ndolved Mysteries —
he Brighton Trunk Crime

*

By
JUSTIN ATHOLL

*

The Organized Forces of the Law Often Need But One Slight “Break” to Clear
Up a Mystery—But There Was No Such Break in the Brighton Trunk Murder,
Which Stands Today, After Thirteen Years, “Unsolved” on the Scotland Yard

ONE of the last days of May, 1934,
ung woman expecting to become a
er was struck violently upon the head
died from the blow. Her attacker
removed every stitch of clothing from
jody and with knife and hacksaw,
-eded to dismember it.

> purchased a trunk and, carrying it
ie scene of his crime, proceeded to
in it the torso, from which he had
ed the head and limbs. Into a suit-
he packed the legs. He then pro-
-d to get rid of the various parts of
ody.

| this he did with such secrecy that
y, 13 years after the crime, his iden-
s unknown. Not only is the murder
olved”, but even the identity of the
an has never been established.

ie facts shout that murder was com-
d, but no one has been able to prove
t seems incredible that a woman who
imably had relatives and friends and
ice in society should vanish without
ne noticing that she was missing. It
s almost equally incredible that in
srn England a man should be able to
ember a body and dispose of it with-
ittracting the slightest attention from
abours. Yet this was the case in what
come to be known as the Brighton
ik Crime No. 1.

1e Brighton Trunk Crime No. 1 was a
fect murder” only in the sense that

Records.

its perpetrator has not been discovered.
Technically, it was by no means perfect in
its execution, and it is the fact that,
theoretically, the murderer did everything
wrong and yet remained undiscovered,
that makes the case so fascinating to the
student of crime.

“PERFECT CRIME”

Theoretically, he could have chosen no
worse way of disposing of the body than
dismembering it and depositing the pieces
in cloakrooms. For 30 years there had
not been a single instance of a murderer
dismembering his victim’s body and re-
maining undetected. They all made some
fatal mistake which led to their detection.

* Ok OK

The Brighton Trunk No. 1 murderer
also made his mistakes. Perhaps because
he had read of previous cases, he used no
cloth to wrap up the pieces. He used
brown paper and newspapers, cotton wool,
and oil of a type sometimes used by sur-
geons to check excessive bleeding. _

All these things were, at least theoretic-
ally, “clues”. Yet, as far as we know,
the police never obtained even a hint as to
his identity.

Modern medical science makes possible
the most astonishing “reconstructions”
from portions of bodies. Yet, although a
fairly detailed description of the victim
was issued, she was never identified, and,
as far as I am aware, the offer of £250

reward for information of her identity
made by a newspaper remains unclaimed.

The crime was discovered on June 17,
when a Brighton station cloakroom atten-
dant noticed that a trunk deposited ten
days earlier on a 24-hour ticket remained
unclaimed. The trunk was opened and its
dreadful secret revealed.

Doctors were able to establish that the
woman had died probably on one of the
last two days of May, and the absence of
features which would have been observed
if she had died from other causes made
it strongly probable that a blow on the
head had killed her.

Slowly it became apparent that the
murderer was no panic-stricken fool, but
an extremely cunning man. The fact that
the trunk was new, without labels and
indistinguishable from scores of others,
made its value as a clue very small.

The murderer had chosen the best pos-
sible time of the day to deposit the trunk
if he wished to avoid being remembered
by the cloakroom attendant. He had
chosen six o’clock on the evening of Derby
Day, when crowds from Epsom were
added to the normal evening rush to
Brighton.

SEVENTIETH TRUNK

It was the seventieth trunk deposited
on that day and befoie its contents were
discovered the attendants had handled
about 20,000 further items. The possi-

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‘HTEENTH EDITION

Page Seventy-three

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