George Kelly

Leonard Thomas and John Bernard Catterall were murdered at the Cameo Cinema, Bird Street, Wavertree, Liverpool during a robbery on the night of 19 March 1949. A man, George Kelly 27, was convicted of their murders and executed but his conviction was later quashed. Another man, Charles Connolly 26, was also convicted of being his accomplice and sentenced to ten years.

It was later heard in 2003 that a prisoner had made a statement in which he had said that George Kelly and Charles Connolly had confessed to the crime to him separately and that his statement was crucial to the conviction, but it was not heard that he had also taken the confession from an earlier suspect, a window-cleaner, a confession that was not brought to the attention of the court. There was no forensic evidence against George Kelly and Charles Connolly nor any witnesses and their convictions were made almost entirely on the evidence of the prisoner who claimed they confessed to him and their two alleged accomplices who came forward some months after the crime, a labourer with a criminal record and a Woman who was a convicted prostitute and who later was convicted for violent robbery of her clients. In 2003 their convictions were quashed after it was the matter of the other earlier confession was considered by an appeal court. It was heard that the fact that the prisoner had made multiple statements regarding prisoners confessing to the crime to him made his statements unreliable and that if that had been known at the trial that then men might not have been convicted along with the fact that it appeared to have been deliberately concealed in evidence at the trial.