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Camden New Journal - by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 30 August 2007

Monica Weller and Ruth Ellis’ sister Muriel outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead

‘Gordon, you have got to pardon Ruth Ellis’

Petition organised by author to be delivered to Downing Street

FRESH appeals to pardon Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hanged in Britain – are being taken directly to Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the basis that new evidence will prove that she did not murder her motor racing boyfriend David Blakely outside a Hampstead pub.
Author Monica Weller, 57, is urging people to sign a petition to be delivered to Downing Street calling for a new inquiry into the shooting outside the Magdala pub in South Hill Park.
Mr Blakely died in April 1955 after being shot at point blank range, ambushed as he walked out of the pub.
Ellis went to the gallows three months later, an unpopular execution which many historians believed hastened the abolition of the death penalty.
Ms Weller said: “I have uncovered a body of evidence that the Old Bailey jury in 1955 never got to hear, evidence showing that Ruth Ellis was a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice and innocent of the crime for which she was hanged. The true sequence of events surrounding the case 50 years ago was withheld.
“I am petitioning the Prime Minister to look again at the Ruth Ellis case and use his position to recommend to Her Majesty that Ruth Ellis be granted a Free Pardon, so justice for Ruth and her family can finally be served.”
It was rumoured two years ago that the government had reviewed the case behind closed doors and knocked back all suggestions of a pardon.
But Ms Weller, who has worked with Ellis’s sister Muriel Jakubait and is planning a TV documentary on the case, said there is new doubt over whether Ellis could have pulled the trigger because her clothes were free from any blood stain.
She said she has tracked down the policewoman who guarded Ellis in a cell in Hampstead police station and was told that Ellis’ clothes and hands were completely clean.
“Ellis was wearing a light coloured costume which she had apparently been wearing to shoot David Blakely in, and there wasn’t one blood spot on her at all,” said Ms Weller.
Last night, the petition on the Number 10 website had mustered 112 signatures.
Ms Weller argues Ellis lied about her involvement – including an admission that she had fired a gun – to protect her second lover Desmond Cussen, who had clashed with Mr Blakely. Ellis also admitted at one stage that it was Cussen who had driven her to the pub and provided her with the gun.
She said: “Ruth Ellis lied from beginning to end in her testimony – everything was one big lie.”
Ms Weller has taken advantage of information released by the National Archives that had originally not been meant to be disclosed until 2031.
She says that medical records contradict Ellis’ claim that she had a miscarriage after being punched in the stomach by Mr Blakely ten days before the murder – an apparent motive.
Instead, Ms Weller says her findings show that Ellis actually decided to have an abortion in Holloway prison, the day after the shooting.

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