Cameo Conspiracy

Product Description

The key actors range from the enigmatic & long discredited Detective Chief Inspector Herbert Balmer (whose nickname was the King of the Verbals) to the much criticised Lord Chief Justice of the times Lord Goddard to a relative of the author whose knowledge of a travesty of justice echoes throughout the books pages. George Kelly was hanged in 1949 for shooting dead two men: the manager of the Cameo Cinema Wavertree & his assistant. Undeniably from the wrong side of the tracks & involved in the black markets rackets & illegal drinking dens of the post-Second-World-War era Kelly & his co-accused Charles Connolly (who went to prison for ten years) found themselves expertly fitted-up because they were deemed to be riff-raff in what for them both became a Kafkaesque nightmare. In this the definitive book on the Cameo case the author recounts these events with the eye of someone who has undertaken prodigious research & has a passion against injustice. The result is not simply a superbly worked account of how due process & justice faltered but a snapshot of social & legal history in which the parallel worlds of the Underworld & Establishment collide in the courtroom & official decision-making. The Cameo murder case can also be seen as one of the most important of the 20th century. Although it took 50 years for the injustice to be admitted along with the case of Timothy Evans & others incomprehensible to the modern-day eye it ranks as a turning point in understanding the depths of wickedness or wilful blindness to which certain people or their organizations can descend to in the absence of decency integrity & adequate safeguards. After more than half a century the books two subjects were posthumously cleared by the Court of Appeal in 2003 following the release of the original version of this book.