The case made national headlines and led to the biggest manhunt in Liverpool’s history
George Kelly who was wrongly convicted of the Cameo Cinema murders in Wavertree in 1949. Mr Kelly was executed in 1950.
A sex worker and her pimp helped frame an innocent man whose execution left a lasting stain on the British justice system. The Cameo cinema murders rocked the city and made national headlines due to the brutality of the shooting and the scale of the subsequent investigation.
Leonard Thomas and Bernard Catterall were murdered – perhaps for the sake of just over £50. Mr Thomas, the manager of the Wavertree cinema, and his deputy Mr Catterall, were working to count the takings from the cinema for March 19, 1949.
They could never have predicted the day would be their last. As part of a weekly series looking at Merseyside’s criminal history, the ECHO has taken a closer look at the double murder and the impact it had on the reputation of the police and justice system.
As the film Bond Street, featuring Jean Kent, played on the big screen, the two men were at work in an upstairs office. Nobody can be sure what happened in the room – except that the events left both Mr Thomas and Mr Catterall dead from gunshot wounds.
The takings were left behind, with the gunman reportedly escaping onto nearby Smithdown Road, bursting past stunned cinema staff who were unable to apprehend him.
Was it a botched robbery or a deliberate murder plot? Did a struggle between the management and the intruder lead to things going too far?
Herbert Balmer led the investigation. A former dockers’ apprentice, Toxteth-born Balmer had joined Liverpool City Police in 1926. He progressed through the ranks, and by the time of the Cameo murders was a detective chief inspector.
Pictured, the exterior of the Cameo Cinema, Liverpool. Circa 1955.(Image: Mirrorpix)
He led the biggest manhunt in the city’s history. Liverpool police’s murder squad interviewed 70,000 people and pulled in every known gangster, pimp and sex worker on the books for information.
The investigation settled on two suspects – labourers George Kelly, 27, and 26-year-old Charles Connolly. Police got their names from a 23-year-old sex worker, Jacqueline Dixon, and her pimp James Northam – and their lies were to have dreadful consequences.
The trial of Kelly and Connolly was one of the longest in British history at the time. It was also remarkable for the role of Rose Heilbron, the 35-year-old Liverpool barrister who was the first woman to appear as leading counsel in any murder trial. She represented Kelly – well aware his life was at stake.
Kelly was accused of the shooting itself, while Connolly was said to be his lookout. Ms Heilbron, who went to Belvedere School and the University of Liverpool, had already secured the acquittal of Donald Johnson, who was charged with disposing of the gun for the killer.
George Kelly who was wrongly convicted of the Cameo Cinema Murders in Wavertree in 1949. Mr Kelly was executed in 1950.(Image: NW2 TRINITY MIRROR)
At the trial, Northam said he and Dickson had been in the Bee Hive pub on Mount Pleasant where they saw the defendants planning the crime.
A prisoner serving a sentence at Walton jail while Kelly and Connolly were on remand there claimed the pair had confessed to him – though both men denied this. Graham was rewarded with a reduced sentence for his evidence.
The first trial ended with the jury failing to reach a verdict – so the case went to a retrial. Kelly’s retrial ended with his being found guilty and sentenced to death, while Connolly accepted a plea deal, admitting conspiracy and being an accessory to murder. Kelly was executed by Albert Pierrepoint on March 28 1950.
Crowds form outside St Georges Hall in Liverpool where the murder trial of George Kelly and Charles Connolly
In 2003, the Court of Appeal posthumously overturned the conviction, declaring it “unsafe”, after the case was referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body which investigates alleged miscarriages of justice.
During the appeal, It emerged that a statement given to detectives by a prosecution witness, claiming a man called Donald Johnson confessed to the crime, was not disclosed to the defence. Connolly, terrified he too would face the death penalty, was persuaded by his lawyer to plead guilty to robbery after a deal was struck with the prosecution.
Charles Connolly
Connolly died in 1997 – still protesting his innocence with the support of his family and his friends. His conviction was also quashed in 2003.
Walk down Webster Road today and you could be forgiven for wondering how a cinema could ever have stood there – let alone been the scene of a chilling episode from our city’s past.
Unlike the retail park multiplexes of today, cinemas in the middle of the last century were often found on residential streets. They stood among houses, and were as much a part of their local communities as pubs, churches and schools. In fact, the building had been a church before its conversion.
The cinema stood on the junction of Bird Street, and is long-since demolished. But its proximity to so many tightly-packed, archetypal south Liverpool terraces gives a real sense of how the street and its residents were shocked and terrified by the murder in their midst.