I wondered. Another mystery: the Metropolitan Police did forensics on the gun and on Blakely but not on Ruth. > descente dmmtjf13 - (set) airy transfer . Sylvia thought the couple rented a cottage in Ide Hill or Brasted Chart, adjacent hamlets east of Westerham and a short distance from Fort Halstead. There is a final postscript to the Ruth Ellis story. He added, "He was a cut above the rest of us, well spoken and well educated, a gentleman" and lived next door at Dapdune. Desmond Cussen is a General Counsel at Fandom based in San Francisco, California. "This was the opinion that Christmas Humphreys, the prosecuting counsel at Ruth Elliss murder trial, was still vehemently defending twenty-seven years later when he spoke to Ruths son Andre McCallum. But he made no attempt to show all the evidence to the jury and let them draw their own conclusions. Top people lived there in houses of substance. To all intents and purposes she appeared to shoot Blakely. He was no ordinary tobacconist businessman. But on arrival at Holloway prison, following her arrest, and before she had time to get her story straight, she told the prison doctor she had actually had an abortion.Interestingly on 19th March 1952 a passport, number N9584, was issued to Ruth Ellis. The next few months were busy. I could not give her an answer. As she awaited the death sentence Ruth Ellis only cried once, when an MP tried to cajole her into seeking clemency, according to Home Office files in the National Archives. Ruth had to be found guilty. The real murderer was Desmond Cussen. To pull a trigger of 10lbs requires definite and deliberate muscular effort.". Nickolls stated in both, "On receipt the Smith and Wesson revolver was in working order and during the course of firing in the laboratory, the cylinder catch broke as the result of a long standing crack in the shank.". Ruth had protected Cussen in her police statement, claiming a man gave her the gun in a club three years previously. He asked if he would ensure that this type of thing would not happen again. 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. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. I noticed this statement made by Clive Gunnell who called himself a Mayfair car salesman. Garlands Road is less than two miles from my home. Ruth lied in court. Miss Gleeson went to the police twice, and a solicitor, but they disregarded her evidence. It has also been claimed that Desmond was a party to the killing. All Melford Stevenson had to say was "No questions.". She recalled that on occasions "Ruth would come in on her own, invariably crying saying David had vanished. He does just that, saving Earth, and seemingly ending his story. The notebook tells a revealing story of its own. But Ruth lied. Andre thought she was funny because she couldnt even shoot a tree and her hands kept shaking.". Finally, in Ruths letter dated 12th July 1955, to Mr Simmons, her original solicitor, she refers to remarks made by David Blakelys brother in a newspaper article following her trial. Her sister Muriel gave birth to a child through incest with her father, a bully who started sexually abusing Muriel when she was six. But two months later at the Old Bailey when questioned by the prosecuting counsel Christmas Humphreys, Nickolls was economical with his words. Newsam advised the home secretary: "It would be a bad day for this country if we adopted the doctrine of crime passionelle This was a deliberately planned and cold-bloodedly executed murder.". 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? He was from an exceptionally well to do family. It was all too quick. When arrested in 1955, Ruth Ellis maintained that she first met David Blakely two years before, "When I was manageress of the Little Club, Knightsbridge. 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.". Much later it emerged that her friend and "sugar daddy", Desmond Cussen, an accountant with whom she had had a brief sexual liaison, had driven her to the pub and provided the gun. Her trial for murder was pushed through in just over a day. 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. Did her light-coloured suit that she was apparently wearing show evidence of oil residue from the bullets? 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. Eventually I was permitted to view the file that contained Christmas Humphreys set of magistrates court documents at the Royal Court of Justice in the Strand. On Easter Sunday, she told Mishcon, she had been drinking Pernod for many hours with Cussen, who had handed her the loaded gun and driven her to the scene of the murder. Desmond Cussen died a lonely alcoholic, as did her solicitor John Bickford, who remained haunted by the case for the rest of his life. 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. The case would be guaranteed open-and-shut. 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. They said, "The Home Office does not hold the information that you have requested.". It stated he achieved pilot officer status in the General Duties Branch on 10th April 1945 and left on 10th October 1945. Jakubait remembers no mention of her sister's imminent death, only small talk. Firstly, all her letters (photocopied from the originals at the Public Record Office) were written in pen. At the time she was employed as a hostess at Carrolls Club in Duke Street in Mayfair. 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. ", In 1955, Ruth Ellis was hanged for murder. 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. But it was not. He looked like a spiv with dark, greased back hair; with a round boyish face and an unnatural looking thin moustache. Fandom General Counsel. He then repeated that the other shots had been fired at a distance. On the surface, the platinum-blond model may. On April 10 1955, Ruth was ready to end it all and headed to the Magdala pub where David was drinking. In March 2002 I contacted Companies House in an attempt to find information about Cussen and Co. Whilst examining hand-written documents on microfiche (luckily still available from Companies House archives) I discovered that Desmond Cussen lived in Garlands Road, Leatherhead with his parents, in a detached house called Dapdune. 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." The incident happened 10 days after he punched her in the stomach and caused her to miscarry their baby. The jury took less than half an hour to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty. Ruth was hanged to protect the shadowy characters she mixed with and took her secrets to an unconsecrated grave at Holloway prison. I struck lucky. Service records for RAF personnel after 1921 are MOD property. 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. From my point of view publication of the book was just the beginning. There are no answers to any of these questions in any police file about the case. Any decent lawyer would play on the fact that no ballistics were done. ", she sealed her fate by responding: "It is obvious that when I shot him I intended to kill him.". She was protecting someone.The two-day murder trial was a travesty. Eleanor Hogg was the policewoman who guarded Ruth all night in her cell at Hampstead police station, following her arrest. Ruth asked what they were for. He turned his attentions to Ruth when she was 11. After the visit he also said he could not forget Ruth Ellis's words to him: It is quite clear to me that I was not the person who shot him.When I saw myself with that revolver I knew that I was another person."". WHAT HAPPENED TO DESMOND'S FLASHES OF THE FUTURE? In 1949 David Blakely began his National Service but within weeks was released and on his way to Penn. Evelyn informed me that, "No prisoner in the condemned cell was allowed access to a newspaper or its contents.". There are 5 other people named Desmond Cussen on AllPeople. When Cussen signed the business document in London in 1964, he was still a free man. All said Ruth had certain characteristics that had made a deep impression on them: she was a lovely, kind person with grace and style. A professional would know that and hold it with two hands at arms length. He was definitely intending to take charge.". Statements Mrs Yule made between 11th April and 20th June were inconsistent. Norman Beaton's wasn't the only tragic death to come out of the Desmond's cast. So they take him in. 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? During the Christmas of 2005 I sorted through information that kept coming in. A week before she died, a reprieve was granted to a 40-year-old woman who had battered her 86-year-old neighbour to death with a shovel after a long-running feud. Therefore she was guilty. 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.". She offered no resistance. Nickolls evidence went unchallenged. 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. As part of my research, I wanted to compare magistrates court statements with the trial transcript. It came as something of a surprise to find a hand written document signed by Cussen in London in May 1964. Her eyewitness account challenged the authenticity of letters that Ruth apparently wrote and sent from the condemned cell. What happened to Ruths blood spattered clothes? "She was very calm. Nobody has ever put two-and-two together before.The trumped up murder charge that Ruth admitted to and for which she was hanged obscured the truth about Britain "in the grips of a spying scandal.". The events of 10th April did not happen as she had described them in her police statement. However as we know now that Ruth lied at her trial from start to finish, it would be fair to assume she lied when she claimed shed only known Blakely for two years. It was against a womans dignity. ", 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. She was not looked upon as the common peroxide blonde prostitute as shes been portrayed over the years. what happened to desmond cussen. "I kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. 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. Registration Number: 2333870 : Full Name: DESMOND CUSSEN : First Name: DESMOND : There was no official explanation.The Donald Maclean connection with Penn illustrates just one of the complicated trails typical of my findings. It would appear he deliberately omitted the reference to the effort needed to fire the Smith and Wesson gun. Also residing in the same block of flats in Devonshire Street was a man by the name of Desmond Cussen. Although appearing to fire shots at Blakely she did not fire the gun which killed him. They had tapes back and front to pull. During an interview in August 2005 on BBC Radio London, Vanessa Feltz was curious to know what Cussen was doing between 1941 and 1945. It would seem coincidental that in 1949 the Blakely family moved into a rented house in the village, immediately changing its name. Two decades later, in the 70s, according to Bernard de Maid, the solicitor handling the appeal, Ellis's solicitor, John Bickford, a friend of Cussen, wrote to Scotland Yard admitting that he had concealed from the jury that "Cussen had driven her to Hampstead, provided the gun, and had goaded her into shooting Blakely to remove a love-rival from the scene.". However the magistrates court papers were listed as FRUSTRATED (not available) at the PRO in Kew; they could not say where they were. Why didnt he ask Nickolls about the distance from which the other bullets were fired? I recently came across a question in parliament dated 8th December 1955. Constable Thompson was inside the Magdala when he heard "a succession of bangs" outside. Then he lied at the trial saying "approximately three years.". The story about spying and the shadowy characters in Ruth's circle continued to unravel by an extraordinary twist of fate. Much later it emerged that her friend and "sugar. I would have remembered. The establishment murdered her. Christmas Humphreys opened the case for the prosecution. The Welsh peroxide blonde glamour model turned cold . 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. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Getting Started | Contributor Zone Contribute to This Page Edit page Desmond Cussen Personal Details Biography Other Works Ruths defence counsel Melford Stevenson did nothing for her.Later when I found this statement that Stevenson made on the first morning of the trial, I asked myself what was going on. The pair frequently visited the Paddock Club, which was a mile or so from Cussens Leatherhead family home, since the late 1940s. I dug deeper into Public Record Office (PRO) documents. Apparently nobody else was involved. "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.". He looked like a spiv with dark, greased back hair; with a round boyish face and an unnatural looking thin moustache. In a conversation with Sylvia Smith, she told me that Ruth Ellis and David Blakely, who she described as a "good looking young man" frequented the pub between approximately 1951 and 1953. Brilliant fantastic true story classic film "Dance With A Stranger" Ruth Ellis should together Desmond Cussed not David Blakely. Ruth Ellis and David Blakely were a tragedy waiting to happen. Even I could see that the gun would have been far too large in Ruths tiny hands one of which was gnarled as a result of contracting rheumatic fever at age 15. These thick padded calico knickers were brought and I was told they had to be put on her. He lied again at Ruths trial when he said on oath that hed known Blakely "Approximately three years.". When he was just a child, for example, he once walked six miles to donate blood to an . Furthermore the recoil after each shot would have knocked her backwards. Its worth mentioning here that Peter Rawlinson (now Lord Rawlinson) Ruths junior defence counsel, met Ruth at the Old Bailey on 11th May one month after her arrest. Reach a unanimous verdict of guilty to Ruth when she was funny because couldnt... Went to the effort needed to fire shots at Blakely she did not happen again walked miles! 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