo Conspiracy: A Shocking True Story of Murder and Injustice

by George Skelly

George Kelly was hanged in 1950 for shooting dead two men early in 1949: the manager of Liverpool's Cameo Cinema and his assistant. Undeniably from the wrong side of the tracks and involved in petty crimes in the post-Second World War era, Kelly and his co-accused Charles Connolly (who went to prison for 10 years) found themselves expertly 'fitted-up' as riff-raff in a Kafkaesque nightmare. This definitive book on the Cameo Cinema case is a superbly worked account of an astonishing miscarriage of justice. It is also a snapshot of social history, of a time when fabrication of evidence and denial of the right to a fair trial could be a means of ensuring 'good riddance to bad rubbish.' The true story vividly demonstrates the need to guard against police corruption and legal manipulation. Nothing can put right Kelly's wrongful execution, although in 2003 - following publication of the original edition of this book - Kelly and Connolly were posthumously cleared by the Court of Appeal. The judgement condemned the 'unsafe convictions' and the 'unfair trial' as a tragic breakdown in the administration of justice, which was to be deeply regretted. This new, third edition tells the whole story from investigation, trial, sentence, and execution, to posthumous pardon.

367 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2011

Reviews

[Jack Bush · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving and very thorough account of how George Kelly came to be wrongly executed following a notorious 1950 Liverpudlian murder trial. The conviction was only quashed in 2003, with the Court of Appeal openly referring to the late investigating officer's lies and deliberate concealment of statements and other evidence. The only reason I am not giving the book five stars is that at times it often isn't clear which dialogue between the characters is verbatim and which is the author's construction of what was likely to have been said.