"True Detective was just five years old when Ruth Ellis was hanged for shooting her lover in front of the Magdala pub in north London, and Britain's fascination with the case hasn't abated since. That's why, when writer Monica Weller, who co-wrote the bestseller RUTH ELLIS MY SISTER'S SECRET LIFE with Muriel Jakubait, phoned our editorial office to ask if we would be interested in her writing about the case for us, we jumped at the chance. Monica's passionate conviction of the truth of Muriel's story proved to be infectious and so we thought, why not share this startling new evidence with our readers?"
From True Detective, April 2006
A SERIES OF SIX ARTICLES ABOUT RUTH ELLIS
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN
'TRUE DETECTIVE' magazine
By Monica Weller
PART ONE
The name Ruth Ellis, to most of us, conjures up the image of the peroxide blonde, nightclub hostess and part time prostitute who shot dead her playboy, racing car driver lover David Blakely in a jealous rage. She became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
The shooting outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, London on the evening of 10th April 1955 was described as an open-and-shut case of cold-blooded murder. Ruth Ellis admitted pulling the trigger of the heavy .38 Smith and Wesson British service revolver.
The two-day trial at the Old Bailey was notable for its lack of forensic and ballistics evidence. Christmas Humphreys, counsel for the prosecution set out to prove that Ruth Ellis killed Blakely. Her defence team led by Melford Stevenson did nothing to help her. Jurors took just twenty-three minutes to find Ruth guilty of murder.
Yet the Public Record Office in Kew and the City of London Record Office still keep certain files closed on the matter until 2031. What else was there to hide?
Near to nine o’clock on 13th July 1955 the two warders who guarded Ruth in the condemned cell at Holloway prison said goodbye to her. She removed her purple diamante spectacles, put them on the table and told a warder, "I won’t need those any more."
Meanwhile at her flat in St Paul’s Cray, Ruth’s elder sister Muriel Jakubait walked into the sitting room, switched on the wireless and heard the nine o’clock pips of Big Ben with the announcement that Ruth Ellis, aged 28 had been hanged.
Some years later Albert Pierrepoint, Ruth’s hangman, told Muriel in a secret letter, "She died as brave as any man and she never spoke a single word." Over a five-year period, Muriel received a total of nine letters from him, occasionally writing under the assumed name of A. Fletcher. Each time Ruth was mentioned in the press, Pierrepoint would be on to Muriel in a flash.
In 2003, the Court of Appeal upheld Ruth’s 1955-murder conviction and sentence. Muriel Jakubait was shattered. Key evidence was still not made public. The same persuasive Ruth Ellis story spun to the press and public in 1955 was being repeated.
Whilst writing our book ‘Ruth Ellis My Sister’s Secret Life,’ I went back over minute details of the case, scrutinising every lead. With access to records previously unavailable at the Public Record office in Kew, and new witness statements, I have presented a range of evidence that the court in 1955 never got to hear; evidence pointing to the fact that Ruth Ellis was innocent of the crime she was hanged for.
She died for another person’s crime, having lied to protect him.
With what I have uncovered, I have sufficient evidence to believe the peroxide blonde killer tag was a carefully constructed cover story involving the British secret services at a time when the cold war was waging between Russia and the West. Ruth was a vulnerable young woman, used by the secret service, murdered by the establishment and whose true identity has been disguised beneath a web of deceit, lies and misinformation.
The trumped up murder charge and Ruth’s death by hanging deflected suspicion away from the real Ruth Ellis story.
In 2002 I set out to find and tell only the truth about the last woman to be hanged. I doubt that the public will ever learn the full story about Ruth, but ‘Ruth Ellis My Sister’s Secret Life’ has come very near to it. It is fortunate that Muriel has lived long enough to learn the truth.
HOW I CAME TO WRITE THE BOOK
My involvement in the project came about by chance. In 2000, I wrote an article about Ron Fowler, a fishmonger in the village of Great Bookham in Surrey.
Soon after it was published in the Surrey County magazine Ron asked if I wanted a good story. He told me about a woman that he used to serve fish to in West Byfleet. Her name Muriel Jakubait would probably be unknown to me but I might recognise that of her sister Ruth Ellis.
Ron recalled how Muriel walked into the fish shop one day. "I asked if I could help her. She replied, More to the point can I help you? Apparently I’d been speaking to a butcher who knew Muriel. He’d told her about the fishmonger next door with a bee in his bonnet about her sister’s case."
"I still remember that day," Ron continued. "It was so uncanny. She was the dead spit of Ruth Ellis. She wore a pink scarf, knotted and hanging down one side of her. I stared and thought this is exactly what Ruth would look like now if she were alive. Her hair was done up like Ruth’s. It really shook me up."
Like many people Ron had an obsession with the Ruth Ellis story. He wanted to know who was called at the trial, so tried to get a copy of the transcript. In 1989 he received a letter from the Lord Chancellor’s Department, saying that the file did not contain a transcript of the trial. They could not help him. "Another senior person phoned and wasn’t so nice: ‘As far as you’re concerned, Mr Fowler, that file lies at the bottom of the Thames.’
Ron lost touch with Muriel but I traced her to her council bungalow in Woking. At that time she was hoping that the Criminal Cases Review Commission would refer her sister’s conviction for murder in 1955 to the Court of Appeal in London. I listened with absolute fascination to her story. The Express published my subsequent article.
In 2002 Muriel and I discussed the possibility of writing her memoirs. Every week for two years we met at her home. We drank tea and talked. Surrounded by family photographs, including one of her sister Ruth, she told me about years of family secrecy; revealing intimate details about herself and Ruth and recalling harrowing memories of the day her sister was hanged.
Each meeting was memorable, planned and focused. Not a stone was left unturned.
As a new author, writing this book has been the most fabulous opportunity I have ever had. It has also been the most humbling, constantly reminded that the person sitting close to me has endured terrible memories of an executed sister for half a century.
SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH
Simple fact finding turned out to be more complicated than I thought at first. It became an extraordinary detailed piece of detective work for first hand evidence in my search for the truth. I followed my instincts. I stopped looking for answers and took one step at a time in looking for facts.
Muriel told me about landmarks in her life and recollections of events. I followed up with my own solid research and investigation, comparing new findings with previously published conflicting information.
Just twenty-three days after beginning my research and detective work I was amazed when I stumbled across Dr Stephen Ward’s name linked to Ruth as far back as the late 1940’s, many years before the 1963 Profumo scandal. Ward was the society osteopath-cum-pimp who introduced Christine Keeler to John Profumo the Minister for War in the early 1960’s.
The public is now aware that Ward was involved in spying in 1963. But the Denning Report at the time merely described him as a pimp. Not a word about Ruth’s association with Ward at the beginning of the Cold War has ever leaked out.
From small beginnings a picture developed of Ruth’s life, stripped of fifty years of fictitious opinion. An unseen side of the last woman to be hanged emerged, as I dug deeper in my investigations; something not uncovered at the time of Ruth’s trial, or since.
For three years I trawled through record office files, birth and death certificates and company records dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. I tracked suspicious addresses, so-called businesses that did not actually exist and incorrect initials on official documents that enabled characters to change their identities and mislead anyone who dared to look for them.
New witnesses from all over Britain have helped with individual aspects of the story. They cast new light on Ruth’s short life, without enquiring about the true object of the story that had to be kept confidential until the whole had been written.
It has taken considerable effort to strip fact from fiction. Caught up in a tangle of new connections were clues. I kept an open mind and did not accept things at face value. The real story about Ruth Ellis began slotting into place.
Ruth had a secret double life. In 1955 it had to be covered at all costs.
This is a story of murder, intrigue, justice and most importantly, truth.
Ruth’s gruesome death by hanging protected people at the heart of the establishment. There was more to Ruth Ellis than has been admitted.
...to be continued
