place

Murder of Alison Shaughnessy

1990s trials1991 in British law1991 in England1991 murders in the United Kingdom1992 in British law
1992 in England1993 in British law1993 in EnglandBritish female criminalsBritish female murderersCourt of Appeal (England and Wales) casesCrime in LondonDeaths by person in LondonIrish murder victimsJune 1991 events in the United KingdomMurder in EnglandMurder trialsOverturned convictions in EnglandPeople acquitted of murderPeople convicted of murder by England and WalesPeople wrongfully convicted of murderTrials in EnglandTrials in LondonUnsolved murders in LondonUnsolved murders in the United Kingdom
Vardens Road, near Clapham Junction station, Battersea
Vardens Road, near Clapham Junction station, Battersea

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. Shaughnessy was newly married, but her husband was having an affair with a 20-year-old woman, Michelle Taylor. A witness reported seeing two women running from Shaughnessy's building after the murder, and fingerprints found at the scene matched Michelle and her sister Lisa Taylor, who claimed never to have been there. Michelle's diary included an entry reading "my dream solution would be for Alison to disappear, as if she never existed". The Taylor sisters were found guilty of the murder in 1992, but one year later their convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal because the prosecution had failed to turn evidence over to the defence, and because the sensationalist media coverage may have influenced jurors. Reinvestigations of the case by the Metropolitan Police did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was decided to no longer formally investigate the case. Filmmaker Bernard O'Mahoney, a man who had originally campaigned for the release of the Taylors and who then had an affair with Michelle, has since claimed that she confessed to the murder to him and has campaigned for the sisters to be re-convicted. The case led to discussions about the role of press and media in relation to criminal cases.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Murder of Alison Shaughnessy (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Murder of Alison Shaughnessy
Vardens Road, London Clapham Junction (London Borough of Wandsworth)

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Murder of Alison ShaughnessyContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.459804884444 ° E -0.17406374766395 °
placeShow on map

Address

Hilda Hewlett

Vardens Road
SW11 1RQ London, Clapham Junction (London Borough of Wandsworth)
England, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

Vardens Road, near Clapham Junction station, Battersea
Vardens Road, near Clapham Junction station, Battersea
Share experience

Nearby Places

St Mark's, Battersea Rise
St Mark's, Battersea Rise

St Mark's, Battersea Rise, is a Victorian Grade II* listed Anglican church located in Clapham Junction in London. The church was designed by William White and built from 1872 to 1874 in a Geometric Middle-pointed, 13th Century Gothic style using yellow bricks with red brick dressings and diapering. Inside, the nave comprises four bays with north aisles, a tower at the south-west corner supporting a wooden belfry and a shingled spire. Concrete piers with naturalistic stone-carved capitals were produced by Harry Hems. The interior floor is tiled. The choir stalls, pulpit and font were built to White's designs. The altar is raised on a stone plinth behind low brass rails. At the east end, the ambulatory descends to the crypt.After a declining congregation and a dilapidated church building, the parish recovered as the result of a church plant in 1987 from Holy Trinity Brompton, led by Pastor Paul Perkin, his wife Christine and a group of about 50 followers. Through donations from the congregation, building works have been undertaken, with a new welcome hall and extended meeting hall opened in 2007. St Mark's Church has been described as conservative and evangelical and was the subject of an article by The Guardian newspaper in 2012, Money becomes new church battleground. The article describes a "bitter power struggle within the CofE and the wider Anglican communion" on conservative issues such as homosexuality and the ordination of women priests. Boutflower Road, which runs to the east of the church, is named for Henry Boutflower Verdon, the church's first vicar-designate who died, young, in 1879, seven years before the construction of the road as part of Alfred Heaver's St John's Park property development.

The Alchemist, Battersea
The Alchemist, Battersea

The Alchemist is a former pub at 225 St John's Hill, Battersea, London, that was controversially demolished in May 2015 after over 100 years in business.It was originally called The Fishmongers' Arms, and was built in 1854.The pub closed in 2013, and was demolished in 2015 by a developer hoping to extend the building and build a block of flats. Wandsworth Council regarded the demolition having taken place without planning permission, and called it a "very serious breach" of council rules, and "unjustified". The council ordered developer Udhyam Amim to rebuild the pub and restore it to its appearance prior to demolition, but a year later this had not been carried out and the developer was seeking retrospective approval to demolish the building and replace it with six apartments, along with retail and commercial space.The demolition was compared to that of the Carlton Tavern in Kilburn, north London, which was demolished in April the same year. The Carlton Tavern was subsequently rebuilt and re-opened following a community campaign and planning appeals.In July 2018 the building was restored. In October that year its owners applied for planning permission to make the building into a shop, office or food establishment, but planners rejected the application, ruling that the change of use would "result in the loss of a public house of historic and community value". This rejection was later appealed and the building's classification was changed to D2, "assembly and leisure".