Cameo murder

In his evidence, Northam alleged that he and Dickson had been present in the Bee Hive public house in Mount Pleasant with the defendants when they were plotting the crime; had seen Kelly loading a pistol; and that Kelly had borrowed his (Northam's) overcoat for use as a disguise during the robbery. Dickson stated that Kelly had borrowed a dark scarf or apron to use as a mask; trying it on in front of the customers of the crowded pub before he and Connolly boarded a tram to take them to the Edge Hill area. No other witnesses to this action were ever found. Northam claimed he had originally planned to assist in the robbery but the sight of the gun had frightened him off.

Much was made of the evidence of Robert Graham, a Preston criminal serving a sentence in Walton Prison at the same time that Kelly and Connolly were on remand there, who claimed to have carried messages between the prisoners as they sat in adjacent cells, which would have been unnecessary as the cells, which had barred doors rather than solid ones, were near enough that the men could converse freely. He also alleged that both Kelly and Connolly had separately confessed their part in the murders to him in the exercise yard, which both men denied. Graham was later rewarded for his evidence with a reduction in his sentence.

Kelly had spent almost the whole day and early evening of the murder drinking heavily and many witnesses came forward to confirm the fact that he was clearly half drunk as the day wore on. The cinema staff however, were quite certain the man who threatened them outside the manager's office before sprinting out of the building and away up a side street, so quickly they could not keep up with him, was not somebody who had been drinking. Forensic examination of the crime scene and the angle of the bullet wounds in the victims' bodies indicated that the person who fired the shots had held the gun in his left hand. The cinema fireman, who witnessed the gunman leaving through the fire exit, noted that he kept his left hand, presumably holding his gun, in his pocket. Kelly was right-handed.

After what was then one of the longest murder trials in British legal history, the jury failed to reach a verdict and a retrial was ordered, this time with the defendants tried separately.

Much was made of the question of where Charles Connolly had been at the time of the shooting[3][4] as it was said that his role was that of lookout. However, he was not seen near the cinema and the sequence of events tended to preclude him having played any role as look out as he neither warned George Kelly of John Catterall's arrival at the managers office nor appeared to have been standing ready at the emergency exit which the gunman clearly had trouble opening. This led to the question of how the gunman entered the cinema, the conclusion being that he must have either gone through the auditorium of from the main entrance, or that there had been an accomplice who had opened the emergency exit from the inside in advance.

The telephone wires at the Cameo Cinema had been cut at the foot of the spiral staircase [3][4] and the police had to be called by a local resident although they arrived quickly. However, no explanation was put forward for who cut them and when. The issue of the cut wires is further complicated when considering the evidence of Northam, Dickson and Graham, none of whom detailed the issue in the planning. In particular, if the robbery had been planned in the Beehive Hotel earlier in the evening then it might have been reasonable to consider that the conversation would have addressed the need or intention to cut the phone wires and whether anyone had a tool that they could be cut with. Nor is the cutting of the telephone wires detailed in Northam's subsequent conversation in the following days with George Kelly when he allegedly explained what happened. The omission of this fact that only the murderer would have known and which was either not reported in the newspapers or only reported in the most extensive coverage, being a significant part of the robbery that would have taken time, of which there were only a few minutes from start to finish, undermines the veracity of Northam, Dickson and Graham's subsequent accounts of George Kelly's alleged confessions. According to Skelly’s book, The Cameo Conspiracy, Balmer tried to cover this aspect by having N&D state Kelly also produced a pair of pliers in the Beehive. But he was told by more senior officers, that this was too far fetched, would be “ over egging the pudding” and to drop it. Thus It never appeared in any of their further changed statements.

Little is made of the break in at the Cameo Cinema on 2 February 1949 [3][4] for which three youths were arrested and charged on 2 April 1949. During the break in they had gone into the manager's office, where Leonard Thomas and John Catterall were later shot and tried forcing cupboards. They took cigarettes, chocolate and 10 shillings in cash, but would no doubt have familiarised themselves with the office layout and seen the safe. Whilst there is nothing connecting them with the murder, there was nothing connecting Charles Connolly or George Kelly with the murder either other than false statements and circumstantial behaviour.

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 arrests of Kelly and Connolly. Johnson had been transferred to Walton Prison from Birkenhead, where he allegedly admitted to another prisoner that he had been involved in the cinema shootings. This other prisoner was Robert Graham, the same witness who would later tell the court that Connolly and Kelly had confessed to being the murderers. During questioning, Johnson admitted being in the vicinity of the cinema at the time of the murders and had 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, a fact which the police had not made known to the public. He further stated that one of the dead men had been shot whilst on his hands and knees, another fact which had been held back by the police. Johnson 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 Appeal in February 2001 and in June 2003 Kelly's and Connolly's convictions were judged to be unsafe and were duly quashed.[5] Kelly's remains were taken from their burial place in Walton prison by his family and he was reburied after a service in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.[6]