FRIDAY, March 19, is the 50th anniversary of an infamous Merseyside murder case, The Cameo Conspiracy.

Author George Skelly, through Bebington-based publisher David Roberts at AVID, has published a book of that title to commemorate the murders.

On Saturday night, March 19, 1949, the manager of the Cameo cinema in Liverpool, 44-year-old Leonard Thomas and his assistant John Catterall, 30, were brutally gunned down during a hold-up for just £5. 8d takings.

Just over a year later, on March 28, 1950, George Kelly, a 27-year-old unemployed labourer, was hanged for the crime. His co-accused Charles Connolly got 10 years' jail.

Half a century later, Skelly retraces the steps to 'expose a scandalous miscarriage of justice'.

This paperback is a cracker of a whodunnit mystery, a true-life drama set in postwar Merseyside with plenty of atmosphere.

This sobering tale of intrigue involves a pub crawl around the pubs of those days, some of which have hardly changed today. Maybe it's the place to read it for an added taste of realism?

The murder mystery crosses the Mersey, where 22-year-old Donald Johnson is in a Wallasey police station. He is due to appear in court with his 23-year-old married brother, nicknamed Judder, on a charge of robbing 33 shillings.

The book sets this scene: "Wallasey was a small borough next to Birkenhead, on the Cheshire side of the River Mersey. Its main claim to fame in the 1940s was the thriving resort of New Brighton."

As 'foreigners' from the wrong side of the Mersey, the two brothers from Toxteth knew they had no chance of getting bail. But Donald Johnson had an idea . . . He told a bobby: "Could you get in touch with with Liverpool police. I want to talk to them about the Cameo Murder."

What happened next led to the execution of one man and false imprisonment of another, says the book.

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