They struck lucky the very next day. At 8.25 am on a cold, wet morning, Elsie’s sodden attaché case was unearthed by PC Philpott. Among its scanty contents were her broken glasses.
At 9.30 am, at Crowborough police station, CI Gillan told Norman he might be charged with murder, if and when they found her body. The police assumed he had buried it somewhere on the 1-acre farm. All day long Norman sat in a cell thinking, while the police continued to dig. At 8 pm he announced: ‘I wish to tell you the truth of what happened …’ He then made a statement. He said he hadn’t killed Elsie, but he knew where her body was buried.
He was, he stated, having tea when Elsie arrived, much to his surprise. She was belligerent, he said, but when she calmed down she joined him in a cup of tea and had some bread and butter. He said: ‘I asked her why she had come down without having written and where she intended to sleep. She replied that she intended sleeping in the hut, Furthermore, she also stated she intended stopping until she was married.’ At about 7.30 pm he went to the Coshams, to see whether they would put her up for the night. But they were out. On his return to the hut there was an argument about his association with Bessie Coldicott and about his unfaithfulness. He and Elsie, he said, then had some supper. About 9.30 pm, he said, he had told her he had to go to the station to meet the Coldicotts. ‘She protested … and she suggested that we should go to bed. I again refused and told her to go to bed.’ He departed at quarter to ten. ‘She remained in the hut with the dog … When I returned about half-past eleven, the dog came down to meet me. When I opened the hut door I saw Miss Cameron hanging from a beam by a piece of cord as used for the washing-line. I cut the cord and laid her on the bed. She was dead. I then put out the lights. She had her frock off and her hair was down. I laid across the table for about an hour. I was about to go to Doctor Turle and knock up someone to go for the police and I realised the position I was in … I got my hacksaw … and sawed off her legs, and the head, by the glow of the fire.’
The head with its new hair-do he crammed into a biscuit tin, and the other pieces were wrapped in newspapers, all being buried in the chicken run in which he kept his Leghorns – ‘the first pen from the gate’. It was there, at 10.46 pm, after Norman had completed his statement, that the police discovered the remains of Elsie Cameron.
Two days later, Sir Bernard Spilsbury examined the decomposing body, and on 26 January it was reburied in Willesden. But a month later the remains were exhumed on Norman’s insistence. He was sure the mark of the rope, which Spilsbury had failed to find, must be visible on Elsie’s neck. He had seen such a mark, he said. When her body was finally reburied, he sent a wreath saying: ‘Till we meet again.’
Norman Thorne was charged with the murder of Elsie Cameron and sent for trial at Lewes Assizes on 4 March 1925. The judge was Mr Justice Finlay;Thorne was defended by Mr JD Cassels, KC; Sir Henry Curtis Bennett led for the Crown.
The medical experts disagreed about the cause of Elsie’s death. She seemed to have died from shock. Spilsbury, for the prosecution, said there were several bruises and injuries on her head and body, all caused shortly before her death, and no evidence of hanging. He also said that a ‘crushing blow’ on her forehead could conceivably have been caused by one of the Indian clubs found outside the hut. The experts agreed, however, that she had died one-and-a-half to two hours after eating a light meal and was dismembered six to seven hours after her death.
The defence’s chief medical expert, of the three who were called, was an extrovert Irishman, Dr Robert Brontë. He had examined the corpse a month after Spilsbury, and now said that creases on the neck might have been made by a rope. Spilsbury said the marks were naturally found on most female necks. The police said there were no traces of any rope-markings on the only wooden beams in the hut, across its centre. ‘The upper beam was very dusty … The lower beam was entirely free from dust.’ There had been hats on the lower beam, and Norman told the court, while giving evidence and speaking of the cord that Elsie had used to hang herself – ‘I believe it was tied around some of the paper I used to keep the dust off my hats.’ He also said of her unexpected arrival – ‘She seemed to be highly strung’ – and of her death – ‘I realised the awful end that neurasthenia had brought to her.’
Her glasses were on the table, he added, along with her brooch, bracelet and hairpins. He was unable to say how her watch and glasses were damaged and why he had burnt her dress and jumper. Mr Justice Finlay enquired: ‘You never thought of getting a doctor, and you did not get one?’ To which the answer was ‘No.’
The accused also said, by way of explaining his actions, that he was ‘trying to build up evidence that I knew nothing about Miss Cameron’s death … I had gone so far and I could not stop. One lie meant another …’
On the night of Elsie’s death, however it happened, he may have been fatally influenced by his apparent interest in and knowledge of the grisly murder that had occurred earlier that same year less than 20 miles away. In April another determined and possessive shorthand typist, Emily Kaye, had been murdered by her lover, Patrick Mahon. He had also been tried at Lewes Assizes, and was convicted largely through the forensic evidence of Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Patrick Mahon had been hanged on 9 September 1924, almost three months to the day before Elsie Cameron’s death. Newspaper cuttings about the Mahon case were discovered in Thorne’s hut. The idea of dismembering Elsie’s body probably came from them, teaching him how to profit, as he thought, from Mahon’s mistakes.
Norman Thorne was found guilty by the jury of Elsie Cameron’s murder and was sentenced to death. The next day, 17 March, he wrote to his ‘Dad and Mother’ about the ‘extraordinary verdict … They say a man has to be proved guilty. In what way was it proved against me? … What happened while I was out I do not know.’ An appeal was rejected, although he had expected it to succeed. He was taken from the Appeal Court crying: ‘It isn’t fair! I didn’t do it.’
He was hanged by Tom Pierrepoint, assisted by Robert Wilson, in Wandsworth Prison on 22 April 1925, on what would have been Elsie’s twenty-seventh birthday.
The minister who attended the execution believed Norman Thorne to be innocent of murder. Most murderers, said the minister, would confess to him what they had done and try to seek forgiveness. But Norman had maintained his innocence to the end. A Sunday School teacher at the Kensal Rise Wesleyan Church, who had known both Norman and Elsie, also never believed – like his father – that Norman had actually and intentionally killed her. It’s possible in this case that an innocent man was hanged.
The day before he died he wrote a last letter to his parents: ‘The world seems bright and beautiful, but how much better must be the Kingdom of Heaven … A flash and all is finished, no, not finished, but just starting; and I shall wait for you, just as others are waiting for me. By Christ I am free from all sin; all forgiven, I go to Him. All’s well. With all my love, your loving son, Norman.’
Perhaps he told the truth – that Elsie stage-managed her death, timing it to coincide with his return so that he might save her. This could account for the lack of marks of hanging – if she stepped off a chair or the bed as he opened the door. Perhaps she bungled it somehow and was shocked to death by the experience. Her injuries may have been caused by his clumsy manoeuvres when he cut her down. They certainly happened near the time of her death. Or they may have been caused by his fists or the Indian clubs during some row, in which he struck her several times and threw her out of the hut. Perhaps, thus rejected and despised, she died indeed of shock, of a broken heart.
In any event, Norman Thorne would probably never have been hanged if he had been wholly honest from the start about the manner of Elsie’s death, however it happened – if he had not dismembered her body, if he had not concealed it in the ground, and if he had not continuously lied, so persistently and for so long.
24
JOHN ROBINSON
THE MURDER OF MINNIE BONATI, 1927
Dismemberment of a murdered person nev
er inclines a judge or jury towards a tolerant view of the murderer. Not only is this a clear attempt to thwart justice by hiding the body and thus the evidence, but it also shows disrespect and is, as it were, double murder. Within three-and-a-half years of Mahon and Thorne dismembering their ladyloves, John Robinson was at it himself, believing no doubt that it was the only way to remove a body from his premises – which happened to be opposite a police station. Surely there have not been many times that murder has been committed so close to the eyes of the law.
On Friday, 6 May 1927, a man with a soldierly bearing deposited a large black trunk in the left-luggage office at Charing Cross railway station. It had a rounded top and was made of wickerwork, the whole encased in black American cloth and bound with a wide strap. He urged that the trunk be carefully handled, then departed in the taxi in which he and the trunk had arrived. The left-luggage attendant on duty the following Monday noticed an offensive smell coming from the trunk. A policeman was sent for and the trunk was opened.
Inside it, roughly parcelled in brown paper and tied with string, were five portions of a woman – her limbs had been severed at each shoulder and hip joint and the sections wrapped in items of female clothing, towels and a duster, the latter being wound around her head. A police surgeon was called to certify the woman was dead before the bits of her body were removed to a mortuary.
The Home Office pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, pieced the body together and concluded that several bruises on the woman’s forehead, stomach, back and limbs had been caused before she died. The cause of her death, he decided, was asphyxia, resulting from pressure on her mouth and nostrils while she was unconscious. She had been dead, he deduced, for about a week, and when alive had been short and stout and about thirty-five years old. A pair of black shoes and a handbag were also found in the trunk. Some of the clothing was marked. Two items bore laundry marks (581 and 447) and a pair of knickers carried a tab marked ‘P HOLT’.
Initials were painted on the trunk itself – FA – and a label read ‘F AUSTIN to ST LENARDS.’ The initials and the name were later found to be blameless and to have no connection with the case. But the police were now checking the other clues.
Within twenty-four hours, the knickers and the laundry marks were traced to a Mrs Holt, who lived in Chelsea and was very much alive. The woman who was likely to have purloined her clothing must have been in Mrs Holt’s employment, and the police now set about checking the whereabouts of ten female servants employed by Mrs Holt in the past two years. All but one were accounted for, and to clinch the matter the genteel employer was asked to identify the head. She did so. The dead woman was a Mrs Rolls.
A Mr Rolls was soon found, but it transpired he was not her husband – she had merely lived with him for a time. Her real but estranged husband turned out to be an Italian waiter called Bonati, who was soon cleared of suspicion. The victim’s real married name was Mrs Minnie Alice Bonati; her maiden name was Budd. She was thirty-six, on the game, it was said, and had last been seen alive in Sydney Street, Chelsea, between 3.45 pm and 4 pm on Wednesday, 4 May.
In the meantime, photographs of the trunk had appeared in the newspapers under lurid headlines – and with satisfying results. A Brixton Road dealer in second-hand luggage told the police he had sold the trunk for 12s 6d on or soon after 4 May to a dark man with a small moustache: a man of average height, well dressed, well spoken, a military sort of man, who looked as if he might have served in India.
A shoeblack produced the left-luggage receipt, which he had happened to pick up in the station forecourt after seeing it thrown out of a taxi window as the taxi left the station. The ticket was numbered, and by tracing the owner of the ticket issued immediately before it the police established that the black trunk had been deposited in the left-luggage office soon after 1.50 pm on Friday, 6 May. Then the taxi driver who had carried the trunk to Charing Cross Station came forward with information about his male passenger and the trunk.
He said that some time after 1 pm on the Friday he had taken two young men from the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall to the police station in Rochester Row, SWl, at the back of the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. The charge sheet at the station revealed that the two men had been summonsed for motoring offences and arrived in the station at 1.35 pm. After dropping his passengers, the taxi driver was hailed by a gentleman standing in the doorway of an office block across the street, and assisted him in carrying a heavy trunk from the building, across the pavement and into the cab. When the cabbie commented on the trunk’s weight, he was told that it was full of books. The passenger’s destination was Charing Cross Station (although Victoria Station was much nearer) and there the trunk, which the taxi driver identified, was left after being taken to the left-luggage office by a station porter. The office block in Rochester Row was identified as Number 86, which was now viewed with considerable interest by the police from their premises diagonally opposite.
Most of 86 Rochester Row was occupied by a firm of solicitors. But one of the occupants of a seedy two-roomed, second-floor office overlooking the street was missing. He turned out to be a struggling estate agent, who had written on 9 May to his landlord to explain that he was moving out because, frankly, he was broke. His name was John Robinson and His office was named: Edwards and Co., Business Transfer Agents.
Born at Leigh in Lancashire, young Robinson had been taken from school at the age of twelve and sent to work. Over the years he had worked variously as an errand-boy for the Co-op, a clerk, a tram conductor, a bartender – and a butcher’s assistant. He married in 1911 and his first wife bore him four children. His second wife was a girl from Tasmania.
Nothing incriminating was found in his office in Rochester Row and not a speck of blood was visible. However, a window pane was cracked and the fireplace fender was found to be broken and an iron bar detachable. Mr Robinson’s clerk, Miss Moore, was traced. She said that on 4 May Mr Robinson had returned about 3 pm to the office, obviously drunk, with a man in military uniform. Alarmed by this, no doubt by something that was said or done, she left the office early at 3.30 pm and never returned.
The police visited John Robinson’s lodgings in Kennington, but he had gone from there without leaving a forwarding address. However – and this was another stroke of luck for the police – a telegram addressed to ‘Robinson, Greyhound Hotel, Hammersmith’ had been returned to his lodgings, addressee unknown. This led them to the Greyhound Hotel, where they found, not Robinson, but Mrs Robinson, who worked there. The telegram had been returned to its sender by a new maid ignorant of Mrs Robinson’s presence in the hotel. She in turn was ignorant, until informed by the police, of the sorry fact that she was not the only Mrs Robinson, for he had another wife – his first. She agreed to cooperate with the police, and when she went to meet Robinson at his telephoned request on Thursday, l9 May at a pub, the Elephant and Castle in Walworth, Chief Inspector George Cornish went with the aggrieved woman.
John Robinson, aged thirty-six, thus identified and then questioned by the police, was quite amenable to being interviewed at the Yard that evening and to take part in an identity parade. Here he was very lucky. For neither the taxi driver, the station porter nor the trunk dealer recognised him. As he naturally denied any knowledge of his crime, or of buying the trunk, or of Mrs Bonati, he was released.
There was a conference at Scotland Yard on 21 May, in which all the evidence was reviewed. Chief Inspector Cornish decided that the bloodstained and grimy duster should be washed. His hunch proved correct, for a thin tab on the hem was revealed bearing the word ‘GREYHOUND’.
In the meantime, a fresh scouring of Robinson’s office in Rochester Row produced a bloodstained match, which had been caught in the wickerwork of a waste-paper basket.
Robinson was picked up at his lodging on 23 May and brought back to the Yard. Now his luck deserted him. For fearing perhaps that the police knew more than they did – or possibly overwhelmed by feelings of guilt – he elected to make a s
tatement. He said: ‘I realise this is serious … I met her at Victoria and took her to my office. I want to tell you all about it. I done it and cut her up.’
His story was that on 4 May, about 4.15 pm in the afternoon, he was accosted by Mrs Bonati at Victoria Station. Back in his third-floor office she asked him for money but he refused to give her any, saying he had none. She became abusive and made as if to strike him. He shoved her away and she fell, hitting her head on a coal scuttle. Having thus silenced her – and perhaps it was the presence of the police station across the road that made him fearful of the noise she made – he left the office. He said he thought she was only dazed and would go when she recovered. But when he returned the following morning, he said, she still lay on the carpet, face down. How was he to get rid of her?
Perhaps he remembered Mahon and Thorne. It seems more than coincidence that led him to the very shop in Victoria Street where Mahon had bought a carving knife and a saw. Here, Robinson merely purchased a knife. Then, in that shabby office of his, under the eyes of the law, he set about dismembering Minnie Bonati.
Having parcelled up her remains in brown paper after wrapping them in her own clothes, in a duster and a towel, he went away, no doubt exhausted. Doggedly, he returned to the office the following morning. He brought a trunk with him and travelled by omnibus, and the bus conductor helped him carry the trunk up the stairs to the top deck of the bus. Having got off the bus in Vauxhall Bridge Road at about 10 am, he dragged the trunk along Rochester Row and up the stairs to his office. Here he loaded the trunk with the parcelled portions of Mrs Bonati, throwing her shoes and her handbag into the trunk as well, and then dragged it out on to the landing. Perhaps he also did some scrubbing and cleaning of the premises to ensure that no sign of Mrs Bonati’s visit remained.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 30