I know, I’ve been away so long you thought I was dead, didn’t you? Well, surprise surprise – The Comtesse lives! I just haven’t been in the best frame of mind for a long time. Something to do with living in a dysfunctional society in a dying world, I guess. But I recently reorganized my library and I was thinking you know, those Morbid Facts are fun, I should get back to them! And so I will try. Thank you for still being out there! – DeSpair
Today’s Peculiar and Offensive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
At first the attendant at Charing Cross cloakroom paid little attention to the well-built, dark-skinned man who brought a large black trunk for deposit. After all, some 2,000 pieces of luggage were left at the station each day, and in time one traveler came to look much like another. But this particular man seemed anxious to make himself known.
“You must take very great care of my property,” he said as he received a ticket for the round-topped, wicker-work trunk. “I shall be travelling later today, and the contents must not be disturbed.”
Having issued his instructions the man —who could have been an army officer from his upright stance and short, narrow moustache—strode off into the station yard. He hailed a taxi, and as he was driven away he did an extraordinary thing.
He lowered the window of the cab, put out his hand, and dropped the cloakroom ticket onto the cobbled ground. He was seen to do this by the station shoe-black, whose pitch was nearby the left-luggage office.
The shoe-black helpfully picked up the ticket, and gave it to Mr. Glass, the head of the cloakroom staff. To them, the man appeared to be just another careless traveler, who would later have to identify his trunk by its contents.
The porters and attendants then went on with their work, and nothing more was thought about the man, the trunk, or the thrown -away ticket. Nothing, that is, until five days later when — on May 11, 1922 — a peculiar and offensive smell was noticed to be coming from the still unclaimed article.
Mr. Glass examined the outside of the trunk, consulted his immediate superior, and was told to take the box from the rack and place it in an adjoining room. There, in the presence of several mystified officials, a number of keys were tried on the massive brass lock.
None of the keys fitted the lock, and it was then decided to force the lid open with a hammer and chisel. This was duly done and the railwaymen were confronted with several brown-paper parcels tied up with a string, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and a leather handbag.
Tell-tale contents of the trunk
A porter was ordered to open one of the parcels at random and see what it contained. He chose the parcel nearest to him — round-shaped and about the size of a football. He cut the string, unfolded the paper, and found himself holding a woman’s severed head!
The horrified Mr. Glass made a phone call to Bow Street station, and shortly before 1 a.m. a Detective-Inspector and a police doctor came and took the trunk and its gruesome contents to Westminster mortuary. There it was discovered that the five parcels contained the amputated body of an apparently young woman.
The torso itself lay under some blood-stained clothing — a pair of corsets, a vest, knickers and silk stockings — and the limbs had been sawn off at the shoulders and hip-joints. The remains were examined by the famous Home Office pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury—who, due to his defective sense of smell, could work in conditions which other doctors often found unbearable.
Putrefaction was then in an advanced state, but even so Sir Bernard concluded that the cause of death was, “Asphyxia from pressure over the mouth and nostrils whilst unconscious from head injury and other injuries.”
The woman — who had been dead for about a week before the discovery of the body — had been around 35, short, rather stout, and with dark fashionably-bobbed hair. “The clean dismemberment of the parts,” added the pathologist, “suggests the work of an expert slaughterman.”
This clue — misleading as it prove to be — was something for the police to work on. The case was put in the hands of Chief Inspector Wensley of Scotland Yard, and after interviewing the cloakroom attendant, he put out the following description of the wanted man:
“Height 5 ft. 7 ins. or 5 ft. 8 ins.; military build; dark, sunburnt complexion; a closely cropped black moustache. Speaks with a slight Midland accent. Believed to be wearing a navy blue suit. Handsome face; features sharply defined; piercing black eyes.”
Apart from this, there were other, even more definite leads to follow up. The dead woman’s knickers bore a small white linen tab with the name “P. HOLT” marked on it in block capitals. On another garment there were two laundry marks — H 581 and H 447. And there was also a duster of the kind used in public houses to wipe the glasses clean.
With all this in the police’s favor — and with a photograph of the trunk issued to the Press — it seemed as if the case would soon be solved. This false optimism was increased when two of the clues proved speedy and satisfactory results.
First of all a dealer named Ward, who ran a second-hand luggage shop in Brixton Road, came forward and identified the trunk as the one he had sold on May 4.
Mr. Ward told the police that it had been bought by a “distinguished, military-looking gentleman,” who had been most particular about the size and the price of his intended purchase.
“I’d like a fair-sized trunk for one journey only,” the man had said.
“I’ve got this one here,” replied the dealer. “It belonged to a family in St. Leonards.”
The would-be traveler inspected the trunk and nodded his satisfaction.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I shall be shipping it abroad and shall put a few clothes and oddments in it. I don’t want to pay more than a pound for it.”
A bargain was truck at 12s. 6d. To the dealer’s astonishment, the customer then hoisted the trunk onto his back and proceeded to carry it away.
“I haven’t far to go,” the main explained. “Just up the road a bit to where my office is.”
This airy reference to an office — which turned out to be opposite the police station in Rochester Row, Victoria — was typical of the coolness of a murderer who cut up his victim in a room overlooking the station and the local police court.
After his promising start, the police were further encouraged when the laundry marks were traced to a Mrs. Minnie Bonati, who had been employed as a cook by a Mr. and Mrs. Holt of Tregunter Road, Chelsea.
Mrs. Bonati was described by her former employers as a friendly, vivacious woman who was “very attractive to men.” A short while later the cook’s husband, Bernard Bonati, an Italian waiter, was run to earth.
The doomed Mrs. Bonati
He accompanied the Chief Inspector’s men to the mortuary, where he identified the remains of his wife by her teeth formation, and by a crooked index finger on her right hand.
As in most cases of this kind, the husband is the first person to be suspected by the investigating officers. Bonati, however, was able to prove that he and his wife had been living apart for some time.
“She was always fond of dancing and having a good time,” he stated. “She went with other men and finally ran off with a lodger we had. After he left her, she sometimes came back to me for money, which I gave to her rather than see her on the streets.”
Mrs. Bonati’s last address was discovered to be in Limerston Street, Chelsea, where she had been last seen alive at four o’clock on the afternoon of May 4. She had then been visited by a Receiving Officer who was making enquiries into the many debts she had incurred.
And it was there — and with that information — that the police ran up against a seemingly blank wall. The mysterious “military gentleman” was no nearer to being caught, and for the next few days Chief Inspector Wensley, and his colleague, Chief Inspector Cornish, followed up one false trail after another.
Finally, on May 14, a conference was held at Scotland Yard when the theory was put forward that the murder, or its aftermath, had been the work of two men. No one person, it was argued, could have taken the heavy trunk to Charing Cross station. The murderer must have had help — either from an accomplice, or from someone who did not know what was in the “death box.” Then, as every avenue turned out to be a dead-end, three more people gave evidence which was to put a rope around the elusive killer’s neck.
A taxi-driver named Waller read about the case, and said that on the morning of May 6 he had been picked up by a man in Rochester Row. He helped his fare put a “very heavy trunk” into the cab, and then drove him to Charing Cross.
Detectives immediately hurried to the office block opposite the police station in Victoria, and stared curiously at the front of No. 86 Rochester Row. On entering the building, they learnt that a Mr. John Robinson — who ran a one-man estate agent’s business — had not been seen for several days.
At the same time, other detectives succeeded in tracing the duster which had been found in the trunk. It prove to have been taken from an inn, the Greyhound Hotel, in Hammersmith. There one of the barmaids had a lot to say about Mr. Robinson, who had suddenly stopped visiting the inn to see his wife.
Astounded by their luck, the officers interviewed Mrs. Robinson who was separated from her husband and forced to work in the hotel. She told them how unsatisfactory a spouse Robinson was.
The police officers then went to a house in De Laune street, Kennington, London, S.E., acting upon information supplied by Mrs. Robinson. There they found Mr. Robinson asleep in his bed. He was promptly awoken and arrested.
Mean Mr. Robinson
To begin with, he denied any knowledge of Minnie Bonati, or the trunk, or of recently having been at Charing Cross cloakroom. But at a second interview — and after being kept waiting for a long time at Scotland Yard — he broke down and told the full, somewhat pathetic story of his crime.
According to Robinson (who had been discharged from the Army on medical grounds), he had been “accosted” by his future victim as he left his office late on the afternoon of May 4.
He took her back to his second floor room, where she complained of not feeling well and asked him for a pound. When he refused to give it to her, she became abusive, flew into a temper, and attacked him in the chair in which he was sitting.
“She bent down as though to pick something from the fireplace,” he said in his formal statement, “and came towards me. I hit her on the face with my right hand… She fell backwards. She struck a chair in falling and fell over it.
“As she fell she sort of sat down and rolled over with her hand in the fireplace… I returned to my office about 10 o’clock the following morning. I was surprised to find that she was still there. She was dead. I was in a hopeless position then. I did not know what what to do.”
Faced with this unenviable situation, Robinson again sat as his desk debating what his next move would be. He knew the police were only a few yards away, and finally decided to dismember the corpse and dispose of the pieces.
“I went to a big stationer’s shop in Victoria Street,” he continued, “and bought six sheets of brown paper and a ball of string, for which I think I paid 1s 9d … I went to a shop and in the street nearer Victoria Station, and bought a chef’s knife.
“I then went back to my office, and of course I did the job – that is, I cut off her legs and arms. I made them up into parcels and tied them up in the brown paper and string which I had just bought. I finished the job as quickly as possible before dinner.”
Robinson’s subsequent movements – on the morning of May 6 – followed the evidence given by the taxi driver and cloakroom attendant. The knife he used in his grisly act was found where he had hidden it – under a tree on Clapham Common.
After completing and signing his statement, he was charged with murder and was tried at the Old Bailey later that summer. The case dominated the newspapers for the next few days, as thirty witnesses were called for the prosecution, and Robinson himself — who pleaded “not guilty” — spent an hour and a half in the witness box.
The verdict against him was almost a foregone conclusion, but even so the jury of ten men and two women were puzzled and intrigued by one of the murder’s most remarkable features — the almost complete lack of motive. Robinson was duly found guilty, his appeal was dismissed, and he was executed at Pentonville on August 27. The “Great Trunk Murder” as it was called, was not, however, allowed to rest there.
Both at the trial itself, and at the police commission held afterwards, Chief Inspector Cornish was strongly criticized for making Robinson wait for over an hour in a room at Scotland Yard. It was then ruled that such “cat and mouse” tactics would not be used on a murder suspect again. In more ways than one John Robinson added his own chapter to the story of trunk murders which made such juicy — if bloody — reading for the crime hungry public between the wars.
Culled from: Crimes and Punishment, the Illustrated Crime Encyclopedia, Volume 11
Vintage Crime Photo Du Jour!
04-10-1951, Burglary suspect. Case information unavailable.
I just love this photo – from an aesthetic perspective. Look at that guy’s face, grappling with the consequences of a bad decision.
Culled from: Scene of the Crime
Garretdom!
Both Officer and Prisoner Will Die.
ATCHISON, Kan., Sept. 13.—Officer Basket, a colored policeman, was sent yesterday afternoon to arrest a negro. Henry Harrington, who was creating a disturbance on Santa Fe street. On reaching the spot Basket found his man on a four foot bridge over a gully, and he resisted arrest. In the struggle which ensued Harrington was knocked off the bridge into the gully, and Basket started after him. Harrington shouted, “If you come down here I’ll shoot,” and as Basket pressed on Harrington fired, the ball striking the officer in the left side. Basket then drew his revolver and fired at Harrington, shooting him in the right nipple. Basket then closed with him and struck him several times on the head with his pistol. At this juncture Superintendent Carpenter, of the street car line, and W. C. Moxie were attracted by the firing, and arrived just in time to catch Basket, who fell to the ground from the effects of his wounds. Harrington was also lying on the ground insensible. Basket was taken to a drug store and thence to his home, where an examination showed that the ball entered below the heart and ranged upward into the left lung. He cannot recover. Harrington was taken to the calaboose, where it was found that in addition to the wound in the breast the skull had been fractured by the officer’s revolver. The doctor pronounced his wounds mortal. Basket has a large family. Harrington is a drunken and shiftless character.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook
My new album will be entitled, “A Drunken and Shiftless Character”.
