User Reviews

What must it be like to have to stand trial for one's life? In the modern world this is becoming less and less a serious question, as more and more jurisdictions either do away with the death penalty or seriously hamper it's use. Just the other day Florida and California, on a temporary level, have stopped executions of prisoners due to questions concerning the humane standard of execution by injection. But there was a time (and not too long ago) that every homicide case in the World's leading states (the U.S., England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Japan, China) was punished by execution. The chance that twelve individuals might put you to death was quite real.

One man who suffered sufficiently for a moment's bad temper the torments of the damned was Tony Mancini, a small time crook who (in 1934) was living with his girlfriend Violette Kaye in the seaside town of Brighton, England. Anyone who has studied Tony's career knows he was capable of violence when he got angry. He and Violette had an argument, and Tony hit her. She fell, and hit her head (inside their apartment) and died. Tony found himself (apparently quite honestly) in that classic situation of having committed manslaughter with nobody as his witness that it was not an intentional murder. With his record, and this corpse, what would happen if he went to the police: Probably they would consider he was lying and killed Violette intentionally.

So Tony got "a brilliant idea". This was before government identification cards, or social security (in the U.S.) - an age where people could still vanish easily. He went and got a huge steamer trunk, and forced Violette's body into it. Then he had it shipped to the nearest railway station, where it was to be picked up at a later date. He then packed his luggage, and went off to London to disappear into the crowds there. He figured that by the time people noticed something odd about the trunk, he would have been able to start a new life far away.

So what do you suppose when a week later Tony was having breakfast and reading a newspaper, and the headline said: "Body found inside trunk in Brighton Railway Station!"? Tony was not too happy about that. As he was only "on the lam" one week, he was quickly found and brought back to Brighton.

He was now facing death, and was also facing something that may have made him absolutely furious. The body that wrecked Tony's scheme was not Violette's. It was the body of a young woman found in another steamer trunk also left at the railway station. Some unknown person had beaten Tony to the use of his "brilliant idea", and left Tony to feel the heat of his accidental killing of Violette and the death of this totally unknown woman.

Tony was lucky in one thing - he had the services of one of England's best lawyers, Norman Birkett, as his defense counsel. Birkett did a brilliant job showing that while Tony should have been more open about contacting the police he was not an intentional murderer. After a bitterly fought case, Mancini was acquitted. He almost collapsed, his gratitude mingled by his complete fear, while thanking Birkett for his saving him. Years later Tony finally explained what led to the argument and the accident.

But one thing left a sour flavor - the story of the unknown woman. For years it was said this part was never solved. No it was solved - it was ruined before it got to court: According to Jonathan Goodman in his essay on the case in THE RAILWAY MURDERS, the unknown lady turned out to be the accidental victim of a prominent doctor who performed abortions. Usually the doctor was quite successful with these, but here he was not too successful. Scotland Yard was preparing to arrest the doctor, but a local policeman confronted the doctor prematurely to "collar him" for the glory of it. The Doctor, in the presence of this dimwit, opened a private telephone list he had, and began making calls - to every prominent family he "helped" when their daughters got into "the family way". Within hours Scotland Yard shut down the official investigation into the first trunk murder, and left the doctor alone (years later he was caught on another abortion and was thrown out of the medical community - it didn't matter, he was quite rich by that time, and he was never sent to prison).

Thinking of the two trunk killers, my sympathy still goes to Tony. Sometimes I think, given his ordeal in the trial, he should have been allowed to be locked in a room with the doctor (suitably tied up) and allowed to pound him for about fifteen minutes.