Gerry Conlon In Plymouth
"Nobody recognised him here and he liked it that way"
To the world, Gerry Conlon was one of the Guildford Four wrongly convicted, imprisoned for 15 years, and eventually cleared in one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
To one Plymouth resident, he was simply Gerry.
After his release from prison, Conlon spent several years living quietly in Plymouth, far from the attention that had followed him for so much of his life. Friends have since spoken publicly about how he sought anonymity in the city while trying to come to terms with the trauma of his wrongful imprisonment.
One local resident, who has asked not to be named, remembers meeting him completely by chance.
"My first encounter with Gerry was in my bedsit," they recalled.
"He arrived with a girl I knew. She had to pop out and left him there while I made us both a cup of tea.
He chatted away while I was in the tiny kitchen, and I kept thinking, 'I know this man.'
Then it suddenly hit me.
'You're Gerry Conlon.'
He looked completely taken aback.
I said, 'You're Gerry Conlon. One of the Guildford Four.'
He smiled but quickly gestured for me to lower my voice.
He told me that nobody had recognised him since he'd been living in Plymouth, and that he quite liked it that way."
"We got on straight away. We laughed a lot and swapped stories about growing up."
"I was young and full of opinions about authority and politics. Gerry listened, but he had his own views shaped by everything he'd been through."
The friendship continued in the months that followed sometimes weekly, sometimes fortnightly. Phone calls were often chaotic, plans occasionally fell through, but neither held it against the other.
Both men were battling addiction at the time, something the source says created an understanding between them.
Looking back, one memory stands out more than any other.
"It always took Gerry a while to relax.
There was a guard around him every time we met.
Once he settled, he was funny and warm, but getting to that point wasn't easy."
On one occasion, Gerry spoke openly about the anxiety that still followed him.
Even everyday tasks such as making a phone call, visiting the post office or unexpectedly meeting somebody he knew could feel overwhelming.
Yet, according to his friend, he carried on regardless.
Eventually, conversations would turn to the events that had made him known around the world.
What struck his Plymouth friend most was Gerry's lack of self-pity.
"He always said other people had suffered worse than he had.
He spoke about the brutality of the police, prison and the court system, but he was often more concerned about what others had endured than himself."
Among the photographs taken during those years is a striking portrait of Gerry sitting in a Plymouth city centre stairwell, surrounded by graffiti.
The image seems to capture something words cannot.
At the time it was simply a portrait.
Years later, it has come to symbolise the invisible burdens he was still carrying.
Although Gerry Conlon eventually left Plymouth, those who knew him here remember not the headline figure from one of Britain's greatest miscarriages of justice, but a man trying to build a quieter life while living with memories that never truly left him.
Sometimes history passes quietly through a city.
In Gerry Conlon's case, many people never realised he was here at all.
Photographs © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post