by Harry Verity
Another officer walked into the room and whispered something to the detective questioning Edward. They both stood up.
‘Interview terminated…’ he said, turning the recorder off, and he led him out of the room.
‘Can I go?’ he asked.
‘Not a chance, mate,’ the officer said, laughing.
‘What?’
‘It’s the cells for you.’
And, his worst nightmares confirmed, Edward, alone, without even a glimpse of Violet, was led into a room no bigger than a bathroom and the door slammed abruptly in his face.
‘I’m innocent,’ he protested, and he felt like banging on the cell door, creating a racket, but he knew it would be of no use. All it would serve to do was play against him in court… Yes, it was becoming more and more obvious where the interview was heading. Oh, why hadn’t he listened to Violet? Why had he ever pursued Michael O’Shea? It didn’t seem to matter how much he protested, how much the evidence pointed in the other direction, he was being fitted up for a crime he didn’t commit.
Later that evening, as he lay in his cell, his face full of tears, Edward reflected on the world he saw around him, the cynicism, the lies, the exploitation that he had been a part of. He had cared little for the people who came on the show. And he had done little to improve their tragic lives. He was disgusted with himself for thinking only of what would make good television, of what would allow him to keep his job. He had been burnt by the fire that he had helped to fuel; maybe he deserved everything he got…
31
Edward was led into the interview room again but this time there were two detectives. They started the tape and asked once again if he would like a solicitor. He declined.
‘What can you tell us about your time working on the Michael O’Shea Show, Mr Lewis?’ the female officer asked. ‘Did you see anything suspicious?’ What was this? A change of tack? Good cop, bad cop?
‘Am I not a suspect?’ Edward asked.
‘You’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder, abduction, and rape. If you’re innocent you should answer our questions and assist us with our investigations as best you can.’
Edward had no idea what his rights were: surely he had to be informed whether he was a suspect or a witness? But he didn’t know for sure. For the first time, he felt exposed without a solicitor. He had no way of knowing what traps he was about to walk into. What if this was a cunning way of getting him to implicate himself?
The officer repeated the question. ‘What can you tell us about your time working on the Michael O’Shea Show?’
Edward wasn’t sure he could answer such a vague question so he simply repeated what he knew to be the truth. ‘I walked into Michael O’Shea’s dressing room and I saw him with his hands around a young girl. Her name is Tiffany. If you arrest Michael and give her protection, a safe house, then she’ll tell you…’
‘We have tried to trace Miss Roe and, would you believe it, we can’t find her.’
‘Check the recordings. She was on the show. Check the notes we made, the CCTV from the studio.’
‘There is no doubt Tiffany Roe appeared as a guest on the Michael O’Shea Show but, conveniently perhaps, television production companies do not make a habit of installing CCTV in their star guests’ dressing rooms…’
‘What!’
How could this be happening to him? How could he have been set up so easily, so glaringly obviously?
‘You have to do something!’ Edward screamed as the realisation that he might not be getting out at all started to dawn on him. One thing was for sure, now he definitely needed some legal advice.
He changed tack again: ‘Tiffany is in danger, so is her twin. If you don’t find her, she could be Michael O’Shea’s next victim.’
‘You are here to answer my questions,’ the officer said, shutting Edward down. ‘That is what you have to do if you want any chance of getting out.’
So Edward caved and asked for a solicitor. The interview was suspended and he was sent back to his cell to wait. Only guilty people ever needed solicitors; nobody innocent ever had the kinds of conversations Edward was about to have, nor did they sit in a room for half an hour weighing up the balance of evidence against them, contemplating whether to give a no-comment interview.
In the end, Edward decided he was going to answer the questions, despite the advice of the duty solicitor who had been allocated to him. Edward had decided that he was a truthful man, an honest person and that the best he could do was to co-operate and hope that his interrogators would eventually come around.
‘Tell me everything you remember about the night of the first disappearance, that of Minnie Jenkins.’
Edward narrated everything he could. How he and Violet had mounted a lengthy PR campaign to stop the papers getting hold of the story and how he and Braithwaite had gone looking for her. He told the entire truth, he knew there was no use withholding anything or trying to embellish what had happened but he knew it sounded patchy as he said it. Why, if he was so innocent, had they tried to stop Minnie’s mother Jo phoning the police for over a week? And since he knew the girl’s address it was surely quite possible that he could have parked up outside and whisked her away one evening?
After an intense two-hour session, exhausted, Edward was sent to his cell once again where he reflected on his predicament. Years of being an avid fan of The Blue Beat – a rival crime show to the one Michael O’Shea presented – had taught him one thing: police officers could not hold him forever, at some point they either had to charge him or let him go.
And he sensed that moment was approaching. Soon he would know if he was to be charged with killing the taxi driver, abducting Minnie and Jessica. Of course, no one ever got bail for murder. This was it: he’d had his final chance to plead his case, either he got out today or he would spend at least the next six months in prison, waiting for the fight of his life. There would be no reprieve, no period in which he could pack up his life as he knew it before accepting his fate.
Hour after hour went by and he found himself becoming like a meerkat; every time he heard an officer on the suite, the rattling of keys, the sound of boots marching towards him, he thought it was his time.
Then, at last, the doors to his cell opened.
‘Follow me,’ said the officer.
Edward could do nothing but close his eyes and hope for the best.
32
The telephone rang five times before an officer at the station picked up. The pre-recorded staccato tones of Microsoft Sam rang through the receiver, devoid of any emotion. Strange how one call was yet again to change everything…
‘Hello, officer. You might want to check Michael O’Shea’s secret garage. It is located on the outskirts of Manchester and registered in the name of Matthew Jones. You may find something that will help you with your investigation into the missing girls.’
The officer went to reply but before he got a chance the person occupying the phone box had dashed off into the pouring rain outside. The glass door clinked shut. The sound of feet slushing through the water reverberated through the area and when, in the minutes or hours to come, the police arrived to investigate, they would find the receiver, still dangling in mid-air…
33
The two men stood before Edward and it took him an age to take in what they said.
‘You’re free to go, son…’
‘Free to go?’
Edward was stunned. He had prepared himself for the worst.
‘We’ve had to make some special arrangements.’
‘Special arrangements?’
What the officer meant was that the outside of the building was swarming with reporters. The longer they had kept Edward, it seemed, the more journalists had arrived, perhaps anticipating a statement from the police announcing that he had been charged. A taxi had been booked to take him back to his flat as there was clearly no way he could walk or take the Tube. And he had been advised to leave London as soon as he could if he wanted to
avoid the attention of the press.
As Edward was led out of the custody suite and made his way towards the public reception, the flicker of camera flashes caught him off guard.
‘Your public awaits!’ The officer at the reception said. Edward was not in the mood for jokes. He said nothing, held his head up high and headed out. But it wasn’t the lights that took him off guard. Reporters were screaming and shouting for quotes whilst presenters did pieces to camera. It was impossible to concentrate in the racket. He felt as if he could not even hear his own thoughts.
Finally, he scrambled for the taxi that had been arranged for him and an officer slammed the door behind him. The police station, the cameras and then the City of London all faded into darkness and Edward sat still as he tried to come to terms with the realisation that his life as he knew it was all but over…
The Owl, p.2
HOW THE TABLES TURNED ON MR O’SHEA’S SANCTIMONIOUS PANTOMIME FOR STATE DEPENDENT DELINQUENTS
-We look back at the life and legacy of Michael O’Shea as ‘the trial of the century’ begins
It has been an unfortunate stain on our country for a great many years that Mr O’Shea’s daily parade of emotionally deprived, drug-addicted, state-dependent delinquents has continued to be a cause célèbre of certain sections of our media. The ratings hit was nothing more than a shameful pantomime of the underclass who dream of a better life, who thrived off Mr O’Shea’s rags to riches tale, who felt that they too would be showered with wealth and privilege, if they just used their fifteen minutes of fame to their advantage. Today, however, the illusion of Mr O’Shea as a moral crusader – the man who shamed people into turning their lives around by simply ‘telling it like it is’ – will come crashing down as allegations of his staggering hypocrisy will once again be thrust centre stage as his own trial for murder, kidnap and rape begins in earnest.
No doubt regular readers of this newspaper will remember the dramatic turn of events late last year when researcher Edward Lewis was released without charge while his former boss spent the evening in a prison cell, charged with the murder of Thomas Mallaky and the kidnap of Minnie Jenkins and Jessica Butler. Hours before, police officers were seen searching Mr O’Shea’s five-bedroom mansion where he resides with his model wife Karen and two children – a thousand miles from the council estates and drug dens of his guests. Then later in the evening came the news that police had searched a garage on the outskirts of Manchester following an anonymous tip-off. What they found there, one can only speculate, but it was indeed enough for him to be charged only a few hours after his arrival and soon we will know whether it is enough to convict him.
The Lion, p.1
THE MAN WHO GROOMED A NATION
-‘Broken’ O’Shea in the dock
-Prosecutors slam fallen star as a ‘cold-blooded murderer’
Opening one of the most talked about trials in modern history, Hugh Kenner QC, prosecuting, today destroyed Michael O’Shea’s reputation as he set about trying to convince the jury the fallen star was guilty of rape and murder. Referring to his weekly daytime show and his role as a judge for Make Me a Star, Kenner said, ‘Mr O’Shea used his fame to groom an entire nation into believing he was a moral crusader, a man simply trying to help people resolve their differences and better their lives.’ But this was a lie, he said. Mr O’Shea was not just a serious sexual offender with a penchant for adolescent girls but an ‘opportunist and a cold-blooded murderer who used his status and his show for the gravest of acts.’
The researchers on the show, Edward Lewis and Violet Dearnley, appeared to be in the clear as Kenner described how they were ‘unwittingly’ used to gather information about young vulnerable teenagers on the pretext that they would appear on the show where O’Shea would offer to help them whilst all the time his true motive was to abduct them, rape them and kill them.
But the most shocking part of the opening statement came right at the end when he revealed that ‘damning DNA evidence’ would prove O’Shea’s guilt beyond doubt. Kenner told the jury they would hear how O’Shea raped and murdered fifteen-year-old Millicent Jenkins and seventeen-year-old Jessica Butler and that he also murdered the innocent taxi driver, Thomas Mallaky, who he said ‘just happened to be in the wrong taxi, on the wrong journey, on the wrong day,’ and ‘was brazenly slaughtered, his body dumped, left for the deer’.
The trial continues tomorrow.
The Lion, p.1
HE’S LIV-ID!
-O’Shea furious as co-host refuses to defend him
Olivia Dessington-Brown will not come to the defence of her former friend and co-host Michael O’Shea at his trial for murder and rape.
The move comes as O’Shea’s legal team set out his case in their own opening statement in which they made the astonishing defence that O’Shea had been engaged in a decade-long affair with his co-host despite being married with two children. His secret rendezvous with Dessington-Brown on the nights in question, he alleges, explains why he does not have an alibi for the murder of either girl.
The trial continues.
The Owl, p.2–3
Inside the Strange World of TV Quacks
Occasionally in British public life, we get an insight into some little facet of truth, a rare admittance of how society really operates, and today – at the trial of Michael O’Shea – we got exactly that, an extraordinary exposé of how so-called ‘experts’ are bullied and cajoled in the mad world of television.
Bernard Braithwaite, a not wholly innocent and strange character with a penchant for stuttering and verbosity, told the trial today how he was handpicked by Michael O’Shea for his show.
O’Shea ‘had come to my rehabilitation clinic when I was a psychiatrist,’ he explained. It was here that O’Shea tempted him with such a large sum of money to come and work on his show that Braithwaite felt he could not turn it down. We can see the tacit agreement that took place, no doubt without a word ever being spoken. Mr O’Shea’s show, the court heard, was recovering from yet another scandal, this time involving a guest who ransacked the set and attacked his best friend on stage. Mr O’Shea needed to prove that the show was looking after its guests or the courts and the network would no doubt have discreetly shown him the door. Desperate that such a new regime should not affect his ratings or his proclivity for scandal and salaciousness, O’Shea hired the useful Dr Braithwaite, to act as his ‘yes man’.
Despite his protestations that he was ‘worried’ that his boss might have ‘ulterior motives’ and his hope that he could ‘make a difference’, the unadulterated greed with which Dr Braithwaite entered into this agreement with Mr O’Shea directly influenced the tragic circumstances that are currently being considered by the jury.
So this paper has little sympathy with Dr Braithwaite’s admission that he was the subject of bullying by Mr O’Shea.
‘I suppose he saw me as a direct challenge to his authority and to his career,’ he began, with such delusions of grandeur it is hard to wonder why he never considered a career in television himself. ‘So I would have to say that he undermined me regularly. He made some very cruel remarks towards me and to other members of staff. Wherever he could, he made sure to ignore my decisions and make me feel worthless.’
‘Do you think Mr O’Shea made guests on the show feel like this too?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘I think so,’ was his reply, carefully calculated, no doubt. ‘I cannot speak for them of course but there were many people who were booked onto the show who I felt would be inappropriate and they seemed to leave feeling emotionally shrunken and deflated.’
‘So, Dr Braithwaite, if what you are telling me is correct, why did you continue to work for Mr O’Shea? Why did you not resign?’
Indeed a question which gets to the heart of the matter. How many more so-called ‘doctors’ have sold out on their principles for the sake of making a quick buck in this never-ending gold mine of debauchery? And how much longer can we turn a blind eye to the under-regulation o
f broadcast media in this country?
The Lion, p.1
O’SHEA’S EMPLOYERS GANG UP
-Shocking revelation at court as Braithwaite says O’Shea IS capable of murder.
Michael O’Shea’s fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worst yesterday as the doctor in charge of looking after guests on his show admitted he did believe O’Shea was capable of rape and murder.
Under examination, Bernard Braithwaite said he thought there could be no doubt that O’Shea was guilty because he was ‘different’ with the victims. ‘He liked to wow them, I think. I suppose he didn’t have to groom them, really: they were so starstruck by him, they came to him. The younger girls would often want his autograph. He would never have to ask them outright to come and find him but it was always made clear that he would be available after the show in his dressing room.’
Asked if O’Shea manipulated the situation, Braithwaite added: ‘I certainly saw situations arise where he could be alone with young teenage girls.’
Later, O’Shea’s other employees were forced to admit their doubts about the besieged presenter.
Senior Researcher Violet Dearnley described how O’Shea behaved aggressively towards other staff on the show, including Braithwaite. The jury was then shown footage of fifteen-year-old Millicent Jenkins’ appearance on the show. Asked whether the tape showed that O’Shea was deliberately trying to ‘provoke’ the girl into running away so that he could abduct her, Dearnley said no.