All this was published on a grand scale while the trial was in progress and with no means of preventing the jurors from reading it. Michelle's diary included an entry that read: "My dream solution would be for Alison to disappear, as if she never existed. Michelle and John lived in the same staff accommodation at the Churchill Clinic, two rooms apart from each other. In 1986, she was working as a clerk at a Barclays bank in London, and met her future husband, John Shaughnessy. For example, the remarks in the 1990 diary – fastened upon by police, prosecution and media in turn – carried their disturbing resonance only when taken out of context.

Not Derek Williams, but Michelle Taylor, a 20-year-old accounts clerk who had known the dead woman for two years. It was discovered that John had spent the night before his wedding to Alison having sex with Michelle, and Michelle later claimed that they had also slept together on the morning of the wedding. As the Court of Appeal was told, while ignorance and confusion may have been used as an excuse for not revealing evidence during the miscarriages of justice of the 1970s and 1980s, by the time of the Taylor sisters' Old Bailey trial last year there can have been no doubts. In 2005 the law on double jeopardy was changed in England and Wales, allowing individuals (in certain circumstances) to be re-tried for crimes after a previous acquittal. After that, the sisters would have had to park the car, and Michelle would have had to compose herself so thoroughly that not even close associates could detect anything untoward in her manner.At their sensational trial the prosecution alleged that 21-year-old Michelle Taylor who had been having an affair with Alison's husband - had murdered Alison in a jealous rage and that she was aided in her brutal attack by her 18-year-old sister Lisa. From the outset the case was surrounded by inordinate, inaccurate and somewhat hysterical publicity. This is the story of Bernard O'Mahoney's two crusades on behalf of, and then against, two sisters accused of murder. shaughnessy murder trial:; england: old bailey: ext cms rees i/c sof lms flat of alison shaughnessy doorway of shaughnessy flat pull out lms flat.

The law governing disclosure of relevant material had been defined and underlined in highly publicised Court of Appeal judgments. The two sisters were seen at the Churchill Clinic in the south Lambeth Road, four miles away, at 6pm. It was further said that it was "difficult to see" how an article in the South London Press saying Michelle Taylor's alibi had been 'torn to shreds' in the witness box had prejudiced the jury, with the judge commenting: "I think the jury were well able to appreciate that it was their assessment of the witness that mattered". They went to school, went out dancing, went to work, planned to get married one day and never threatened for a moment to break out of the obvious course which life had planned for them.J.’) Tapp, a close friend who also worked at the Churchill, said that Michelle and Lisa were with her, watching Neighbours, during the critical 5. Still it was obvious that JJ had lied at some point, either in her first three statements or in her later interview with police. Det Supt Chris Burke, who led the murder inquiry, described the sisters as 'clever and calculating killers'. On 3 June 1991, 21-year-old Alison Shaughnessy ( née Blackmore; born 7 November 1969) was stabbed to death in the stairwell of her flat near Clapham Junction station.

The Crown made much of the fact that Michelle had originally claimed that her sister had never even been to Alison’s flat while she now admitted that that was not true. A doctor who lived in the same road said he had seen two girls running from a house at about the time that the murder was committed; but the height, hair-colour and clothing which he described did not match Lisa and Michelle and he failed to pick them out at an identity parade. At that stage they were the only victims of a miscarriage of justice in the UK to have ever been denied any compensation.Michelle claimed that the affair between her and John had ended months prior, but John discredited this when he revealed that they had sex as recently as three weeks before the murder.