Murder of Alison Shaughnessy

Common card · No. 278796

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 those of Michelle and her sister Lisa Taylor, who claimed never to have been there. Michelle's diary included an entry that read: "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 by the Metropolitan Police did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was...

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