EP118: Never Again: UK's Last Woman Hanged

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Note/Correction: Investigator Slater kept referring to A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story as a Netflix series, but it actually aired on BritBox. She's very sorry.

Ruth Ellis was a 28-year-old nightclub hostess and mother who, in 1955, became the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom. Her crime: the premeditated shooting of her abusive lover, David Blakely, outside a London pub in broad daylight. The trial was swift and the verdict was inevitable: Ruth Ellis was to hang for her crime. Despite mounting public sympathy and clear evidence of sustained physical and emotional abuse, the legal system refused to consider her mental state or the context of her actions. Ruth's execution sparked national outrage and helped ignite a decades-long movement toward the abolition of capital punishment in Britain. Her story remains one of the most haunting examples of how justice can fail those trapped by violence, gender, and a system determined to punish and condemn, rather than understand and help. So, while this is the story of Ruth Ellis, it is, at its core, about so much more.

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