Margaret Newsome was a widow and the mother of Grant, a security guard at the Pickstock Warehouse in Manchester who died in February 1983 of cirrhosis of the liver. He had turned to drink after being badly injured in a robbery at the warehouse on 26th February 1980 carried out by Johnny Connor and Scott Emberton in which Grant was badly injured. Scott was caught, tried and served time for the robbery while Johnny escaped, laid low and turned away from a life of crime becoming a successful businessman. Having cut off his contacts so efficiently, Johnny had no idea about Grant's eventual fate.
By chance, Scott came back into Johnny's life in 2020 and the unwanted reunion caused him to confront his latent feelings of guilt. After reading an archived story in a newspaper about the robbery, he paid a visit to Grant's last known address but made no attempt at contact. Margaret was still living there and followed him back to Coronation Street, demanding to know why he had hung around outside her house for half an hour. Johnny posed as a friend of Grant's from years ago who was visiting his old haunts. He bought her a coffee and chatted with her in Victoria Gardens. She related incidents that Johnny already knew but now with the added dimension that he now found out how Grant had died and he saw for himself the human cost of his youthful transgressions.
A couple of months later, Margaret called into the Rovers and told Johnny that the police thought they had a lead on the accomplice. By that time, the stress that Johnny was feeling with his guilt had built up to almost unbearable proportions and he had confessed his past crimes to his wife Jenny. Both she and Johnny gave Margaret a sympathetic hearing during which Johnny broke and confessed to being the man who drove at Grant. He was staggered when Margaret told him about the subsequent assault that her son had suffered at Scott's hands which was the real cause of him being hospitalised. She railed at him for the pain and misery he had caused her for the past forty years. She left the pub and Jenny chased after her, begging her to see that Johnny was a changed man and tried to find common ground with her by telling of her death of her own son, Tom Midgeley, in a drowning accident. Margaret sympathised with her loss but asked her how she would have felt if someone had actually been responsible for her child's death. Telling her that as a mother she ought to be ashamed for protecting Johnny, Margaret departed and informed the police of what she now knew. Johnny was arrested and charged with robbery and ABH. He pleaded guilty and at a hearing in January 2021 was sentenced to eight months in prison.
List of appearances[]
2020