This podcast details true crime cases. It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of

violence. It is not intended for children. Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.

Welcome back to our seven-part true crime podcast series, Hanged, Ruth Ellis and The Price of Passion.

At the end of our last episode, Ruth Ellis had carried out a cold and deliberate act.

She emptied a revolver into her lover, David Blakely, outside the Magdalah Tavern

on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955. Four bullets struck him as he fell to the pavement. Blood pulled

around his head, as Ruth, gun still in hand, stood over his body in silent fascination.

Later she would recall in a hushed voice, there was so much blood.

What happened next would astonish witnesses and set in motion a criminal investigation

that would make Ruth Ellis infamous to this day, as the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Continue on with me to listen to the next chapter in Ruth Ellis's story.

This is Part 6, An Eye for an Eye. Ruth Ellis' gaze shifted from David's lifeless body to his friend Clive Gunnell.

calmly, through her horn-rimmed glasses, she instructed him. Go and call the police.

Clive ran back into the Magdalas shouting, she's got him. The tavern owner grabbed the phone to summon an ambulance and the police.

Off-duty officer, PC Allen Thompson, who had been enjoying a quiet drink inside, hurried

outside to the street.

There he saw a shocking sight, a young man lying face down on the ground, blood streaming from his mouth,

and a blonde woman standing over him, a revolver still pointed at his body. Ruth repeated,

phone the police. Thompson, who identified himself as a police officer, carefully took the weapon

from her hand. Another bystander bent down to

fill for a pulse. He's gone, the man announced. Clive, overcome with grief and disbelief,

...