TWO sisters wept in court yesterday as they were jailed for life for
the murder of bank clerk Alison Shaughnessy.
Michelle Taylor, 21, who had an affair with Mrs Shaughnessy's husband,
was convicted of murder with her 19-year-old sister, Lisa. The verdicts
led to a wave of emotion at the Old Bailey.
Mrs Shaughnessy's mother, friends of the sisters, and even a woman
juror broke down in tears.
The Taylors' parents, Derek and Ann, put their arms round each other
and gasped when the verdicts were given.
Mr Justice Blofeld told the sisters: ''After a lengthy trial and an
exhaustive and careful consideration of the evidence, you have been
found guilty of this terrible crime -- of killing Alison Shaughnessy,
the wife of John Shaughnessy, whose life was all before her and whose
life is now no more.''
Outside the court Mr Shaughnessy, 30, embraced members of Mrs
Shaughnessy's family. ''It's good to see it's all over and justice has
been done at the end of the day,'' he said.
But his wife's mother, Mrs Breda Blackmore, said: ''There will be no
justice for Mrs Shaughnessy's death. I want the world to know that those
two girls did kill Alison. That's all I want.''
Her husband, Bob, looking shaken, added: ''Now we know who actually
killed Alison. That's all we wanted to know.''
Asked about their feelings towards Mr Shaughnessy, Mrs Blackmore, 48,
added: ''We are still a family. We will be talking to John, we will all
get together as a family.''
Detective Superintendent Chris Burke, who was in charge of the
investigation, said he was delighted with the verdict.
The sisters had ''coldly, calculatedly and wickedly manipulated their
way into a young bride's home and brutally stabbed her to death 54
times.''
He said of Mr Shaughnessy: ''What he has done morally is not for me to
make a statement about, you have all heard about his part in it.''
The sisters' solicitor Michael Holmes said: ''There will be an appeal.
I have seen them in the cells, and they are in tears and very upset as
you would expect them to be. They cannot believe the verdict.''
Mrs Shaughnessy 21, was stabbed in a frenzied attack after the sisters
duped their way into her home in Battersea, London.
Michelle bitterly chronicled her hatred for Mrs Shaughnessy and her
passion for her Dublin-born lover in her diaries, claiming she slept
with him on the eve of his marriage, the court heard.
On June 3 last year, nearly a year after the Shaughnessys were married
in Piltdown, County Kilkenny, she embarked on a cold-blooded plan to
kill her rival.
The sisters drove to the Shaughnessy home and killed Mrs Shaughnessy
after she arrived back from work at Barclays Bank in The Strand, London.
Before the body was found they created a false alibi, persuading a
friend they were at the private Churchill Clinic in Lambeth, where both
Michelle and Mr Shaughnessy worked.
Then Michelle calmly returned to the scene where she attacked Mrs
Shaughnessy only hours earlier.
She gave Mr Shaughnessy a lift after their Monday night routine
arranging flowers for the clinic.
The pair often made love on Mondays when the affair was at its height.
But now it had ended. Mr Shaughnessy told Michelle he wanted to spend
more time with his wife and talked of starting a family.
As he walked in to find his wife's body at the top of the stairs,
Michelle feigned horror and ran to a nearby pub to call police.
After the verdicts, Mr and Mrs Taylor left the Old Bailey through a
rear exit with coats over their heads, refusing to answer reporters'
questions.
Friends of the sisters came out of court with tears streaming down
their faces.
Mrs Shaughnessy's sister Susan, 26, said: ''She was happy for all 11
months she was married.''
Her brother Robert, 19, told reporters: ''I'm just relieved it's all
over. We're going to go and have a drink in a pub to celebrate.''
Lisa Taylor will start her life sentence in youth custody. Prisoners
transfer to an adult jail when they are 21.
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