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

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And the police were not interested in her: the pathologist estimated that Alison had been killed at six o’clock and there were plenty of people who had seen Michelle in the clinic then, arranging the flowers with John. At six that evening, Michelle went with John, as she often did, to arrange flowers in the patients’ rooms.

Defence lawyers argued at the time that this case demonstrated how the collusion of the press and the prosecution lead to inaccurate, incomplete and sensationalist journalism.

For their appeal in 1993 their defence team found the initial informal notes made by an officer who had been speaking to the witness Dr Unsworth-White when he first reported his sighting of the two women coming out of the flat at 5:45 that afternoon.

This claim was discredited by the fingerprint expert, who insisted that the fingerprints were no older than 72 hours old and certainly not as old as two or three weeks, meaning that Michelle's account did not explain the presence of the fingerprints.A witness reported seeing two women running from Shaughnessy's building after the murder, and fingerprints found at the scene matched those of Michelle and her sister Lisa Taylor, who claimed never to have been there. Shaughnessy was newly married, but her husband was having an affair with a 20-year-old woman, Michelle Taylor. I didn’t sleep at all for about a week and I was just speeding around and not listening to anything anybody told me and crying all the time.

Since then he has made documentaries, written for The Observer and New Statesman, and spent a period in the BBC's Drama Serials Department.

Others argued that the press coverage was no worse than in other cases, considering it was "the perfect tabloid story".

Eric Milne, one of two professional witnesses, indicated in the witness-box that Lisa’s fingerprint on the Shaughnessys’ front door was recent, and Professor Rufus Crompton, the pathologist, said that the violence suffered by Alison was probably inflicted by a woman: ‘it would suggest the capability of a female.

A window had been forced open in the Shaughnessys’ flat, and jewellery stolen, including a bracelet that Alison always wore. However, the friend who had given them their alibi, later told the pol 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 court heard that the elder sister didn't admit to having the affair with Alison Shaughnessy's husband until two months after the murder. The sister whose card it was said that it was not the first time that money had been taken out of her account without her knowing, however, it was noted that the sister had never reported her card lost or stolen or complained before about money being taken out of her account by anyone other than herself before.