Giving evidence from behind a screen, Thomas Cashman

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Thomas Cashman’s former lover was a contradictory whirlwind of defiance and vulnerability, conscience and barbed comebacks. ‘I’ve ruined my life for this,’ she told Manchester Crown Court.

Yet victimhood and self-pity were not the emotions she conveyed so much as courage and determination to do right. 

She described how drug dealer Cashman had jumped over back gardens to seek refuge at her home on the night of August 22 last year.

And how, after realising he had killed nine-year-old Olivia, she had reported the man she had been ‘infatuated’ with to the police – putting her own life on the line in the process.

As the star witness at Cashman’s 18-day murder trial, she had to provide humiliating and tawdry details about the couple’s affair, including the size of Cashman’s genitalia.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Thomas Cashman's former lover was a contradictory whirlwind of defiance and vulnerability, conscience and barbed comebacks. 'I've ruined my life for this,' she told Manchester Crown Court. Pictured: Stock image of silhouette

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Thomas Cashman's former lover was a contradictory whirlwind of defiance and vulnerability, conscience and barbed comebacks. 'I've ruined my life for this,' she told Manchester Crown Court. Pictured: Stock image of silhouette

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Thomas Cashman’s former lover was a contradictory whirlwind of defiance and vulnerability, conscience and barbed comebacks. ‘I’ve ruined my life for this,’ she told Manchester Crown Court. Pictured: Stock image of silhouette

She described how drug dealer Cashman (pictured) had jumped over back gardens to seek refuge at her home on the night of August 22 last year.

She described how drug dealer Cashman (pictured) had jumped over back gardens to seek refuge at her home on the night of August 22 last year.

She described how drug dealer Cashman (pictured) had jumped over back gardens to seek refuge at her home on the night of August 22 last year.

Yet if she felt diminished or daunted by the terrifying prospect of Cashman seeking revenge, she disguised it well. 

As she put it to the killer’s lofty defence team: ‘I’m more than ready for you, so come on.’

So impressive was her candour that Detective Superintendent Mark Baker of Merseyside Police said: ‘In my 30 years as a police officer, I’ve never seen such bravery.’

Having become pivotal to Cashman’s conviction, she is said to have faced more threats than any witness Merseyside Police have ever dealt with. 

This very modern-day heroine, who we will call Emma, has since been granted a lifetime of anonymity under the witness protection scheme and is believed to have been moved out of Liverpool – ruing the day, no doubt, she and Cashman started their affair.

They are believed to have known each other for years, and started flirting with each other on Instagram.

‘Do you feel what I feel?’ Cashman asked Emma, who – dazzled by the designer clothes worn by the outwardly respectable father of two – in turn questioned him: ‘Why do your eyes undress me all the time?’

As she told the jury of Cashman: ‘I’m not gonna lie, he’s a good-looking lad.’

Thus began a ‘fling’ that continued ‘on, off, for months’ but, for all the initial excitement, seemed to offer Emma rapidly diminishing returns.

At first, she told the court, the sex was ‘actually amazing’, but by their third encounter, it ‘lasted about 56 seconds’.

And how, after realising he had killed nine-year-old Olivia (pictured), she had reported the man she had been 'infatuated' with to the police – putting her own life on the line in the process

And how, after realising he had killed nine-year-old Olivia (pictured), she had reported the man she had been 'infatuated' with to the police – putting her own life on the line in the process

And how, after realising he had killed nine-year-old Olivia (pictured), she had reported the man she had been ‘infatuated’ with to the police – putting her own life on the line in the process

She said Cashman was unable to perform in bed at all on occasion – and, with hindsight, said she felt ‘groomed’ by him.

Certainly, the killer seemed confident Emma would comply with his demands when he ‘sought refuge’, as prosecutor David McLachlan KC put it, at her house that fateful night last August. 

Emma had been asleep for around two hours when Cashman woke her by tapping her on the leg and saying, ‘It’s Tommy, it’s Tommy.’

He told her: ‘I didn’t know where else to go, I trust you.’ She followed him downstairs in the dark as Cashman muttered something to the effect of someone being after him.

He was trouserless and demanded ‘a pair of pants’ from Emma who, still half-asleep, handed him a pair of tracksuit bottoms belonging to her boyfriend, Paul Russell. 

When she asked where Cashman had been, he told her that he’d ‘dropped the bits’ off – a reference to guns, she later deduced. Although he told her ‘no-one can know I’m here’, she called Russell, who rushed round.

On the doorstep, she heard the two men discussing Joseph Nee, the intended target of Cashman’s shooting. 

‘I’ve done Joey,’ she heard Cashman say, before Russell drove the killer to the van he’d parked earlier, and took away the pile of clothes he’d been wearing when he killed Olivia and which had been dumped on the floor by Emma’s washing machine.

The following morning, after learning news of Olivia’s death on television, Emma ‘put two and two together’. Suspecting Cashman must have been involved, she broke down.

When she heard Nee’s name reported as the intended target, her worst fears were confirmed, and she told police: ‘I couldn’t protect him.’

She knew Olivia’s mother Cheryl deserved answers: ‘It’s her little girl, at the end of the day.’

And while police struggled to find witnesses in Cashman’s drug-dealing underworld willing to speak out, Emma said: ‘There is no such thing as a grass when it involves a nine-year-old.’

Yet at first, fear of reprisal prevented Emma from admitting she’d had sex with Cashman.

‘I was petrified to say yes and to go out there and all the drama to come to my door,’ she said, her world quickly descending into panic and paranoia: ‘I felt everything… happened so fast… I was scared… I didn’t think I was going back to my own home ever again.’

Yet her conscience prevailed: ‘I ended up breaking down because I physically couldn’t hold it inside me no more.’

Last October Paul Russell, 41, pleaded guilty to assisting Cashman at Liverpool Crown Court, his conviction unable to be reported until after Cashman’s trial. He is expected to be sentenced soon.

Last October Paul Russell (pictured), 41, pleaded guilty to assisting Cashman at Liverpool Crown Court, his conviction unable to be reported until after Cashman's trial. He is expected to be sentenced soon

Last October Paul Russell (pictured), 41, pleaded guilty to assisting Cashman at Liverpool Crown Court, his conviction unable to be reported until after Cashman's trial. He is expected to be sentenced soon

Last October Paul Russell (pictured), 41, pleaded guilty to assisting Cashman at Liverpool Crown Court, his conviction unable to be reported until after Cashman’s trial. He is expected to be sentenced soon

Having lost her lover and her boyfriend, Emma turned up at Manchester Crown Court to be branded a ‘liar’ by defence lawyer John Cooper KC, who accused her of being ‘angry, resentful and vindictive’ towards Cashman because he had refused to leave long-term partner Kayleeanne Sweeney for her.

To which Emma retorted: ‘I certainly didn’t want a relationship with a thug with a little willy.’ 

Cashman accused her of trying to ruin his life ‘for loads of reasons’. He alleged Russell owed him a £25,000 drug debt and she wanted him ‘out of the way’.

When she was questioned about a text she sent to a friend a month before Olivia’s murder in which she said she wanted to ‘ruin him like he’s done to me’, she claimed this was because she had learned Cashman had also been seeing one of Ms Sweeney’s friends.

At times so emotional that the judge Mrs Justice Yip at one stage asked her to calm down, Emma nonetheless managed to ridicule the defence team’s line of questioning.

When they suggested she couldn’t have been that shaken by what happened because she went to the gym and the nail salon, she asked: ‘Am I being shouted at for getting my nails done?’ 

And after objecting to Mr Cooper’s facial expression on one occasion, she told the barrister, ‘I suggest you shouldn’t look at me like that again. I’m not a child, I’m a grown woman. I don’t take s***.’

Her flippant remarks could have been dismissed as disrespectful, were it not for the truth and conscience that undercut every word.

At one point Emma described Mr Cooper’s line of questioning about her sexual relationship with Cashman as ‘appalling’ and said: ‘The only thing I’m very passionate about is that little girl – so should you be.’

Crying, Emma told jurors that if Cashman was ‘any sort of man he’d just f****** own it’. 

‘I can’t believe he’s making the family go through what they’re going through,’ she said.

Her courage was perhaps the one redeeming factor of this tragic case. ‘I’ve got a lot of compassion,’ she said. ‘If I believe something I’ll fight it until my point has been heard.’

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