Horrible story of Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hanged in Britain — an execution that appalled the world.
On Saturday we told how she was beaten and abused by the men in her life before finally snapping and shooting dead her faithless, violent lover David Blakely.
Today, in our final gripping extract from a forensically researched new book, we reveal how vital evidence that would have saved her from the gallows was ignored . . .
Two hours after the shooting, while David Blakely’s body was lying in the mortuary, Ruth Ellis was questioned by three detectives in Hampstead police station. It was 11.30pm.
One of the detectives recalled: ‘She had a cigarette and she was completely calm . . . she really couldn’t care less what was going to happen to her.’
She was cautioned: ‘You are not obliged to say anything at all about this unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘I am guilty,’ Ruth said decisively. Then she hesitated: ‘I am rather confused.’
She began answering the questions, which then became her statement.
She was asked where she got the gun. She explained that it had been given to her as security for money about three years ago in a club by a man whose name she did not remember.
Then she uttered the crucial words: ‘When I put the gun in my bag, I intended to find David and shoot him.’
The police were puzzled. Ruth seemed fragile, only 5ft 2in and less than 7st, and calm and quiet rather than driven by raging emotions.
Moreover, her story about the gun did not add up: it was too well-oiled to have been left in a drawer for three years.
The following day Ruth was told she would be driven to nearby Hampstead magistrates’ court to be formally charged with Blakely’s murder.
She nodded, and then remarked: ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I will hang.’
That same day Desmond Cussen gave a statement to police. He described the past two years, his relationship with Ruth and admitted to competing for Ruth with Blakely.
He also discussed his part as her unofficial chauffeur and the beatings Ruth had received from Blakely.
But while he admitted to having spent Easter Sunday with Ruth and her ten-year-old son Andre, he claimed to have dropped her off at her rented room at 7.30pm and said he hadn’t seen her since.
What he did not say was that he had not only given Ruth the gun, but had also taught her how to use it — and had driven her to the Hampstead street where she later killed Blakely.
Though he did eventually confess all this to Ruth’s solicitor, John Bickford, it was never brought up at her trial — because Bickford thought it would affect the chances of achieving a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder.
It was Bickford’s job to defend Ruth, but she did not make it easy. She was determined to shield Cussen and was vehement that she did not want her life to be spared.
She firmly rejected his request that she plead insanity. ‘I took David’s life and I don’t ask you to save mine,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to live.’
As she waited in Holloway for her trial, warders noted she was extremely quiet and co-operative.
With visitors she made bright small talk — ‘almost as though we were at a tea party,’ noted one in bewilderment — and spent her days reading.
She put on several pounds, probably because she was eating a proper diet for the first time in her life, and wrote polite letters thanking friends and well-wishers.
She cried only once — when she asked for, and was given, photographs of Blakely’s corpse.
Today it seems clear that, driven to the edge of madness by her ill- treatment at the hands of Blakely, she was suffering from post- traumatic stress.
But in 1955 the term did not exist. Nor did the defence of diminished responsibility, which would almost certainly have saved her from the gallows.
She had been abused all her life. She had just lost her baby after being viciously beaten by the man she loved, and was desperately unwell.
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