Originally Posted by
SteH
Shortall states that if the testimonies of the witnesses were true then Connolly could have planned the robbery. He also has letters from an MP who was trying to get the case re-opened on behalf of the Kelly family in his appendices. The letters say that as Connolly wont make a statement on what he knows, there'd be no chance of getting things re-opened.
There's no real explanation in the book as to why, given that Connolly changed his plea to guilty, he didnt go on to name the gunman.
I'm fully with Skelly on this one anyway, I cant see why Connolly would maintain his innocence till his death 45 years after the event if he was guilty -surely at some point he would have confessed all to put the Kelly family's minds at rest.
Hello Steve
I received the following information from George Skelly which might clarify some things from his perspective.
In George's opinion, Richard Whittington-Egan has not written any worthwhile account of the Cameo case. In his book Liverpool Roundabout he simply recounts Balmer's now totally discredited scenario, and states that he briefly met Kelly in the Big House pub on Lime Street.
George feels that Shortall's scenario doesn't make sense.
George notes that there is confusion in Shortall's book about whether the crime was planned in the Beehive pub or in the Boundary Pub. At first, the plotters are in the Beehive pub planning the crime, then without any change of scene or time lapse, when they are leaving the pub it has suddenly and magically become the Boundary pub -- which was nearer to the Cameo and over 2 miles away from the Beehive.
Shortall also maintains that Donald Johnson was the Cameo killer. Johnson was a thin fair-haired, slightly built man -- yet every witness at the cinema and outside stated on oath that the killer was dark haired, with dark eyebrows and stockily built.
George further talks about Shortall's assertion that Connolly was involved as the killer's accomplice and would not speak to MP Sydney Silverman.
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George says that the reason for this, according to what Connolly told George, was that although he was willing to co-operate with both Mr Silverman and a Daily Express reporter, he discovered at the last minute that George Kelly's relative - who was the initiator and go-between - was motivated by money and that as a consequence Connolly decided to withdraw his co-operation. Connolly was going to state formally to the Silverman and the reporter that despite his guilty plea to robbery at the Cameo, he was in fact innocent, did not know Kelly, and believed that Kelly too was innocent.
Chris
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