The Cameo Cinema, a modest 200-seat venue converted from a former Methodist chapel, stood at the corner of Bird Street and Webster Road in the Wavertree neighborhood of Liverpool, England. On the evening of March 19th, 1949, patrons settled in to watch Bond Street, a lighthearted British comedy-drama, oblivious to a horror that would shortly unfold upstairs.
Forty-four-year-old Leonard Thomas, the affable manager who had helmed the cinema for years, and his trusted deputy, thirty-year-old John Bernard Catterall, had retreated to the manager’s office to count the day’s takings: around £50 in cash, a tidy sum in austerity-era Britain.
Sometime between nine thirty and ten p.m., as the film’s credits rolled and audiences filed out, a masked intruder burst into the office. Armed with a pistol, later identified as a .32 automatic, the gunman demanded the bag of money. When Leonard and Bernard hesitated, the perpetrator opened fire. Leonard was shot twice in the chest and died almost instantly, slumped over his desk. Bernard, hit in the abdomen and leg, collapsed to the floor and lingered for several agonizing hours before succumbing to his wounds in the hospital. Forensic analysis later revealed the shots had been fired from a left-handed position, a significant detail that would haunt the investigation.
The robber fled empty-handed, the cash untouched on the desk—a bizarre twist suggesting panic rather than greed drove the violence. Eyewitnesses glimpsed a figure in a brown overcoat, face obscured by a scarf and hat pulled low, scrambling down a fire escape and vanishing into the night along Smithdown Road. Adding to the eeriness, the cinema’s telephone wires had been severed at the base of a spiral staircase, hinting at premeditation. This wasn’t the Cameo’s first brush with crime; just weeks earlier, on February 2nd, three youths had broken in but fled without incident, an event unrelated to the murders.
Liverpool City Police mobilized what was then the biggest manhunt in the city’s history. Over 9,500 doors were knocked on, and 75,000 statements collected in the ensuing weeks. Detective Chief Inspector Herbert Balmer, a seasoned officer known for his dogged pursuit of leads, spearheaded the effort. Initial clues were scant: a partial footprint, discarded bullet casings, and whispers of a prior break-in. The public, gripped by fear and fascination, flooded police stations with tips, while national newspapers splashed lurid headlines across front pages.
Months dragged on with no arrests. Then, in late 1949, a breakthrough, or so it seemed, came from an unlikely source. Convicted criminals Jacqueline “Jackie” Dickson, a sex worker with a history of petty crime, and her pimp James Northam, contacted Balmer with explosive information: they claimed to have overheard two men plotting the robbery in the Bee Hive pub on Mount Pleasant. In exchange for immunity, they implicated twenty-seven-year-old George Kelly, a petty thief and drifter, as the gunman, and twenty-six-year-old Charles Connolly, a laborer with a record for brawling, as his lookout and planner.
Kelly and Connolly, who insisted they’d never met before their arrests, provided solid alibis: Kelly had spent the evening pub-crawling, heavy with drink, corroborated by witnesses; Connolly clocked in at a warehouse job. But police pressure mounted. Another suspect, Donald Johnson, a known Liverpool criminal, was briefly detained after boasting of details only the killer could know, like the victims’ positions during the shooting. Johnson admitted scouting the cinema but refused to name the gunman, citing a “religious oath.” His statement, tainted by allegations of police coercion, was suppressed.
A prison informant, Robert Graham, added fuel to the fire, claiming Kelly and Connolly confessed to him in Walton Prison’s exercise yard. Graham, facing his own charges, stood to gain leniency—details that would later unravel the case.
The drama unfolded at Liverpool Assizes in St. George’s Hall, drawing crowds that spilled onto the streets. The first joint trial, beginning January 12th, 1950, before Mr. Justice Roland Oliver, painted a vivid, if flawed, picture. Prosecutors alleged Kelly, left-handed and desperate for cash, borrowed a scarf mask from Dickson and loaded his pistol in the pub, while Connolly cased the joint. Northam and Dickson testified to the plot, though their criminal pasts and motives for testifying raised red flags. Graham’s cellblock confessions sealed the narrative, earning him a reduced sentence.
The defense, led by the formidable Rose Heilbron KC for Kelly, hammered inconsistencies: Kelly was right-handed, contradicting ballistics; no one corroborated the pub meeting; Connolly’s alibi timesheets, suspiciously altered post-arrest, held up under scrutiny. After days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked, forcing a retrial.
In the second trial before Mr. Justice Cassels, Kelly faced the gallows alone. Connolly, offered a plea deal, admitted conspiracy to avoid a murder charge. On February 8th, 1950, Kelly was convicted and sentenced to death. His appeal failed, and on March 28th, 1950, just over a year after the murders, he was hanged at Walton Prison by executioners Albert Pierrepoint and Harry Allen, protesting his innocence to the end. Connolly served seven years before release in 1957.
Justice Cassels lauded the informants, awarding Northam and Dickson £30 each for their “bravery.” Yet cracks appeared quickly: Dickson was soon jailed for violent robbery, Northam and Graham racked up further convictions, and whispers of police coaching emerged.
For decades, Kelly’s family, aided by solicitor Rex Makin and researcher George Skelly, fought to clear his name. In the 1990s, businessman Luigi Santangeli uncovered archived files revealing a bombshell: a 1949 statement from another prisoner claiming a third man confessed to the murders, withheld from trials. This, combined with evidence of fabricated testimonies and suppressed alibis, prompted the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case.
On June 6th, 2003, the Court of Appeal quashed both convictions as “unsafe,” acknowledging a profound miscarriage of justice. Kelly’s remains were exhumed from Walton’s unmarked graves and reburied with honors at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Connolly, in a 1997 BBC interview before his death, reaffirmed their innocence: “We were framed.” An official apology followed for Kelly’s family.
The Cameo Cinema case, once Britain’s longest murder trial, endures as a cautionary tale of flawed policing and unreliable witnesses. Balmer, the lead detective, later investigated the 1951 Beatrice Rimmer murder, securing convictions later questioned for eerie similarities to the Cameo framing. Police records were destroyed, and the file remains closed with no reopening planned.
As of this writing, the double murder of Leonard Thomas and Bernard Catterall at the Cameo Cinema is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 