Dead Men Walking

by Bill Wallace

  Gray had been drinking for much of that day – in fact, he had been drinking for much of the past few months. Today, however, he was drinking to build up enough Dutch courage to kill a man. He travelled by train to New York from Syracuse and then took a bus to Long Island. Arriving at Queen’s Village where Ruth and Albert lived, he spent an hour just walking around, stopping every now and then to take a swig from a hip flask. Finally, he summoned up enough courage to go into Ruth’s house through the back door.

  The house was empty, the Snyders having left earlier to go to a party and not expected to be back until late. He hid, as arranged, in a spare room where Ruth had left a pair of rubber gloves, a bottle of chloroform and a heavy window weight.

  At around two the following morning the family returned and while the others prepared for bed, Ruth opened the door to the spare room to make sure he was there. A little later, she came back in her nightdress and the two of them had sex while her husband slept just down the corridor. Ruth then led Gray to the master bedroom where Albert was asleep. He took with him the weight, the gloves and the chloroform. they went into the room and he stood on one side of the bed while she stood on the other. Raising the weight high above his head, he brought it down on Albert’s head. It was a hesitant, ineffective blow, however, and Albert let out a roar and sat up attempting to grab hold of his assailant. Gray shouted to Ruth for help, using his pet name for her, ‘Momsie’.

  Ruth Snyder remained cool, however. Grabbing the weight from Gray’s trembling hands, she smashed it down on her husband’s skull, killing him instantly.

  They went downstairs and talked through the rest of their plan while they had a drink to steady their nerves. Gray pushed over a few chairs to make it look like there had been a scuffle, tied Ruth’s hands and feet and put a gag around her mouth. After he left, Ruth waited for a while before banging on her daughter Lorraine’s bedroom door. Lorraine hurriedly removed the gag from Ruth’s mouth and Ruth shouted to her to run next door and get help. The police were called.

  The investigating officers were immediately suspicious. Ruth listed items that the burglar had taken but all of them were found to be hidden in the house. They noted that the burglar had left little evidence of actually having had to break into the house and they did not think Mrs Snyder behaved like a woman who had just been terrorised by a killer. Foolishly, when a detective showed her a piece of paper with the letters ‘JG’ on it, she asked him what Judd Gray had to do with it. It emerged that the letters were actually the initials of Jessie Guischard, a young woman that Albert had dated who had died before he met Ruth. Police immediately became interested in this Judd Gray and when they began to question her, she immediately caved in, blaming Gray for everything.

  They found him hours later, hiding in a Syracuse hotel room. He screamed that he was innocent and that he had not been to New York. That was fine until they presented him with the train ticket that he had earlier tossed into the room’s waste paper basket. He confessed and like Ruth, blamed it all on his partner in crime. The carping continued all the way to the trial, as each threw accusations at the other.

  When it finally arrived, the trial was a circus. Celebrities such as film director D.W. Griffith, author Will Durant and, of course, Damon Runyan, sneering at the stupidity of the two main players in the drama, turned out in droves.

  Ruth’s attorney launched the defence by saying that her husband had driven her out of the house by pining for Jessie Guischard even though she was long dead. She claimed also that Judd Gray had persuaded her to take out a $50,000 double indemnity insurance policy on Albert Snyder. He put Ruth on the stand and she acted like a wronged woman, describing how Albert had paid no attention to her most of the time, only taking her out occasionally. The affair with Gray was, of course, barely mentioned. When she did talk about him it was disparagingly. She spoke of how he drank too much while she rarely touched a drop and did not smoke. She even suggested that Gray had once sent her poison with instructions to give it to Albert.

  Judd Gray took the stand and his attorney described how he had been duped by a, ‘designing, deadly conscienceless, abnormal woman, a human serpent, a human fiend in the disguise of a woman.’ He added that he had been ‘drawn into this hopeless chasm when reason was gone, mind was gone, manhood was gone and when his mind was weakened by lust and passion.’

  Gray testified that Ruth had tried to murder Albert several times previously, giving him poison when he had hiccups, trying to gas him and putting sleeping powders in his drinks. He claimed that she alone had taken out the insurance policy and that it had nothing to do with him. He described how it had been Ruth who had dealt the fatal blow that night. As he talked, Ruth’s sobs echoed noisily in the courtroom.

  The jury took a mere ninety-eight minutes to come up with a verdict of guilty for each of them. They were sentenced to death.

  On 12 January 1928, Judd Gray was the first to be strapped into the electric chair. The warden described how he had found him smiling in his cell when he had arrived to escort him to the execution chamber. His wife had written a letter to him in which she told him she forgave him. He told the warden that he was ready to go, that he had ‘nothing to fear.’

  Ruth followed him down the corridor minutes later. She had earlier watched the prison lights flicker as the current had coursed into the body of her former lover. She said as she was being led to the electric chair she said that God had forgiven her; now she hoped the world would.

  She sat down, was strapped in and was frozen for eternity in Tom Howard’s photograph.

  Ruth Ellis

  Hangman Albert Pierrepoint had done a good job. She had a fracture-dislocation of the spine and a two-inch gap and transverse separation of the spinal cord. For good measure, both wings of her hyoid, the horseshoe-shaped bone between the chin and the thyroid cartilage, were broken and her larynx was fractured. It was what was supposed to happen to a person who has been the victim of a hanging.

  Her execution, however, would linger over the English legal system for decades to come, long after capital punishment had been banned and it would continue to resonate in the lives of those who had known her. Two of them would commit suicide and another would die of a broken heart.

  She was born Ruth Hornby in Rhyl, North Wales on 9 October 1926, the third of six children of Arthur Hornby and his Belgian wife Elisaberta. Arthur, a musician on cruise liners, struggled to make ends meet and was forced to take a job as a porter at a mental hospital. His musical career over, he sought solace in alcohol and became abusive to his wife and two daughters. He would not be the last angry, drunk man to enter Ruth Ellis’s life.

  By 1941, Ruth was working as a waitress in Reading where her father was now employed as a caretaker. He moved to London later that year, finding employment as a chauffeur in Southwark. Ruth moved in with him and found some menial work. Now sixteen, she had begun to bleach her hair blonde and was a pretty girl, brimming with confidence. She spent her nights dancing and frequenting London’s drinking clubs. Just after Christmas 1944, however, she met a French-Canadian airman and got pregnant. Unfortunately, he already had a wife and family in Canada and he returned to them leaving Ruth and her unborn child behind. The baby, a boy, born in September 1945, was christened Clare – his father’s surname – but was always known as Andy.

  In order to keep herself and her baby, she found work as a model at a camera club. It was around this time that she met a wealthy club owner, Morris Conley, and he offered her a job as a hostess in his clubs. She earned good money, met a better class of people and she was soon managing a number of his clubs across the West End. She worked with Conley for nine years, living the good life while leaving her sister, Muriel, to look after Andy.

  In 1950, she was pregnant again, the father being one of her regular customers. She had an abortion and was back at work soon after. Later that year, however, she met the man she would marry.

  George Ellis was a Mancunian who had trained to be a dentist. Married once
before, it had ended in a haze of boozy arguments with his wife. He got over it by spending all his spare time drinking in West End clubs and bars. Ruth and George enjoyed a whirlwind courtship and he showered her with gifts and treated her like a queen. Slowly she began to fall for him and could see a life of respectability and financial stability stretching ahead for her and six-year-old Andy. She moved in with him.

  The one cloud on the horizon, however, was his excessive drinking, but after she finally persuaded him to be treated for alcoholism at a clinic in Surrey, they were married on 8 November 1950. In early 1951, George found work in a dental practice in Southampton and they moved to the Hampshire village of Warash. He started drinking again, however, and they began to fight both at home and in public. She was also worried that he was having relationships with other women. In May 1951, George was fired from the dental practice and as they separated and came back together again countless times, she discovered she was pregnant. On 2 October 1951, she gave birth to a girl, Georgina. But the marriage was over, Ellis divorcing her on the grounds of cruelty. The fiery marriage had lasted less than a year and, aged twenty-five, Ruth found herself with two children and no means of support. She contacted Morris Conley and was soon back working for him. She moved into one of his properties and the good times returned.

  In the hot summer of 1953, she began making new acquaintances. They were a group of racing drivers, exuberant young men who risked their lives on the track every weekend. Led By Mike Hawthorne, they were based at the Steering Wheel Club, located opposite the Hyde Park Hotel. It was there, amongst this crowd of drivers, socialites and groupies that she first set eyes on David Blakely.

  At first sight, she thought him ‘a pompous little ass’ and the two of them argued when first introduced. He was the product of a good public school, Shrewsbury, and came from a wealthy background. Ruth’s daughter, Georgina, would later describe him as a ‘sponger and a ponce’ who rarely bought anyone else a drink, but was content to benefit from other people’s hospitality. A racing driver friend described him as a ‘supercilious shit’ but added that he was likable. The only things that interested him, however, were cars and, eventually, Ruth. She fell head over heels in love with him but all he would give her would be heartache.

  In October that year, Conley appointed Ruth manager of the Little Club on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge. The best thing about it was that she got to live in the two-bedroomed flat above the club, rent free.

  The first customer she served at her new club was Blakely who was a member there, and soon they were sharing the space upstairs, too. But just a month later, he became engaged to a woman called Linda Dawson. It did not stop him spending week nights with Ruth, however.

  But matters became even more complex when Ruth met a man named Desmond Cussen, referred to at her trial as ‘her alternative lover’. She began seeing him, she claimed later, as a way of getting back at the diffident and unfaithful Blakely, who had gone to drive in the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans and weeks later had still not returned. Cussen had been a bomber pilot in World War Two, after which he had trained to be an accountant. When Ruth met him, he was a director of the family business, a chain of wholesale and retail tobacconists in London and South Wales. A habitué of the Steering Wheel Club, he and Blakely disliked each other intensely.

  Cussen fell deeply in love with Ruth, but was frustrated by the fact that she was falling ever deeper in love with Blakely, even as he treated her badly. Coupled with that was the fact that Blakely was ten years younger than him. It was hard to see how he could win.

  Meanwhile, in 1954, George and Ruth decided it would be best if their daughter Georgina was put up for adoption. The environment in which Ruth lived was not suitable for bringing up a young girl.

  Early that year, Ruth met the Findlaters for the first time, Anthony ‘Ant’ Findlater, who worked for an engineering company, and his wife Carole, a journalist. They lived in Hammersmith and soon David Blakely was spending a lot of time with them, mainly because he had fallen for Carole. By the autumn of 1954, he was begging her, at twenty-seven – six years older than him – to run away with him. She almost did, but Ant succeeded in persuading her to stay.

  When Blakely returned from France, he broke off his engagement to Linda Dawson and asked Ruth to marry him. She had been fighting George Ellis’s divorce suit because she wanted to continue to receive the maintenance she had been receiving, but now decided to let it go ahead. Meanwhile, her son Andy went off to boarding school, all paid for by Desmond Cussen. Blakely, spending all his time building a racing car and earning nothing, persuaded Ruth to let him move in with her, but they began to become more jealous of each other’s relationships. Their arguments were also increasing in violence and Blakely was regularly beating Ruth.

  Eventually, she began to neglect her work at the Little Club and the takings plummeted. In December 1954, she either resigned or was sacked by Morris Conley. She moved into Desmond Cussen’s flat at Goodwood Court. Blakely was furious, of course, that she was living in Cussen’s flat, although she assured him she was not sleeping with him. But the rows continued and the pattern of violent confrontations followed by passionate reconciliations persisted.

  On 9 February, using money borrowed from Cussen, Ruth moved into 44 Egerton Gardens which at least meant she was not sharing with Cussen any more. It did not prevent their increasingly violent arguments, however. At the end of March she learned she was pregnant again, and the father could have been any one of a number of men. But she miscarried after another terrible fight with David during which he punched her in the face and in the stomach.

  In the second week of April everything came to a head. Ruth was feeling awful, suffering from a cold and the after-effects of her miscarriage. On Friday 8 April when David failed to return home, she phoned the Findlaters. Although they said he was not there, she was certain he was. She was exhausted by it all, by two years of struggling to make it work and now she thought it truly was over.

  She kept phoning the Findlaters until they left the phone off the hook. She called Cussen and got him to drive her to their house in Hampstead but no one would answer her knocks at the door. Outside she found David’s green Vanguard car and smashed its windows. It was 2 a.m. and the police were called. They found her screaming in the street and Ant in pyjamas trying to calm her down. David Blakely, no doubt would be hiding inside, as usual. The police left without taking any action and Cussen drove Ruth home.

  Over the weekend, she returned to Hampstead several times, now irrationally convinced that David was having an affair with the Findlaters’ nanny. She was losing her grip on reality and spent the weekend fuelled by drugs and alcohol.

  It was Easter Sunday and around 9 a.m. she rang the Findlaters’ number again, telling Ant, ‘I hope you are having an enjoyable holiday, because you have ruined mine.’ He hung up.

  At 8.45 p.m., Carole ran out of cigarettes and David offered to drive down to the Magdala pub to buy some. Meanwhile, Ruth was driving north through London to Hampstead with Desmond Cussen to confront her lover for the final time. At the Findlaters’ house there was no sign of the Vanguard and she surmised that he would probably be at the Magdala. When they arrived there, sure enough the green car was parked outside. After kissing Cussen on the cheek, she got out and walked across the road while he drove off. She peered into the pub and spotted David, drinking with his friend, Clive Gunnell. She moved along the front of the pub, slipping into the shadowy doorway of a newsagent next door.

  A short while later, Blakely and Gunnell emerged and as David bent to put his key in the Vanguard’s lock, she stepped from the shadows and shouted ‘David!’ Either he did not hear her or chose to ignore her, but he continued without looking round. She shouted his name again, taking a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver from her handbag.

  Blakely looked up and took fright. He ran around to the back of the car where Gunnell was standing, but she pulled the trigger, firing twice. He screamed ‘Clive!’ as the bulle
ts ripped into him. Blood sprayed from his wounds onto the shiny metal of his beloved Vanguard. She followed him round the vehicle, ordering Gunnell to get out of the way. As Blakely tried to run, she shot him again and he fell to the ground. As he lay on the ground, face down, she pumped another shot into him at point-blank range. As she stood above him, she raised the gun to her head but there was just a dull click when she squeezed the trigger. She then pulled the trigger again and the bullet fired this time, ricocheting off the pavement and hitting a woman nearby in the hand. Her bullets exhausted, she told Clive Gunnell to go and call the police. However, there was an off-duty police officer in the pub who came out, took the gun from her and arrested her.

  It took the jury less than twenty-three minutes on Tuesday 21 June, only the second day of the trial, to find Ruth Ellis guilty. She was given the only sentence possible – death.

  On the morning of 13 July 1955, a crowd of hundreds gathered outside Holloway Prison. Appeals had been denied and petitions signed by tens of thousands of people had failed to change the rigid process of the law. Ruth’s son Andy was told his mother had gone to Italy to model swimwear.

  She was led into the execution chamber by Pierrepoint, the hangman who had hanged more than four hundred men and women in the past twenty-five years. Her wrists were strapped behind her back and her ankles shackled. A white hood was placed over her head and Pierrepoint made his final adjustments before pulling the lever that opened the trapdoor. Ruth Ellis was dead less than ten seconds after entering the execution chamber.

  In the decades since, there has been much speculation about the murder of David Blakely. Many questions have been asked about the role of Desmond Cussen. Ruth’s son Andy recalled seeing Cussen clean the gun and give it to Ruth and some suggest that he had taught her how to use it, even taking her for target practice. Ruth, however, had told police that she had acquired the weapon three years earlier in settlement of a drinks bill at the Little Club. No one recalls this, however, or remembers ever having seen the gun before.