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The secret double-life of Ruth Ellis and the Establishment cover-up that led to her unjust hanging Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, was convicted fifty years ago for shooting her lover David Blakely. The case became a notorious part of British criminal history and was turned into the film, Dance with a Stranger. The story that has been perpetuated ever since is that of a peroxide tart who killed in a fit of passion. Yet, crucial questions were left unasked in the original trial. Ruth Ellis's sister, Muriel Jakubait, knew her longest of all. She has never given up her search for justice. Now after fifty years she has decided to reveal the hard facts about their shared upbringing, and seek to piece together the full true story of her sister. As she is at pains to point out, the jealous killer tag has never been substantiated. This is a story of power, espionage, lies, loyalty, poverty, sex and betrayal. It suggests a third man may have pulled the trigger for the fatal shots. And that he belonged to a web of espionage into which Ruth Ellis fell long before the shooting. Above all, it indicates that Ruth was being run by Stephen Ward, at least a decade before his name became public in the Profumo Scandal. Muriel's motive is about more than proving her sister Ruth's innocence. It's about reclaiming the right to tell the story of her own family, stripped bare of the many tabloid myths that have accrued over the decades. She shows that Ruth was somebody damaged at a very early age - who strove to make something of herself, only to be caught up in something much bigger and end up paying with her life.
About the Author
Muriel Jakubait last saw her sister through a wire grille in a tiny visiting room inside the Condemned Unit at Holloway prison. She supported the recent appeal against the 1955 verdict, but was keenly aware at the time that key evidence was still not being made public. She says, 'Now is the time for the truth to be told. The public has the right to know.' Monica Weller is a freelance writer and photographer.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ruth Ellis My Sisters Secret Life,
By VA Fairmaner (Leatherhead, Surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ruth Ellis: My Sister's Secret Life (Paperback)
I congratulate Muriel Jakubait and Monica Weller for so carefully and sensitively unfolding the harrowing story of Ruth Ellis. It took so much courage to investigate the cover-up and intrigue that surrounded Ruth. The research is brilliant, all information pieced together carefully and presented convincingly. The book is written in a flowing style and has such empathy that you LIVE the events as you read the pages. I found it impossible to put down until I had read to the end.
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Best at what it did not intend to do,
By
This review is from: Ruth Ellis: My Sister's Secret Life (Paperback)
The central thesis of this book is that Ruth Ellis did not actually commit the murder of David Blakely for which she famously became the last woman to be hanged in Britain but was a stooge for her 'other' boyfriend, Desmond Cussen, who not only trained her to shoot and drove her to the scene but also fired the fatal shots himself from cover then sped away in his own taxi (reluctantly taking a wounded by-stander to hospital!) leaving Ruth to take the rap. Why? It was all a cover for unspecified espionage activities involving her, Blakely and Stephen Ward, later a protagonist in the Profumo scandal.
This is all obvious rubbish that does not bear any further analysis. Ruth Ellis was guilty as charged; there were unquestionably mitigating circumstances, Cussen put her up to it and Blakely was a complete swine but she had a fair trial by the standards of the day and went to some effort to put the rope around her neck by alienating the sympathy that would otherwise have gone to an attractive young woman. Where the book does, ironically, score highly is in showing the devastating effect of capital punishment on the family of the victim. Ruth's son Andre led an aimless, unhappy life before finally committing suicide; the damage done to Muriel Jakubait herself is evidenced both by her harrowing description of Ruth's last days and by her clinging on to a fantasy version of the events. The best part actually comes at the end, where Muriel is reluctantly put in contact with and finally meets the executioner Albert Pierrepoint, who emerges as a truly creepy, indeed disgustingly ghoulish, man. It is worth reading for that alone. For an impartial story, look elsewhere.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly readable but muddled,
By Dr Bookworm "Dr Bookworm" (Bexhill, East Sussex, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ruth Ellis: My Sister's Secret Life (Paperback)
This is an interesting book which present many new facts into the case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. I found the new evidence to be convincing, especially the link between Ruth and Stephen Ward, and the suggestion that when Ruth found herself caught up in a world of espionage , it was to late to reveal 'names' and incidents in the witness box, 'names' and evidence that may have saved her life.
Ruth knew many famous faces (including film actresses Deborah kerr and Diana Dors) and had many 'clients' who were (at the very least) aristocratic and many who were part of the criminal underworld. As we now know, many of these people mixed openly with each other in clubs such as the one that Ruth ran. She was very proud to be running this Mayfair club, even vetting young men (called 'chickens) for elderly aristocratic customers and also providing girls for other parties. of course, none of these 'names' came up in the trial, and I believe Ruth was too scared to give the complete picture. Her trial was a travesty. As a legal lecturer, I found her defence was almost deliberatly negligent. Why was there no witnesses of any substance? Why did they not subpoena Carole findlaker from Majorca? Why did they not call witnesses from her own family? Why were the parents of David (the murdered man) not questioned? It becomes quite clear that the Judge, the prosecution and the defence collaborated together. Unlike the author's, I belive their was a strong masonic link between all of the players, which would explain many abnormalities (why, for example, did Ruth's father, who was living in poverty at the time, have a high class solicitor in Pall Mall? Why did the defence not object when the prosecution practically labelled her a prostitute? Why did the defence not object to ANYTHING the witnesses said or the prosecution pronounced as 'facts'?). Where the book falls down is that it doesn't remain impartial. there is alot of 'he said that ' and 'she said that' which gets in the way of the narrative. The book could have been written in a more contextual way, instead of jumping from 1940 to 1960 and writing about people who had nothing really to do with the case. Apart from this one failing, I think this is a well researched book which, I think, jumped to the wrong conclusions. Based on the evidence presented here, I don't think it was espionage
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