Murderers Or Martyrs


Book Description

A spell-binding account of an appalling miscarriage of justice. Charged with the "Cranborne Road murder" of Wavertree widow Alice Rimmer, two Manchester youths were hastily condemned by a Liverpool jury on the police-orchestrated lies of a criminal and two malleable young prostitutes. George Skelly's detailed account of the warped trial, predictable appeal result courtesy of 'hanging judge' Lord Goddard and the whitewash secret inquiry will enrage all who believe in justice. And if the men's prison letters (including from the condemned cells) sometimes make you laugh, they will make you weep far longer. Following his masterful expose of injustice in the Cameo Cinema murder case in 1950s Liverpool described in his book The Cameo Conspiracy, George Skelly now reveals a second police conspiracy-two years later in the same city involving the same senior detective-which this time led to the execution of two young men. In 2011, faced with countless proven contradictions and errors plus substantial previously undisclosed evidence, the Criminal Cases Review Commission unbelievably side-stepped the opportunity to refer this gross injustice to the Court of Appeal. So until justice is finally done, Teddy Devlin and Alfie Burns still lie together beneath the staff car park at Walton Prison, their only trace a tiny plaque numbered 55. 'A very powerful case of a miscarriage of justice': Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith PC QC As featured in the Liverpool Echo. Author George Skelly is also the author of The Cameo Conspiracy (3rd edition Waterside Press, 2011) about an equally disturbing case where an innocent man was hanged in a famous miscarriage of justice.




Martyrs and Murderers


Book Description

The House of Guise was one of the greatest princely families of the sixteenth century, or indeed of any age. Today they are best remembered through the tragic life of one family member, Mary Queen of Scots. But the story of her Guise uncles, aunts and cousins is if anything more gripping - and certainly of greater significance in the history of Europe. The Guise family rose to prominence as the greatest enemy of the House of Habsburg and had dreams of a great dynastic empire that included the British Isles and southern Italy. They were among the staunchest opponents of the Reformation, played a major role in re-fashioning Catholicism at the Council of Trent before plunging France into a bloody civil war that culminated in the infamous St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. They protected English Catholic refugees, plotted to invade England and overthrow Elizabeth I, and ended the century by unleashing Europe's first religious revolution, before succumbing in a counter-revolution that made them martyrs for the Catholic cause. Martyrs and Murderers is the first comprehensive modern biography of the Guise family in any language. In it Stuart Carroll unravels the legends which cast them either as heroes or as villains of the Reformation, weaving a remarkable story that challenges traditional assumptions about one of Europe's most turbulent and formative eras.




The Myth of Martyrdom


Book Description

Adam Lankford looks at the motivation of suicide bombers and other rampage killers.




A Passage to America


Book Description

On the last days of Osho, 1931-1990, in U.S.A. and India.




The Missing Martyrs


Book Description

In this startlingly counterintuitive book, a leading authority on Islamic movements demonstrates that terrorist groups are thoroughly marginal in the Muslim world. Charles Kurzman draws on government sources, public opinion surveys, election results, and in-depth interviews with Muslims in the Middle East and around the world, finding that while young Muslims are indeed angry at the West, they are simply not attracted to terrorist methods. This revised edition, updated to include the self-proclaimed "Islamic State," concludes that fear of terrorism should be brought into alignment with the actual level of threat, and that government policies and public opinion should be based on evidence rather than alarmist hyperbole.




The Scariff Martyrs


Book Description

' This incredible book is very, very important'. Damien Dempsey In November 2008, Tomás Mac Conmara sat with a 105 five-year-old woman at a nursing home in Clare. While gently moving through her memories, he asked the east Clare native; 'Do you remember the time that four lads were killed on the Bridge of Killaloe?'. Almost immediately, the woman's countenance changed to deep outward sadness. Her recollection took him back to 17th November 1920, when news of the brutal death of four men, who became known as the Scariff Martyrs, was revealed to the local community. Late the previous night, on the bridge of Killaloe they were shot by British Forces, who claimed they had attempted to escape. Locals insisted they were murdered. A story remembered for 100 years is now fully told. This incident presents a remarkable confluence of dimensions. The young rebels committed to a cause. Their betrayal by a spy, their torture and evident refusal to betray comrades, the loneliness and liminal nature of their site of death on a bridge. The withholding of their dead bodies and their collective burial. All these dimensions bequeath a moment which carries an enduring quality that has reverberated across the generations and continues to strike a deep chord within the local landscape of memory in East Clare and beyond.




The Cameo Conspiracy


Book Description

The definitive book on the case which led to a posthumous pardon. A classic within the True Crime genre. The notorious Cameo Cinema murder case of 1949 is one of Britain’s legal cause célèbres. But for over half a century the convictions of two young men, George Kelly and Charles Connolly, went unchallenged, until — following publication of The Cameo Conspiracy — both were exonerated by the Court of Appeal in 2003. This made it the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British legal history. In this powerful, meticulously-researched account the author painstakingly exposes the evil police conspiracy which sent Kelly to the gallows and Connolly to ten years’ imprisonment. He recounts how the men were framed by corrupt investigators and condemned by an amoral legal establishment, making it a terrible indictment of human wickedness by those supposed to uphold the law. This revised third edition of the definitive book on the case not only reveals a diabolical miscarriage of justice but comprehensively describes the arrests, trials and execution as well as Kelly’s successful posthumous appeal. It also authentically chronicles 1940s Liverpool, its pubs, post-war rationing, shebeens, black market and the colourful and seedy characters of the city’s underworld. Reviews “Skelly is a very good writer”—Norman Mailer “He writes from the heart with his life’s blood”—John Schlesinger “The best book I have ever read”—Former Police Sergeant, Chris Kelly “One man’s relentless hunt for the truth”—Liverpool Echo “A truly brilliant book … memorable and thought-provoking”—John Howley “An impeccable account of the infamous Cameo case”—Professor E Rex Makin As featured in the BBC TV’s Murder, Mystery and My Family.




La Verdad


Book Description

Lucia Cerna's firsthand account of the Jesuit martyrdoms in 1989 (where she was a housekeeper at the Jesuit residence), and her stories of her long journey through the US immigration and economic system, are complemented in this book by commentary and explanatory text by Mary Jo Ignoffo, who also translated and adapted interviews she had with Cerna.







The Irish Assassins


Book Description

A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the “compulsively readable” writer (The Guardian). One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially made surgeon’s blades. They put an end to the new spirit of goodwill that had been burgeoning between British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland’s leader Charles Stewart Parnell as the men forged a secret pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland—with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone’s protégé, to play an instrumental role in helping to do so. In a story that spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris, New York, Cannes, and Cape Town, Julie Kavanagh thrillingly traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From the adulterous affair that caused Parnell’s downfall; to Queen Victoria’s prurient obsession with the assassinations; to the investigation spearheaded by Superintendent John Mallon, also known as the “Irish Sherlock Holmes,” culminating in the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas, The Irish Assassins brings us intimately into this fascinating story that shaped Irish politics and engulfed an Empire. Praise for Julie Kavanagh’s Nureyev: The Life “Easily the best biography of the year.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “The definitive biography of ballet’s greatest star whose ego was as supersized as his talent.” —Tina Brown, award-winning journalist and author