The Dream Solution: The Murder of Alison Shaughnessy - and the Fight to Name Her Killer

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She and Shaughnessy had undoubtedly cheated on Alison as that expression is commonly used in a sexual relationship".

The Dream Solution tells the story of his two crusades - the first to prove the sisters' innocence, the second to be allowed to tell the world of their guilt. Three months after Alison Shaughnessy's husband started the affair with one of the sisters, in June 1990, Alison Shaughnessy and her husband, who at that time were only living together, married in Kilkenny. Still it was obvious that JJ had lied at some point, either in her first three statements or in her later interview with police. However, there was no sign of a break-in, and she had taken time to pick up the post as she came in, suggesting to police that she felt comfortable with her killer(s) as they came in with her. Bizarrely, O'Mahoney manages to present himself simultaneously as a man of uncompromising conviction and a piece of human flotsam, an impression scarcely mitigated by his at times horrifying candour and self insights.However, it was heard that Alison Shaughnessy's husband paid for the sister to attend the wedding ceremony and arranged for her to look after the clinic garden, for which he was responsible, whilst he was away on his honeymoon. But in August 1991 she was arrested in an early morning raid and cautioned for conspiracy to murder. When she entered the flat with John, Michelle picked up the dead woman, meaning that any forensic evidence on the body that linked Alison to Michelle could now be explained by this action.

And although it was never argued before the judges yesterday, one proposed ground of appeal was that evidence had been unearthed which might suggest a young vagrant had committed the crime. In the middle of the trial the Sun used stills from a home-video of the Shaughnessys’ wedding under the headline ‘Cheat’s Kiss’. Sitting in the cafe, there was a man in the phone box and he looked like one of the CIDs and she went white…By her conversation, she has lied in court and she is frightened. It is hard to feel confidence in the views expressed by someone whose judgement is so appalling and whose moral compass so directionless. The police considered whether Michelle and Lisa Taylor could be charged with perjury or perverting the course of justice (they could not be re-charged with murder because of the double jeopardy laws in place at the time).After studying Politics at Leicester University, he trained as a journalist on the Wolverhampton Express and Star, then worked as a casual reporter on the current-affairs TV programme This Week. The pathologist said he could not be exact about the time of Alison’s death; she might have died two hours either side of six o’clock. Police attention was focused on her and she resolved to shield Lisa from the same kind of ordeal, keeping her out of the picture entirely.

Michelle also admitted at trial that she felt jealous of Alison and that she still loved John, despite the affair "dying". The law governing disclosure of relevant material had been defined and underlined in highly publicised Court of Appeal judgments. The social worker explained that he had often seen Derek Williams sleeping rough around the Strand and that more recently he had come across him in a squat in Battersea. The final straw may have been, alleged the prosecution, when John told Michelle only days before the murder that he was planning to give up the flower arranging sessions he did with her every Monday, which was the only time they had together and when they invariably had sex. Reporters swarmed all over the trial, chewing over the sexual innuendo and the detail of the victim’s wounds, regurgitating the whole affair in stories which presented Crown allegations as though they were fact.Michelle was repeatedly described as a jealous mistress; her journal was a diary of hate; the Sun ran a front-page picture of her kissing John O’Shaughnessy under the headline “Cheats kiss”. Michelle, 22, and her sister, Lisa, 19, had served nearly two years in prison for murder before they emerged yesterday from the Court of Appeal, pale, shocked and stunned, to a tumultuous welcome to freedom. The prosecution said that only the murderers would have done this, as only they would have known by that stage what specific period of time they needed to cover their tracks for. I always had my doubts about those sisters , and although the author is a dubious character I truly believe their sentence was quashed under the most ridiculous circumstances.

However, it was heard that two girls had been seen leaving Alison Shaughnessy's flat around the time she was murdered, that one of the sisters fingerprints were found inside the flat and that one of the sisters, the elder one, had been having an affair with Alison Shaughnessy's husband and had kept a diary detailing the relationship in which she had expressed hate for Alison Shaughnessy and in which she had written that she wished that Alison Shaughnessy would just vanish so that she could have her husband to herself. It was said that the older sister, who had been having the affair with Alison Shaughnessy's husband, didn't like being a 'bit on the side', and had so recruited her younger sister to help her kill Alison Shaughnessy.Michelle picked her up, eliminating any possibility of testing her clothes, car or hands for forensic evidence.