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A window had been forced open in the Shaughnessys’ flat, and jewellery stolen, including a bracelet that Alison always wore. Michelle made friends again with both of them and when they were married in Ireland in the summer of 1990, she went to the wedding. At the end of the trial, and after only five and a half hours of deliberation, the jury found the Taylor sisters guilty of murder by a unanimous verdict. Having given two statements providing the Taylors with an alibi, Tapp admitted in her police interview that her story was false and she had provided them with an alibi to cover for her friends.
It was pointed out in court that, when the Taylor sisters claimed to Tapp to have been waiting for her there since "just after five" that they were already creating an alibi for themselves before the murder had even been discovered at 8:30 p. However, it was heard that two girls had been seen leaving Alison Shaughnessy's flat around the time she was murdered, that one of the sisters fingerprints were found inside the flat and that one of the sisters, the elder one, had been having an affair with Alison Shaughnessy's husband and had kept a diary detailing the relationship in which she had expressed hate for Alison Shaughnessy and in which she had written that she wished that Alison Shaughnessy would just vanish so that she could have her husband to herself. Reinvestigations by the Metropolitan Police did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was decided to no longer formally investigate the case.A number of journalists embarked on a campaign after the trial to try and free the Taylors, believing that the sisters' character showed they must be innocent. A witness reported seeing two women running from Shaughnessy's building after the murder, and fingerprints found at the scene matched those of Michelle and her sister Lisa Taylor, who claimed never to have been there. The two sisters said that they had been with a friend at the clinic that one of the sisters worked at the time of the murder. In 2001, the case was highlighted as such when a trial of professional footballers Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer collapsed due to press and media intrusion.
In the summer of 1987, when she was 16, Michelle got her first job, as a clerk in the accounts department of a private health clinic in Lambeth Road, south London.He overlooks the fact that this was a sensational case: a murder trial of two sisters that involved adultery and a hate-filled diary.
MLA style: "ALISON WAS STABBED, BUT I LOST MY LIFE TOO; Woman cleared of Irish murder tells of her pain. Ann and Del Taylor commissioned a speech expert, Peter Wright, to analyse her final interview with police. The judge also added that he was satisfied that press coverage of the sister's trial in July 1992 created a real risk of prejudice and said that a re-trial could not take place.
For the defence, Lady Mallalieu QC told the court that "Where evidence is thin or non-existent, as it is in this case, the temptation to guess or speculate is enormous but guesswork and speculation are not evidence and nor is suspicion. However, the High Court judges disagreed, saying of the publishing of the image of Michelle and John kissing at the wedding headed 'Cheat's kiss': "It cannot be said to be an inappropriate description.
What emerges most forcefully from these pages to distract the reader from the issue of the Taylors' guilt or innocence, given that O'Mahoney had at different times believed passionately in both, is the sheer destructiveness, unfettered savagery and Grenzenlosigkeit of his personality. Had an intruder climbed the drainpipe or climbed onto the flat roof they almost certainly would have left fingerprints, shoemarks or scuffing by hands or feet, but experts found no such evidence. About three weeks before the murder, Michelle and Lisa had been round at Alison’s flat offering to clean the windows. A virgin before she met John, she was even asked by him to go on the pill so they could maintain a long-term relationship. She gave an accurate description of what Alison had been wearing and told the police that she must have come in after six, because the Six O’clock News had already started on the BBC.The prosecution said that only the murderers would have done this, as only they would have known by that stage what specific period of time they needed to cover their tracks for. To reach home, she would have walked to the bus-stop, taken a bus to Waterloo, then a train to Clapham Junction, and walked to her flat. Others such as Judith Ward, Stefan Kiszko, members of the Maguire family, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six had spent periods of between 10 and 17 years in jail before having their names cleared.
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