Brighton was a beautiful resort town on the English seaside. It was known for holidays and illicit weekend trysts. And then it became known as “Queen of Slaughtering Places”, becoming the crime capital of England.
It all started on May 10th, 1927. An unpleasant smell was coming from a trunk that was left in the luggage department at Charing Cross railway station. Staff opened the trunk and found the dismembered body of a woman. “Each piece had been wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. The woman’s shoes and handbag were also in the trunk and the crime had been committed two to three weeks previously.” She was identified as Minnie Bonati.
It was discovered that Minnie had been murdered by a man by the name of John Robinson. In his defence, he claimed that Minnie had died of a heart attack. But this didn’t explain the massive blow to the head discovered during examination. The prosecution argued that Minnie’s head injuries simply weren’t enough to have caused Minnie’s death.
During Robinson’s trial at the Old Bailey on July 11th, 1927, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, a renowned pathologist, argued that “Bonati was in good health and said that the bruises on her chest suggested someone had knelt on her while holding her down and possibly suffocating her”. Well, so much for the ‘heart attack’ theory (which didn’t explain her being dismembered and stuffed in a trunk).
The jury found Robinson guilty. He was sentenced to death and hanged on August 12th, 1927 at Pentonville Prison. Brighton was at peace.
Until seven years later.
On June 17th, 1934, cloakroom attendant Willian Joseph Vinnicombe found a dismembered woman in a trunk at Brighton railway station. Upon finding the trunk, locked, he summoned Detective Bishop of the Railway Police. There was a foul odour.
Upon opening the trunk, they discovered “several layers of paper and cotton wool soaked in blood and a parcel tied with a sash cord that held together arms and a torso”. A King’s Cross the following day, another trunk was discovered. This one contained a pair of legs.
Chief Inspector Ronald Donaldson was alerted immediately. The corpse was described as having ‘dancer’s feet’. The press gave her the nicknames “The Girl with the Pretty Feet”, or simply “Pretty Feet”.
Once again, Sir Bernard Spilsbury was called in on June 19th to conduct the post-mortem. He discovered that she was about 25 years of age and five months pregnant. Brighton was once again in the grips of a murdered woman in a trunk.
The Brighton police immediately called in Scotland Yard to help with the investigation. “The cases of 700 missing women were reviewed and police checked hospitals and known abortionists. For the first time ever the police appealed directly to the public for help and information using the Press.”
Neither victim nor murderer were ever identified. Chief Inspector Donaldson did have an abortionist as his primary suspect, but that investigation never amounted to anything solid.
It was during the investigation of this second trunk victim that the police uncovered the third.
Violet Kaye – known as well as Violet Watts and Violet Saunders – was a 42-year-old dancer and sex worker from London. It was in London that she met Toni Mancini, a 26-year-old vagabond.
Toni, who’s real name was Cecil Lois England, had a criminal record for theft and loitering, and he worked as a waiter and bouncer. He also went by three other known aliases: Jack Notyre, Tony English, and Hyman Gold.
In September of 1933, Violet and Mancini moved to Brighton in the hopes of a better life. Violet had a very volatile relationship with the man who was 16 years her junior. They argued constantly. One particular display occurred just before her death.
On May 10th, 1934, at the Skylar Café where Mancini worked, witnesses saw them go at each other in a particularly vicious row. Violet stormed into the Café, quite drunk, and accused Mancini of “being familiar with a teenage waitress” by the name of Elizabeth Attrell. Mancini told Violet in no uncertain terms to sod off.
Violet was never seen again.
Mancini told friends that Violet had gone off with another bloke to Paris. He even went so far as to give some of Violet’s belongings to Elizabeth. Further ‘proving’ his story, Violet’s sister-in-law received a telegram which read: “Going abroad. Good job. Sail Sunday. Will write. — Vi.”
When she initially disappeared, Mancini was questioned by police. When the second body was discovered, he got spooked. He ran. He didn’t think anyone would tie him to the trunk he had in his flat – the one that held Violet’s “non-dismembered body inside it”. He kept it at the foot of his bed, covered it with a cloth, and used it as a coffee table.
During house-to-house calls, police came across Mancini’s lodgings at 52 Kemp Street. They found the trunk, and subsequently Violet. Mancini was quickly found in South East London and arrested. For the third time, Sir Bernard Spilsbury was called in to perform a post-mortem on a body found in a trunk.
Mancini went on trial for Violet’s murder on December 10th, 1934 in Lewes Assizes. According to the prosecution, Violet had died from a blow to the head. They also managed to match the handwriting from menus written by Mancini at the Skylark to the handwriting on the telegram form. They were also quick to point out that the telegram had been sent after Violet’s death.
Doris Saville, a witness for the prosecution, stated that Mancini had asked her to provide him with a false alibi. Other witnesses came forward and stated that Mancini had “boasted in the days after the murder of giving his ‘missus’ the biggest hiding of her life”.
The defence, having very little to go on, chose to degrade Violet’s character based on her profession. Toni Mancini managed to murder Violet twice – first, he physically murdered her, and then he had his defence assassinate her character.
Mancini, through his defence team, claimed that he had found Violet’s body at the flat, already dead. He didn’t think the police would believe his story due to his criminal record. He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking at all. He kept the ‘truth’ a secret, and hid her in the trunk.
Unbelievably, the jury believed him. They found him not guilty.
In 1976, at the age of 68, Mancini confessed to a journalist at News of the World that he had, indeed, killed Violet. He was near death. It was time to come clean.
He explained that after the row at the Café, they’d continued the row at home. Violet came at him with a hammer. He wrestled with her over it. He got the upper hand. She demanded it back. He threw it at her. It hit her in the left temple.
For 42 years, Toni Mancini got away with murder. And then he escaped justice once again via death bed confession.
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Sources:
The Brighton Trunk Murders – Crime Files – Crime and Investigation
Brighton Trunk Murders Wikipedia page