This Week in Court: A total of 84 phone calls in one day left Keelie Murphy carrying a large black suitcase and a JD Sports drawstring bag into the dock
This Week in Court: A total of 84 phone calls in one day left Keelie Murphy carrying a large black suitcase and a JD Sports drawstring bag into the dock
05:00, 25 Apr 2026
Over the course of one Wednesday in September 2024, Keelie Murphy telephoned her childhood best friend Jemma Ellison a total of 84 times. In isolation, it was an unusual and perhaps slightly unnerving course of conduct, but, in the context of everything that had passed over the preceding years, it was yet another alarming chapter in what had, by now, become a rather extraordinary falling out.
Within a week, Murphy was back behind bars, recalled on licence in relation to her fourth sentence of imprisonment for harassing Jemma. This week, the now 39-year-old returned to the dock at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court, wheeling a large black suitcase behind her and carrying a JD Sports drawstring bag as she faced the prospect of a fifth prison term for essentially identical conduct.
This bizarre story of a friendship which drastically soured goes back around a decade, with the ECHO having previously reported that an “infatuated” Murphy, of Halewood Place in Woolton, confided her feelings to Ms Ellison before “obsessively” bombarding her with a string of constant calls, that forced her to change her phone number.
Murphy then shifted her attention to her former friend’s workplace and colleagues and created numerous fake social media accounts to continue her stalking campaign.
It took several years before Ms Ellison reached breaking point and reported Murphy’s conduct to Merseyside Police, leading to her being handed a suspended jail sentence in June 2020. Within months Murphy brazenly flouted a restraining order which banbed her from contacting her former friend for five years, resulting in her being locked up for seven months, followed by another 10 weeks in January 2021.
But prison proved no barrier to Murphy who breached the court order a further five times between February and April of that year. This including calling Ms Ellison’s place of work on nearly 100 occasions on one day. Her messages had turned from “expressions of love and romance to threats of violence and abuse”.
Murphy even warned Ms Ellison “watch what happens” and told her that she would “take the consequences into her own hands”. She was also said to have attempted to post letters to the mum-of-three via the letterbox of her nan’s home.
Andrew McInnes, defending, told Liverpool Crown Court during a resulting appearance in September 2021 that his client had not spoken to Ms Ellison for a number of years before they resumed contact with one another in 2017.
He said she “perhaps wanted more than friendship”, something which “wasn’t going to happen”.
Mr McInnes also described how Murphy, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, had not intended to frighten Ms Ellison but said “completely unacceptable and unpleasant things” when drunk. Judge Dennis Watson KC went on to tell her that she “did not show motivation” to address her substance misuse as she was jailed for a further two years and again ordered not to contact Ms Ellison or her nan.
Less than a year later, Murphy was back before the same court after harassing Ms Ellison as soon as she was released from prison. This again saw her repeatedly call her workplace, causing the family business, Ellison Motors in Widnes, to grind to a halt.
Murphy was released from her third jail sentence in December 2021 before being recalled in April 2022. And, having then been freed again later that month, she “immediately started contacting her again at her place of work”.
The garage received a string of calls from withheld numbers, persisting from opening time at 9am until the end of the working day, leaving the phone lines jammed and customers unable to get through. Murphy also exhibited “troubling behaviour” during her “relentless attempts to speak to” her former friend, including “talking about her children and relationship”.
Ms Ellison detailed how she was left with “constant migraines after a day of her ringing” and added: “I go home to the kids feeling sad and deflated.
“She turns horrible so quickly if you tell her to stop ringing. I wonder what it will take her to stop. It’s been going on for years and years now. It’s having a huge effect on me and the business.
“Every time Keelie is let out of prison, she starts back up immediately on her release. Keelie would not just call up once, she would call from the minute we open up until we close. I constantly think about what’s next. It makes me feel mentally drained when all I want to do is come to work and run my business.”
Murphy has five previous convictions for 15 offences, all but one of which relate to conduct against Ms Ellison, with the other concerning matters of drunk and disorderly behaviour and assaulting an emergency services worker in 2008. Stuart Nolan, defending her during her 2022 court appearance, saidf: “It’s a very distressing case. One can only feel for the victim in this matter.
“There are serious mental health issues here. She does regret her behaviour. It just seems she is not able to control it when in drink and drugs, a combination which is explosive. I fear for her in the future.”
Murphy was jailed for 30 months at that hearing and her restraining order was being extended indefinitely. Sentencing, Recorder Tim Harrington told her: “Previous sentences have not deterred you. If you breach that order, you will undoubtedly be prosecuted again, and the sentences are just going to get longer and longer.”
Desspite the judge’s warnings, Murphy returned to the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts on Wednesday this week, having pleaded guilty to a further charge of harassment by breach of a restraining order. Her solicitor Gary Bryan told magistrates during the hearing: “This is a matter of breach of restraining order which goes back to the 25th of September 2024. On that day, she has called the protected person 84 times.
“The defendant was on prison licence at that time. Because of this reported behaviour, her licence was revoked on the 1st of October 2024. She was released from prison on the 23rd of December 2024, roughly the equivalent of a six-month prison term.”
Murphy was only ultimately charged with the offence in December 2025 and not brought before a court until March 2026, when she entered her guilty plea and admitted a second offence of possession of a knife which she was found to be carrying on Whitney Road in Woolton on November 22 last year.
The sentencing was adjourned until this week in order to enable a pre-sentence report to be prepared but Murphy missed her appointment with the Probation Service. She was therefore not sentenced as planned, with magistrates giving her a further opportunity to cooperate with the preparation of such a report but sending the case up to the crown court for sentencing.
Appearing in the dock wearing a grey Adidas hoodie over a white North Face t-shirt, with her brown hair tied up in a bun, Murphy was released on unconditional bail ahead of a further hearing next month, with her fate yet again hanging in the balance and a fifth jail sentence potentially awaiting.
Mr Bryan cited the “very considerable delay” in bringing the matter to court as mitigation and added: “Given the age of the matter, given the fact that her licence was revoked for this matter, essentially on the same facts, is there now an argument in favour of a suspended sentence?”
