RedHanded - Episode 87 - Ruth Ellis: The Last Woman to be Hanged in Britain

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

"Six revolver shots shattered the Easter Sunday calm of Hampstead, and a beautiful platinum blonde stood with her back to the wall. In her hand was a revolver." These were the headlines that the hit the nation after Ruth Ellis, a young, welsh-born hostess shot and killed her lover - David Blakely - in broad daylight. The pair had had a violent and tumultuous affair, and there was no doubt that it had been Ruth who had pulled the trigger, but had another one of her lovers primed her to kill? Join the girls this week as they delve into the story of the last woman to be executed in the UK, and understand why her story captured the public imagination like nothing before.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. This case has struck quite a few chords with me in quite a weird way. Almost a hometown murder in an indirect fashion.

Ruth Hornby was born on the 8th of October in 1926 at 74 West Parade in Rhyl, which is a seaside town in North Wales. Ruth lived there until she was seven years old. Seven-year-old Ruth didn't know that she would change the course of British legal history forever. After Ruth's death, murder would never be tried in the same way in the United Kingdom ever again. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Ruth's family life was, at the start, a reasonably affluent one. Her father, Arthur, was a cellist and he played at the cinema in Rhyl. This is obviously the days of silent films where a cinema would have an orchestra to play along. This work took him around the country a bit so he was absent for parts of Ruth's childhood. Ruth's dad used a stage name which was Arthur Nielsen so you'll sometimes see Ruth's childhood. Ruth's dad used a stage name, which was Arthur Nielsen, so you'll sometimes see Ruth's name listed as Ruth Nielsen, but that's incorrect. And it also isn't the name the world would remember her by. When her dad was travelling around on his cello tours, Ruth lived with her mum, Elisabetha, who was a World War I Belgian refugee. She also lived with her sister Muriel, who would remain a close confidant of Ruth's her whole life.

By the time Ruth was 15, her family had moved to London after a brief stint in Basingstoke. Ruth found work as a photographer's assistant and quickly slipped into the West End glistening club scene. London was much more suited to Ruth than the seaside or Hampshire had ever been. And we'll be talking about London's clubs in the 40s and 50s a lot in this episode. They were quite different to the clubs we have today, just like the cinemas they had then are miles away from what we have. I mean, I just get excited when it's like, oh, come to this cinema. We have big velvet sofas instead of chairs. Or you can sit in a hot tub on the roof in Dalston and watch this film. Where? Is that real? I think so. There's, yeah, there's like a hot tub cinema,

which I'm so grimy and horrible. That sounds so gross. That is definitely how you get Lyme disease. That's gross. Have you not seen it? I'll share the picture with you. It's just like a rooftop of like a car park that has got loads and loads of hot tubs on it

and then a big cinema screen. Always sold out though. A Stolsten for you, isn't it? The clubs are also completely different in the 40s and 50s than what we imagine them to be now. These clubs could be almost anywhere. In a front room, above a shop, even in a basement of a butcher's. Again, kind of sounds like Dalston.

I'm pretty sure there's a bar in Dalston where you just have to like open a fridge to walk through to where the actual bar is. But those are like the really contrived ones where it's like, we're a speakeasy. It's another prohibition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up. London doesn't need any more fucking prohibition themed speakeasy bars. Just give it a fucking rest.

No, my favorite club in Dalston, I believe, has now shut down. I realized I was too old to go there about four years ago. No, we've been there together in the past two years. Oh God, or maybe that's when I realised I was, that's the night I realised I was too old to go there. Because it was just us and like 18 year olds. And you got the first train home like a maniac. Oh my God. I'm so old now. It felt like a lot longer than that, that I decided I could never go back there. That's where we went to that pub and I stole that box of chocolates. I remember now. And I had just like chocolates in my pockets for weeks.

You heard right guys. We were in a pub with all of my friends who I believe maybe you were like meeting them for the first time. Yeah first time. Hannah found a box of chocolates. Well we all found a box of chocolates in the pub but Hannah decided to take them with us when we went to this club that we were too old to be in. Nothing says you're too old to be in this basement club in Dalston than turning up with a box of chocolates that you stole from a pub. Exactly that. Anyway back to 40s and 50s clubs. The thing is these clubs were a real cultural piece that we need to talk about. Firstly they had a lot more lenient opening hours than pubs. And the most exciting

thing about them was class-wise, because all bets in these clubs were off. The class system in Britain was pretty rigid back then. I'd say the class system in Britain is still pretty prevalent today. Oh, it's still present for sure, but it's nowhere near like it was then. But the thing is, in these clubs, what made them so interesting was that you could find aristocrats rubbing shoulders with criminals and every type of person in between the london club scene was also synonymous with the world of organized crime the cray twins owned several clubs in the west end and we will even come across a club in this episode owned by morris conley also known as the vice king and i've

always thought that wartime britain especially london must have been quite exciting is it or is it just like the branding around the blitz era and like wartime britain and all they're like keep calm and carry on and blitz spirit and all this and people were fucking starving weren't they and terrified and living in the dark but if you put rationing and impending doom to one side for a minute there are foreign soldiers everywhere who might murder you and everyone's like oh well we might be dead tomorrow so fuck it let's just have a good time that's my like impression of it which i accept is probably very molded by the edge of love and keep calm and carry on tea towels i'm convinced they're the ones that have done this to us it's really funny my co-workers and i at work one day we were just

like shit chat and we were like if you could go back or forwards to any point in history or the future where would you go and honestly without missing a beat my colleague was like back to the day we won the war whoa all right fucking imperialist ethel and she was like oh no but it just looks so fun like all the street parties and people kissing each And she was like, oh no, but it just looks so fun. Like all the street parties and people kissing each other. I was like, the game was you could literally go to any point in history or the future. And you chose the day we won the war. This is how people are brainwashed by that whole blitz era. And I don't know if you've seen all that Brexit stuff where people are like, we must Brexit, even if it means that we run out of food, we'll go back to rationing,

we'll have a resurgence of the blitz era I'm like calm the fuck down it's like I'm not one of those people who's like obsessed with it you know those people who are in like get like 40s bands to like it's three girls doing harmonies like I'm not like one of those people I quite enjoy the fashion but I'm not like oh I definitely want to live in that time when women had basically no rights. No, I mean, if you were, you've kept that quite a good secret for the past two years. It's all just quite funny, like that blitz era mentality and like how it's now been dressed up to be really glamorous. And I actually think it was probably super horrible.

Anyone who lived during that time, people still alive who lived during that time? Yeah, my grandma lived through the war. She said it was the best time of her life. Yeah, I'm serious. Is that because she thinks the world's gone to shit now? No, it's because she had a job. She was building the radar. She didn't have a man telling her what to do.

She was completely independent for the only period of time in her life. Oh, good for your grandma. That's the thing though. During wartime, women had a freedom that they hadn't previously been afforded. They could build the radar like my grandma did or dig for victory or make other considerable contributions to the war effort. Like Rosie Rivets. Exactly. Ruth's time as a photographer's assistant quickly morphed into modelling work. She had a bit part in a film called Lady Godiva Rides Again but unfortunately she was uncredited. Do you think we need to run down the Lady Godiva story?

What is the story? Like, she rode a... Oh my life, didn't you used to live in Birmingham? From, to Coventry or something. Yeah, so she was like a medieval wife of some sort of important politician man, and her husband was taxing the people who lived in her area too strongly, so she rode naked through the town in protest. I love that you've gone into that oldie worldie story of lady godiva and why she did it when the next sentence is explaining that lady godiva rides again was a fucking softcore porn

film oh no the film wasn't a porn film no no no it sounds like a porn film it does sound like a porn film and as and ruth was involved in some softcore porn Lady Godiva Rides Again wasn't a softcore porn film is that what you're telling me it was not no what the fuck was it she's always got really long hair you can never see anything that's why softcore right exactly because 40s softcore was very softcore indeed and the other thing about Ruth she was absolutely beautiful she was very slim and she had this perfect curled, bright blonde hair. And I always look at those 40s hairstyles and just think how is that humanly possible? Obviously, it's people are taking pictures when they look their

best, but it looks like it's just not moving when they're in those like tight, like finger curls on their heads. Oh, I have no idea. But I have no idea to do anything with hair whatsoever. Mine always looks the same unless I'm a bit stressed. And then it just changes partings regularly. But my grandma said that the way they used to do it is a lot of sleeping, sitting up, pin the curls before you go to sleep and then sleep sitting up, possibly in a turban. And that's how you keep them. I sleep in a little silk turban. You love your silk turban. It's so good. If ladies, gentlemen, anyone out there, buy a silk turban to sleep in. It's honestly the best thing I ever did for my hair. Feels great.

But sitting up sleeping, I wouldn't do that. She does that whenever she has to go to a wedding or a funeral or whatever. She gets her hair done the day before and she sleeps sitting up. Your grandma? Yep. Still to this day? Yep. Fucking hell.

That is commitment. She is very old. She's like 93, 94. Good old Muriel. I also do find that in those olden days pictures, everyone looks really handsome and really beautiful. Yeah, they do. They just put like what, rub Vaseline on the fucking like film cover.

Like it's just because the quality of the cameras were so poor, everyone looked great. Yeah, they just smoothed out your edges. Quite possibly. So the way Ruth looked, the company she kept, and the job she worked, often meant that people formed quite a negative opinion of her. And they would keep doing that her whole life. In 1944, Ruth fell in love with a Canadian pilot. He got her pregnant and once the war was over, he abandoned her and flew back to his wife in Quebec.

Classic. This is the thing. All these foreign soldiers walking around, they will leave as soon as the war is over. So now Ruth was pregnant, unmarried and just 17. And in the 1940s, that was definitely no one's idea of a good time. She kept the baby though. And he was a boy who she named Andre. I also thought Andre was quite a strange name in the 40s.

I thought that. Quite an outlandish name in the 40s. I thought that. Quite an outlandish name for the 40s, I thought. She is so young. So Ruth's mum took care of Andre while Ruth went back to work in clubs. And first she started off in the camera club in Mayfair as a hostess. The thing is with Ruth,

she was a working-class Welsh girl in the upper echelons of the London nightlife scene, and she knew it. So, to fit in, she adopted a very posh, clipped London accent, which she never dropped. I love that kind of, like, 1940s, very posh, clipped London accent. It's so entertaining. Can't do it. I was going to try. I was like, I can't do it. It's just like classic Queen's English, isn't it? Today, on Radio 4, it's like one of those. And the thing is, she had to do this. She had to put on this accent or she never would have got a job as a hostess

at the clubs. Because although the clientele were very much a mixed bag, the staff had to at least give the impression of opulence. This feeling of not quite belonging would always be a feature for Ruth. A lot of people claim that Ruth was engaged in sex work during her time as a hostess at the clubs. I haven't been able to find much to prove this one way or the other, so we're not going to give a definitive yes or no on the truth of that. What's important is that people thought she was. Many people pegged Ruth as a sex worker because she was working in clubs, she wore makeup, she dyed her hair and she was sexually active with no wedding ring. Ruth also underwent an abortion during this time. She never disclosed who the father was. Abortion in the UK was completely

illegal back then. It was real Vera Drake, warm, soapy water, backstreet abortion territory. Super dangerous. Over the years, Ruth worked in various clubs owned by various underbelly kingpins. She was paid very well and made a nice living for herself and for her son, Andre. Through her club work, Ruth met a dental surgeon called George Ellis. They got married and moved to Southampton and had a baby girl called Georgina. But the marriage didn't last long. Affluent as George was, he was an alcoholic, a violent one. After two years, Ruth took Andre and headed back to London. She left baby Georgina behind, but took her married name with her. The 27-year-old Ruth Ellis was now quite a heavy

drinker herself, but she landed herself a job managing a place called The Little Club in Kensington. She rented a one-room flat above the club where her and Andre lived together. From 1953 onwards, that Kensington flat had a very frequent visitor, a man named David Blakely. His full name, and prepare yourself, was David Drummond Moffat Blakely. It's just fantastic, isn't it? I feel like you can picture exactly what he looks like just from his name. Oh yeah, and I really wish I could say that in that clipped accent. Shall I try? Do it. David Drummond Moffat Blakely. There you go. You did it. I feel like I'm at Bletchley Park. And the best bit of this is that is not even the best name you're

going to hear today. Oh, the names get so good. I can't wait. So David was 26 and he was an aspiring race car driver. And apparently he was very handsome indeed. But again, I just don't trust these photos from the 1940s. I feel like everyone looks great. Like, whatever. Maybe we've evolved too far with our Instagram filters. Maybe we just need to go back to black and white. To shitter cameras. Because we just keep getting better cameras on our phones. And then we just have to get more intense filters on them to look like our grandparents did.

But with like fucking doggies or some shit. As you can imagine, David was a very wealthy man. His family lived in a stately home in Penn in Buckinghamshire. Penn is really nice. I went to Brownie Club Camp there once. We used to do Brownie Club Camp in Cotterud. I don't know why I said that. That's just where I went to Brownie Club Camp. We totally get Ruth's attraction to David. A wealthy race car driver is an exciting prospect. I'd go out with a wealthy race car driver. That sounds great. Lewis Hamilton. Oh, not Lewis Hamilton, but another one. Jenson Button. Oh yeah. Yum. So Ruth and David's relationship was very intense. And just like her relationship with George Ellis, it was also very violent. Now there are a lot of pictures of Ruth during her

time with David. And in a lot of them, her arms are visibly bruised. Most people thought that Ruth was not good enough for David. They were from two very different classes and you often see David described as a quote leg up for Ruth in contemporary reports and Ruth was very aware of this. There were a lot of photos of her and David together at races and on nights out and they look like a lovely couple but David was engaged to a string of more quote suitable women and he never even introduced Ruth to his family. But Ruth wasn't just pining for this roguish race car driver with the posh family home because she had another lover called Desmond Cusson. Desmond was in his 30s and during

the Second World War he had been a bomber pilot stationed in South Africa and you'll often see Desmond described as a man who would have done anything for Ruth. He was the one who truly loved her, wanted to marry her and finally make an honest woman of her. Desmond was also wealthy. He had inherited a chain of tobacconists. And he was very much less of a hooray Henry than David Blakely. And any of our non-British listeners who may not know what a hooray Henry is, it's just like a pejorative term to describe like a rich posh but like old money and like loud yeah if you google hooray Henry and I really urge you to google it the picture that comes up is David Cameron is it and I don't mean you google it and you go into google images you know when you get the definition from

Wikipedia come up on the side on the right hand side it is a picture of david cameron so literally in the modern equivalent of looking up a word in the dictionary it's david cameron and this is the thing people some people came for us when we went after jacob reese mogg a few episodes ago but i didn't put that there that is what comes up when you google hooray henry imagine if that was your like quest in life just be like oh no i'm just gonna make sure david cameron's face pops up anytime anyone mentions the words hooray henry if i was gonna spend any time sabotaging david cameron it would be that his face came up when people googled pig oral sex americans look it up. It happened.

Our former prime minister genuinely fucked a pig. Can we put a caveat there? Journalism. Hannah's just wildly claiming these things. I think he put his dick in a dead pig's mouth or something. Yeah, it's the same thing. That's fucking a pig. Just putting out the facts as I know them, as I believe them to be.

Have you seen the first ever episode of Black Mirror where the prime minister fucks a pig? That happened before anyone knew that David Cameron had actually fucked a pig. And Charlie Brooker, the writer of Black Mirror, had to do a press release saying, I didn't know. You couldn't make me shut up. David Cameron fucked a pig. Oh, God. Right.

Let's stop talking about David Cameron. Sorry. Right. We can keep talking about pig fucking. Let's stop talking about David Cameron. So, important things. There's David Blakely, race car driver, Desmond Cussin, the older, possibly more sensible choice, owns a lot of tobacco shops. And it would appear that

Ruth continued to sleep with both of these men. It's quite hard to follow her movements from 1953 to 1955, but it seems like she bounced between the two of them. Sometimes Blakely would be living with her in Kensington. Sometimes her and Andre would be living with Cussin in Marlborough. Both men knew about each other and Ruth would speak very openly about David to Desmond. I'm not sure if the reverse is true. The feeling I have is that David was the one she wanted to be with, but Desmond was her safety net when it all went wrong. During one of her stints in Marlborough, Ruth had a tutor called Mrs Harris, who would later describe Ruth as being quite obviously on the verge of a breakdown. This love triangle situation was pretty unsustainable. There were frequent fits of jealous rage from all parties. It all started tumbling down when Ruth lost her

job at the little club just after Christmas in 1954. Then, in February, things took a turn for the even worse when Ruth fell pregnant. Two weeks before Easter, David Blakely hit her so hard in the stomach that she lost the baby. Around this time, in a possibly unrelated incident, the police were called to Cusson's flat to investigate a domestic disturbance. Blakely told the officers that Ruth had attempted to stab him. Ruth was in a bit of a state herself. So they're all so intertwined with each other that Blakely is at Cusson's house. It's not his house. It's all so like interwoven. But nothing came of this house call. Back then, it rarely did. Domestic violence was a lot more acceptable in the

50s. All the evidence you need of this is in the black and white films of the era. They are full of hysterical women getting slapped and then melting into well-behaved apologetic puddles of love and gratitude. So it's not surprising that no action was taken by the police. A man beating his wife was seen as his own business and not a matter for the long arm of the law. By the time Good Friday rolled around, David was totally done with Ruth. He went off to Hampstead to stay with his friends, a couple called the Findlaters. I think that's also a great name, the Findlaters. I'll see you later.

Do you reckon? I don't like it. No? I wouldn't want to be Sir Ruthie Findlay. I wouldn't want to be a Findlater, but I thought it was an interesting name. Especially in that accent. I love it. The Findlaters were an interesting couple because David was actually building a race car with them. Got it all going on.

House in Hampstead, building a race car. What's not? I'd run off there. I frequently run off to Hampstead as it is. And the story you're about to hear now is the one that Ruth Ellis told the police. Good Friday in 1955 fell on the 8th of April. Ruth knew that David was in Hampstead with the Findlaters, who she hated because they made her acutely aware that she

was not well-bred enough to be in their company. Ruth called the Findlaters several times asking to speak to David. They told her that he wasn't there. Ruth became more and more agitated and eventually convinced Desmond Cusson to drive her to Hampstead to find David. When they arrived at the Findlater abode, David's car was outside, but David did not come out to greet Ruth. So she pushed the windows in on his car and left. So what, she like smashed them in? No, so in really old cars, we're sort of slightly past Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in like age of cars. They're like big boxy cars and the windows are on hinges.

So you could push them in from the outside. So I think she pushed them in so the rain would get in and ruin his seats. Got it. Sneaky. So it's an act of vandalism, but not quite smashing them in. So Ruth spent Saturday with Andre and Desmond, still furious that David was eluding her. By 7.30pm on Easter Sunday, Ruth had had enough. She put Andre to bed at her new flat in Egerton Gardens where they lived without Blakely or Cussin. Then she got into a taxi and went to the Magdala pub in Hampstead. There she was sure

she would find David and she was right. Once Ruth got to the pub she patiently waited for David to come outside and get in his car. At 9.30pm David emerged with his mate Clive Gunnell. Ruth called out to David but he ignored her. So Ruth pulled out a.38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that she had in her handbag and took aim. She shot six bullets in total, two of them from where she was standing. Then as David lay on the ground outside the pub Ruth walked right up to him and fired more bullets into his body at point-blank range. Two of the bullets went astray and one ended up in the thumb of a lady called Mrs Gladys Yule.

What a Sunday on the Heath, hey? You've just gone to the pub in Hampstead and you end up with half a thumb. I know. Bloody hell, Gladys. After Ruth had finished her shooting, she turned to Clive Gunnell and asked him to call the police. But Clive didn't need to trouble himself. People poured out of the pub to see what all the noise was about Clive Gunnell, and asked him to call the police. But Clive didn't need to trouble himself. People poured out of the pub to see what all the noise was about, and one of those people just so happened to be off-duty policeman Alan Thompson,

who was just trying to have a quiet drink. Ruth was arrested, with her hands displaying the telltale burns of close-range shooting, and taken from the scene. David Blakely was driven to the nearest hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The bullets had injured his intestines, lungs, liver, trachea and aorta. This murder was gift wrapped for the press. They were all over it instantly. This beautiful, loose, working class girl spurned by her upper class lover snaps and takes her revenge. It basically writes itself. So to give you an example, the Daily Mail reported, I think the Daily Mail had a slightly better reputation back then than it does now,

but who knows, they said, six revolver shots shattered the Easter Sunday calm of Hampstead and a beautiful platinum blonde stood with her back to the wall. In her hand was a revolver. And everyone was just as interested in what Ruth had been wearing as they were in how many bullets she fired. Blakely was the roguish cad and the blonde bombshell Ruth Ellis was the femme fatale writ large. The pub were quick to also capitalise on the media frenzy. The landlady had bullet holes drilled into the exterior walls of the

pub so murder tourists could come and look at them for years to come. That's smart. Yeah I know it's smart. Have you ever been a murder tourist anywhere? I went on a ghost walk in Edinburgh. Does that count? No. No then no I haven't. No I haven't been a murder tourist anywhere either actually. This is smart because if you remember the story there were no bullets ever lodged into the pub walls. She shot most of the bullets close range directly into Blakely's body. So Ruth was taken to the Hampstead police station where she gave a three-page confession to Detective Chief Inspector Leslie Davis.

Ruth appeared calm and collected. The first line of her confession read, I understand what has been said. I am guilty. I am rather confused. Ruth explained that she had been given the gun by a customer in the club that she worked in three years ago and that she'd only kept it as a curiosity. DCI Davis heard what Ruth had to say and concluded in his report that David Blakely had been a quote step up for Ruth And when she realized that he was slipping away,

she took out her cold-blooded revenge on him. Ruth was taken off to Holloway Prison, where she was found by two separate prison doctors to be totally sane. And these doctors also recorded that on one occasion, David had hit Ruth so hard that she had gone temporarily deaf in one ear. Ruth's miscarriage was also discussed. But Ruth had not mentioned either of these things in her statement to the DCI. Perhaps he didn't ask.

Seems like a pretty open and shut case. She has motive, means and opportunity. There were multiple witnesses. She was arrested at the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in her hand and confessed to the killing straight away. So why is it that the trial and sentencing of Ruth Ellis is one of the most controversial cases in British history? I think the best place to start is with the first line of her confession. She said, I am

guilty. I am rather confused. Why is she confused? If her story is true, it would seem that she has very little to be confused about. And if you scratch even a little bit below the surface on this one, Easter Sunday 1955 starts to look very different indeed. Desmond Cussin was interviewed by the police after the murder and explained that he had been with Andre and Ruth on Easter Saturday and that on Sunday he had driven them back to their flat and left around 7pm. On Easter Monday, Desmond had driven Ruth's parents and Andre to London Bridge Station and left them there. And according to Desmond, that was the end of the matter for him. But that's not what Ruth's sister said. And this is where the story starts to get a bit sticky. Muriel was never interviewed by the police, so you do have to wonder how much of this is true and how much of this is retrospective, but here we go. In later years,

Muriel said that on Easter Monday, Desmond Cusson turned up to her house with her parents and little Andre in tow. Desmond then told Muriel that under no circumstances was anybody to question Andre, and the police never did. If they had, they might have started to paint a different picture of that Hampstead Sunday. According to Mrs Harris, the Marlborough shooter, Andre had always known that there were guns in the house. He'd once shown her a drawer in the Marlborough flat that had two guns in it. And although he never breathed a word of it to the police, 11-year-old Andre had a very different memory of Easter Sunday than the story his mother and Desmond Cusson had told to the police. And I think this is the first thing we can flag up on this one that would be different today.

I think today Andre definitely would have been questioned by the police. A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, he's 11. He's not three. Exactly. And Andre would tell family members years later that his mother and Desmond had been together all day on Easter Sunday and that they had been meant to drop him off at a fair but when they had got there they had found that the fair was shut so poor old Andre had had to accompany his mum and Desmond in the

car all the way to Penn where they had a good hunt around for David Blakely but couldn't find him. Then they got back in the car, drove back to London and on the way they stopped off in a wooded area and Desmond showed Ruth how to shoot a small handgun at a tree. Then they got back in the car, made it back to their flat where Ruth put Andre to bed and then Desmond and Ruth left the flat together with a gun each. Something the modern officers re-examining this case have raised is that in the 50s the police had all of the licensed hackney cab drivers on a pretty tight rein. They would have their licenses revoked for the smallest connection to a crime. So former homicide squad now forensics lecturer Brian Hook argued that it was extremely odd that the taxi driver didn't hand himself in to avoid being tracked down. Any cabbie involved in a crime had to come forward within 24 hours. But the thing is, is it

that strange that this mysterious cab driver would want to keep his mouth shut? What are the chances that someone like saw you and took down your license plate? They couldn't just check her Uber app to see who was doing the driving that day. And of course, also, they only had the licensed Hackney cabbies on a tight leash. Not all taxis are licensed law-abiding hackney cabs. Maybe we should explain what a hackney cab is. Quite the famous image of London is a black cab with a yellow light. They're called hackney carriages. Hackney cabs, that's where that word comes from. But guess who else drove a taxi? Desmond Cusson. He wasn't a taxi driver for a living. He just drove a taxi around like Stephen Fry. So he's just like a posh rich guy who just drives a fucking taxi around. Yeah like Stephen Fry. Does Stephen Fry

pick people up in it or just drive a taxi? No no he just drives it around. But Desmond Cusson picked people up in it? No no he just drove it around. God that's so quirky. So eccentric isn't it? So eccentric. What is it if you're rich it, it's eccentric. If you're poor, it's mad. So when Ruth said she got a taxi to Hampstead, could she actually have meant that Desmond drove her? Much of the controversy surrounding this case comes from whether Desmond was there at the time of the shooting and whether he supplied the murder weapon. And you might think that's a bit irrelevant as Ruth shot the gun.

But some people argue that it matters for two reasons. Number one, if he was there and he supplied the weapon he lied about it to the police and number two if we cast our minds back to the Janelle Potter episode try and think about whether you can imagine the murder happening without Desmond giving Ruth the gun. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life you can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus in season two

I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met but a couple of years ago I came across a social media post by a person named Loti it read in part three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration

with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free

and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app

or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Desmond was never asked by police where he was in the daytime of Easter Sunday. His timeline literally starts at seven o'clock. They don't ask him anything else about the day. And another piece of evidence that makes Desmond look a bit guilty is that the Smith & Wesson revolver that Ruth used was part of a shipment that was sent to British forces stationed in South Africa during 1940. The gun was one of 2,000.

And South Africa is where Desmond was stationed during the war. So it's possible that it was his gun. I'm not sure how likely it is. It is one of 2,000 guns, but it's a connection. Things get even more eyebrow-raising when we get to Ruth's solicitor. Because the thing is, she had absolutely no prior affiliation with this man. He was called John Bickford, and he just showed up at Holloway Prison, explaining that Ruth's housekeeper back at Egerton Gardens had sent him.

Which seems like a very peculiar thing for a lawyer to do. Yeah, you can't just show up at a prison and be like, hello, I'd like to do some lawyering, please. Like, you need appointments, you need to be on a list. Even back then, you couldn't just walk into a prison. Yeah, because the thing is, he wasn't a public defender and he wasn't affiliated with Holloway Prison at all. But he had done quite a lot of work for the Daily Mirror.

The now defunct Woman's Sunday Mirror ran a serialised feature on Ruth after the conclusion of her trial, which very much like Roxy Hart in Chicago, showed Ruth to be a very simple country girl driven mad by the lights and the lifestyle of the big city. So you do have to wonder if the Mirror had a little bit of an invested interest in the outcome of Ruth's trial. I think there are quite a few things about this case that are quite Chicago

reminiscent. So I wonder whether she was a bit of an inspiration for it, because it really is like almost exactly the same story of this country girl being driven mad by booze and liquor, and then she shoots someone. There's more similarities as we go through. I feel like it would have almost been like people's fascination with this reading about, you know, serialised thing in the newspaper and stuff. It's like a moral fable for the time, isn't it? For women. Stay away from nightclubs, don't be a hostess or you'll end up like Ruth Ellis. Exactly. Driven mad, hoisted by her own petard and all that. And a quick thing about the increasingly confusing British legal system. We have two types of lawyers here. We have solicitors who wear normal clothes and can appear in magistrate's courts where less serious crimes

are dealt with. Then there are barristers. They are a different thing altogether. Barristers wear fancy white wigs and black robes. They work in higher levels of court and their main job is to act as an advocate for their client in the courtroom. In the case of Ruth's murder trial, her case was prepared by her solicitor John Bickford and then handed over for review to barrister Aubrey Melford-Stevenson. Solicitors do the groundwork and then pass it over to the barristers who give everyone the razzle-dazzle in the courtroom in their big fancy Ruth's trial was set for the 20th of June 1955. And in the run-up, while Bickford was preparing his case, he interviewed Desmond Cussin. Desmond gave a statement that totally contradicted the one he gave to the police.

When speaking to Bickford, Desmond said that he'd spent the whole day on Easter Sunday with Ruth and they were drinking Pernod, which is 40% by the way. And then after that, he had driven her and Andre to Penn and back in search of the elusive David Blakely. He also confirmed that he had given Ruth the gun and that he had cleaned it and loaded it. They had stopped off on the way back to London to shoot at a tree and they made one more stop on a bridge which Desmond used as an opportunity to throw the gun's cleaning materials into the river. In this version of events Desmond took Andre back to the Egerton Gardens apartment and then he and Ruth headed to Hampstead together just as Andre remembered. But this confession, this alternate account never made it into the hands of barrister Aubrey Melford-Stevenson. We will never know really why not.

But the important thing is, it doesn't. And it seems like a pretty major fucking thing to leave out. And the only thing we could think of is that they were trying to avoid anything that may suggest the murder was premeditated. And that was very much the defence's vibe when Ruth's trial began. In 1955, the mandatory penalty for murder in the UK was death. But that didn't mean that every convicted murderer was hanged, far from it. 90% of the 145 women sentenced to death in the 20th century were reprieved. By the mid-50s, Britain was already getting pretty uneasy about the death penalty in general. Public hangings had been done away with in 1868. But to put the whole

thing into context, the London Underground started service in 1863. So for five whole years, you could have got the tube to a public hanging. Isn't that mad that those two things overlap? That's mad. I love that fact. It's my favourite. Absolutely. Just get on the tube. Head to Tyburn. Yep. Shall we go and see a public hanging? I think there's a couple of murderers today. Let's get on the Met line. Because I used to work in St Catherine's Dock and you have to get off at Tower

Hill and walk and you walk past where Anne Boleyn was beheaded and everything because you walk past what is it? Traitor's Gate. Tower of London and it's like the little hill outside and you'd see all these tourists taking photos and it's just like a little mound of earth i love walking past traitor's gate though it's my favorite we should have a little staycation in london one weekend oh we go to the tower of london yeah yes sounds like the best day of my life you're so easily pleased i'm so easily pleased i really am should we go to la

first and then we'll come back and do that back to the story and this is an interesting bit of the story a week before ruth sentencing for murdering her 86 year old neighbor with a shovel and she went on to serve just seven years and it wasn't just women either on the 1st of april 1955 28 year old alfred wayman was reprieved four days before his execution date. He had stabbed his girlfriend, Josie Larvin, to death and then tried to kill himself with the same knife, but failed. The thing is, officials were worried that the wound on his neck may open during the hanging and make a bit of a mess. So they reprieved him and he went on to serve just 12 years for Josie's murder instead.

I think it's interesting that, that like just being concerned about the mess was enough to get someone off the death penalty. And that was the same year as Ruth. It was the same month even. And Sarah Lloyd got off a week before Ruth's sentencing for fucking smacking her next door neighbour, her 86-year-old next door neighbour, over the head with a shovel and killing her.

It was happening. People were getting reprieved all the time. But would that be the case with Ruth? The nation awaited Ruth's trial with bated breath. Ruth's class and the way she looked were hot topics. A great deal was made about her requesting to have her hair dyed blonde before her trial, just like Roxy Hart in Chicago, while she was in Holloway because she needed a special permission slip because obviously it's bleach and it's dangerous and it can't be just sort of handed out to prisoners so she was allowed to dye her hair but even in modern articles I've seen people say stuff like oh

hardly the behavior of a downtrodden woman which like give her a break she's on trial for murder in a country where the mandatory penalty is death let her get her hair done there was another case we did as well where the woman asked for like a haircut get her hair done there was another case we did as well where the woman asked for like a haircut or something or makeup and they were like outraged by it was it was darling it was darling yeah you're right you're right you're right darling rootier and it was like she's doing it to have some fucking confidence she has to go stand on trial for her life or is she doing it because she's that fucking stupid and doesn't realize how that would make her look exactly and it's just the idea of like the image of uh of a sorrowful woman someone who's penitent is someone

who's not good looking like that's so fucked i also do think there's something to be said for your fucking defense lawyer to be like listen shut up this is what you need to wear and this is how you need to behave in there to oh yeah it's like the Menendez brothers and how they like send them in dressed like children after they kill their parents. And it's like, oh, they didn't do it. Look, they're fucking men. Like, can we stop with the bloody coloured jumpers and shit? Put them in a suit.

Dresses and appearance in these situations are very, very important. But I totally take on board your point about what it says about a woman who doesn't look downtrodden enough someone actually shouted blonde tart at Ruth as she was pleading not guilty from the gallery she was being tried in the old bailey and in the old bailey they have public galleries but you can just go in and see what's going on that's another thing oh my god we should I've never been to the old bailey oh it's cool And the reason Ruth was pleading not guilty is not because she

had some sort of vain hope of an acquittal. It's because she wanted to tell her side of the story. Ruth's barrister, Melford Stanley, attempted to inspire sympathy in the jury by asking Ruth to recount the abuse she had suffered at the hands of David Blakely. But instead of the emotional testimony he had hoped for, Ruth was stone-faced in the stand, explaining that Blakely had only ever hit her with his hands, and that yes, he had hit her in the stomach, but she wasn't sure if that was what had caused her miscarriage or not. Melford Stanley also quizzed Ruth about the abortion she had had. All of her responses were pretty unemotional, and did not ingratiate her to a 50s jury at all. Overall, Ruth Ellis did a pretty good job of

undermining her own defence. At no stage in her statement in court does Ruth mention Desmond Cusson and her defence team don't call him to the stand. The idea here, I think, is the same reason Desmond's version of events were left out of the barrister's documents. If Desmond told the courtroom that he had given Ruth the gun and that they had been driving around all day looking for David, then the heat of the moment or crime of passion argument is totally out of the window. The defence didn't call him up, but Desmond was the first person to be called by the prosecution to the stand. And the leader of the prosecution team's name was Barrister Christmas Humphreys.

That is the best name I've ever heard in my life. I'm finished now. I can die happy. I never need to hear another name. Christmas Humphreys. This is my barrister. He's in charge of my life and death. Christmas Humphreys. You would just shorten that to Chris,

but not if you're a barrister. The name is Christmas. It's Chris Christmas, actually. And Mr. Christmas Humphreys had a great time with Desmond. Desmond told the court all about the multiple abortions Ruth had had, how she was sleeping with multiple men all the time, which to me sounds a bit like fucking throwing her under the bus, Desmond. He's absolutely throwing her under the bus.

He's like, oh, I'm finished with her now. I don't, I'm not going to be any part of this. They don't think I was involved anyway. No one's asked me what I was doing that day. Wash my hands of it. So Desmond gave no details of his whereabouts on Easter Sunday before or after he allegedly dropped Ruth and Andre off at their flat. Desmond was not cross-examined at all by Melford Stewart. Judge Cecil Havers ruled that the jury were unable to consider that Ruth Ellis may have been provoked into the murder of James Blakely as the circumstances of the case did not fit the legal definition of it. The law of

provocation in Britain originates from protecting people in a 16th century duel. If you shot your opponent during a duel and they died that was not murder. However if you went away to find another weapon to finish them off that was apparently definitely murder. So it's you went away to find another weapon to finish them off, that was apparently definitely murder. So it's a very like in the heat of the moment thing. It's like if you're in this isolated situation where emotions are running high, then that's kind of fine. But going away thinking about it and coming back, that's when it's murder. So provocation cannot be used as a defence for an assault, but it can be used to reduce a murder charge to manslaughter. And that's what Ruth's defense team were aiming for. But the problem was in 1955,

the provocation defense was a heat of the moment argument. Like they both reach for the gun or someone walks in on their partner in bed with another lover and ends up killing them. It needs to be an immediate knee-jerk reaction to something. And in cases like that, sometimes the perpetrator could be charged with manslaughter. I do kind of see why that argument doesn't fit Ruth's case. She doesn't storm in on David with another woman. She waits outside the pub for him with a handgun in her handbag.

Before they left to deliberate, Judge Havers told the jury, this court is not a court of morals. This is a criminal court and you should not allow your judgment to be swayed or your minds to be prejudiced in the least degree against the accused because according to her own admission, she has committed adultery or because she was having two persons at different times as lovers. That'll do it. I'm sure they won't use that as prejudice at all. Exactly, yeah. Why don't you just lay out all of the things that they could be prejudiced against just before they go and have a chat? Difficult to know whether they were prejudiced or not, but I think they probably were.

Maybe if it had been possible to show that Ruth had not meant to kill David, she would have got away with manslaughter. But when asked by Mr Christmas Humphreys what she intended to do with the revolver, Ruth replied, it is obvious when I shot him, I intended to kill him. She's really not helping herself here at all. The trial lasted less than a day and the jury deliberated for 14 minutes. 14 minutes for someone's life? You couldn't just round it up to a full 15? The verdict was guilty and Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death by hanging

and was sent from the courtroom back to Holloway. Ruth uttered one word. Thanks. In the three months between her trial and her execution, Ruth Ellis told her sister Muriel that she wanted to die because she wanted to be with David. And I think that could possibly be why she acts the way she acts in the trial. She seems like a defeated person. She's not really fighting for herself.

And she's like, well, I deserve to go. I'm going to go. Absolutely. And I think, like you said, the laws surrounding sort of diminished responsibility hadn't even been created yet. But the fact that she's in court saying things like, it was obvious when I shot him, I intended to kill him. And a woman who was saying this now, she is probably not in her right mind. Like I don't think she's never defending herself. And I don't know, I feel like had those laws been in place, and she'd had solid defense around that, I think hopefully the outcome would have probably been a bit different. I think if she'd had a solid mental health assessment,

I think we'd be on very different territory. She also wrote to David's mother apologising for murdering her son. She wrote to her saying, quote, I shall die loving your son and you shall be content knowing that his death has been repaid. Ruth never wrote to her own son though. And again, I feel like she's not okay. She's not okay. No, I don't think so. With no legal

grounds for an appeal, Ruth's only shot at survival was the Home Secretary, Quilliam Lloyd George, whose dad, David Lloyd George, is one of the major reasons that we have the National Health Service in the UK. Fun fact for you there. So for this last ditch attempt, just 21 hours before her set execution date, Ruth ditched her old solicitor in favour of Victor Mitchum, and she told him everything. In her new statement, Ruth recounted her movements on Easter Sunday. She told him that her and Desmond had been drinking, that shooting David had been Desmond's idea, that it was his gun they had driven to Penn. She says all about shooting the tree and everything. It's the same story as Desmond and the same story that Andre would retell years later. But it did no good. Lloyd George commented,

our law takes no account of the so-called crime passionnel and I'm not prepared to differentiate between the sexes on the ground that one sex is more susceptible to jealousy than the other. In the present circumstance, the woman was unfaithful to her lover as he was to her. If reprieve were to be granted in this case, I think we should have to seriously consider whether capital punishment should be retained as a penalty. On the 13th of July 1955, hundreds of people crowded outside the looming gates of Holloway Prison. The Daily Mirror described Ruth as the calmest woman who ever went to the gallows, reporting that she told those at the prison, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, I'm quite happy to die.

Ruth was hanged at 9am that morning. She died almost instantly. Thousands of people had signed a petition asking for clemency, but it made no difference. But not everyone was rooting for Ruth. The News Chronicle argued there's no reason for Ruth to receive special leniency just because she was a quote woman and an alcoholic. The Home Office still holds a catalogue of letters they received after Ruth's trial. 90% of them called for a reprieve but some of them weren't so kind. One man wrote if Ruth didn't hang then his wife would think it was okay to kill him. isn't that just an argument you see all the time wow what is he doing to his wife that's what i want to know exactly just because

i'm punching her in the stomach so hard she miscarries her babies and i beat her up um she's gonna look at this and think it's fine to murder me one day and i think that the reason the public got behind ruth in such a massive way in a way that they hadn't for anyone else who was facing the death penalty. I think a lot of women could see themselves in Ruth's shoes. She had a hard life. She was abused by multiple partners. But is that enough to excuse her murder? I totally agree with you. I think the reason women in particular got behind her so much was this was such a turning point in women's history, when finally they were getting more of a voice because of the war like we talked about and finally maybe it was starting to feel like we don't have to deal with

this anymore. There must have been hundreds of cases like Ruth's before this but there was something really different about the Ruth Ellis case. And that's the question everyone asks about this case is if Ruth were alive today and if she had done exactly the same thing, killed exactly the same man, would she have been found guilty of murder? Provocation is now defined in English law to mean circumstances that would cause any reasonable person to lose self-control. So could that apply to Ruth? I don't know. I don't know.

I think my problem with it is the day she spent looking for him and the time she spent waiting outside the pub for him. If she'd almost just immediately known he's in that pub, she went in and she'd shot him in front of everyone had done to her but I don't know if that extends to provocation in a very legal sense of course it does in in normal world yeah because in normal world you know even when I say I don't want to sound ignorant and always she was waiting outside she could have changed her mind she could fully have been having a break for 24 48 72 hours who knows what he had led her to and what her mental state was at the time. She still does it very much in public. She doesn't sneakily shoot him in a room and then try to cover up the

crime. She shoots him in public and then hands herself in. She's not okay. But I don't know in a very legal sense what would happen now. The Homicide Act was passed here in 1957, which limited the death penalty to certain types of murder. The first time in history, the American model of degrees of murder was ever mirrored here. That's something I didn't know. I didn't know we didn't have degrees of murder. No, I didn't know that either. First and second degree is an American concept. We don't have it in law here. Really? How interesting. So diminished responsibility was introduced as a viable defense in a subsection of this act. Basically, what it means is that if someone intended to kill

a person due to mental incapacity, they could be charged with manslaughter rather than murder. But again, is that the case with Ruth? We don't know. She never really receives a very clear mental assessment that we can go back and look at. She's just declared sane by two doctors. No one was being given like the rigorous mental health exams we have today back then. And that's the thing actually as I said that I was like oh well she was just declared sane by two doctors well that is your that's your mental assessment but yes the mental assessments they were doing wouldn't have probably revealed what a mental assessment now would reveal. So in 1964 Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hanged. And those were the last ever judicial executions to take place here in Britain. The next year, the death penalty was abolished, initially on a five year trial period, and then forever in 1969.

I quite like that. They were like, let's just see how we get on. Let's try five years and then we can change our minds again. It was a sensible thing and I remember when we did the Moores case they were like just after the abolition of the death penalty and people were like bring it back. Fucking hang them. The trial period was over by then. No one person's child can be held responsible for this change to the system but Ruth's was definitely important. She captured the public's imagination probably for the same reason she was ostracized for so much of her life. The that she looked ruth was buried at holloway prison until she was moved in 1971 and reburied at saint mary's church in amersham which is where i'm from and my mom actually went and took a picture of it she uh she took the dog down there and she was like red-handed roving reporter there's actually no headstone for Ruth because Andre destroyed it

in the 80s. It's just like a little collection of, I'll put the picture on the Facebook group, just a little collection of rocks and like a tiny potted plant just by a hedge. You wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it. David Blakely is buried just three miles up the road in Penn. And I feel like everyone, everyone forgets about Andre. He lost his mum and David, who he felt really close to, and he never quite recovered. He was a child. He was 11. And in the 80s, Andre tracked down Christmas Humphreys to discuss his mother's trial. There's tape of it. You can hear them talking, and it is just heartbreaking. Andre took his own life at 37 years old in 1982. His ashes were buried with his mum in Amersham. He

was staying in a bedsit at the end of his life and no one found his body for weeks. In 2003, Muriel, Ruth's surviving sister, attempted one last time with the help of Michael Mansfield QC to clear Ruth's name. Michael Mansfield, who also worked on the Stephen Lawrence appeals. So the rather indelicate battered woman syndrome had been accepted as a legal defence in the year 2000. So Michael Mansfield argued that Ruth, because of the abuse she endured at the hands of Blakely, had post-traumatic stress disorder

and therefore a diminished responsibility for her crimes. He also maintained that Ruth had been sexually abused by her father and encouraged by Desmond Cusson to murder David Blakely. And this is the thing about quite a lot of the stories in this case. I do wonder when Muriel tells the story about Easter Monday or when Andre retells the story. Andre must have heard that story so many times before he decides that he remembers it. So you do have to take that into account also. Desmond Cusson has always denied giving Ruth the gun

and he actually emigrated to Australia where he died in 1991. The appeal was tried in September 2003 but was dismissed without merit. So was the murder of David Blakely really a crime of passion that would be manslaughter these days? I'm not sure. I'm still not sure. I really thought I would come to a conclusion as we went through it. But I'm not sure. And I'm not even sure Ruth wouldn't get called a blonde tart today. No.

I think she probably would. Probably by the Daily Mail. So no, I don't think we can say either way what would happen in the situation now. If we had a proper mental assessment, we would be able to comment more. But we just don't know. It was very obvious that she wasn't fine. But we don't know the extent of what was going on. So it's really hard to make a call that if she did exactly the same thing today, what would happen. But I think the closest parallel we can draw to this in modern times is the case of Sally Challen. We don't have a huge amount of time, obviously, to go into that case in detail now now and it's definitely one that I want to cover properly in the future. I've been waiting for basically to see what the outcome of this appeal would be but essentially Sally Challen

was in a marriage with a man, faced 40 years of abuse by this man, coercive control and she killed him. I believe she ended up taking a hammer to his head as he sat at the dining room table one day. Like the case with Ruth, she didn't do it in response to a specific action that he had just done. Okay, like a build-up. Exactly. It wasn't like she walked in with him in bed or he attacked her that day and she killed him. It was a build-up of four decades of abuse. She was convicted, she was sent to jail, and now her son and her family launched an appeal to get the murder conviction overturned. And basically, in a landmark appeal, she's won to not be a murderer anymore.

And it's the first time that the sort of coercive control has been used as a defense. So it's a landmark case here in Britain. So we will definitely cover that in future. Oh, for sure. It's on the list. If you're listening to this on the day of release, we're probably on a plane coming back from L.A. because that's where we're going on Saturday. I mean, we'll let you know all about it next week. Follow us on the day of release we're probably on a plane coming back from LA because that's where we're going on Saturday I mean we'll let you know all about it next week follow us on the social medias and if you would like to give us some money to support the show you can do that at

patreon.com forward slash red handed and we've got some people who have already very generously done that we've got Liz Sampson, Charlotte, Stephanie Brown, Vivian Hall, Kimberly, Kristen, Denise Grogan, Terry Orr, Kay, Brandy Flagg, Sarah Edwards, Holly Cass, Katrina VB, Tracy Chesney, Laura Morgan, Tor Hassan, Daniel Mills, Danielle Speck, Rachel Jones, Lena Mahan, Elizabeth Chang, Morena... Oh, no. Morena Ki Akinlawan. I'm so sorry. Message us and tell me how to pronounce your name. I'll do it again next week. Stacey Lafreniere.

Thank you very much, guys. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

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