Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 28

Cl HASTILY Just a quaint little resorf cottage but within were the traces of one of the revolting murders that ever startled the English public JDUNOALOW The very walls, EASME Patrick Mahon, who checked a suitcase in a London railway station and Wound up, a few months later, on the gallows. cottage at The Crumbles were made public. Mahon came to grief through mere chance," primarily. He had been in the habit of disappearing over week-ends; someone the police did not reveal just who had become curious about his absences, and had put a private detective on his trail. rpHIS detective, one Monday, saw Mahon 1 returning to London after a week-end holiday.

Mahon checked a valise at Waterloo Station, and the detective, reporting that fact to his client, was ordered to stay there and see how long it would be before Mahon reclaimed it. Days passed. Nothing happened except that an unpleasant smell began to permeate the room. The detective notified Scotland Yard, and police came to join his vigil. At last Mahon appeared and presented his check for the valise.

He was arrested and taken to Scotland Yard, where the valise was opened. Mahon was not greatly perturbed at first. He explained the blood stains very simply. He had some dogs down in the country and frequently took meat down to them in the valise. It was all quite simple, really.

The detectives quietly suggested that the stains might be of human blood. They also asked whom the clothing belonged to. Mahon sat silent for fully 15 minutes. He could not say they were his wife's the police would check up on him instantly. Besides, the initials on the vanity case didn't correspond with hers.

Finally Mahon broke his silence, asking, "I wonder if you can realize how terrible it is' for one's body to be active and one's mind to fail to act?" The detectives said nothing. Then Mahon broke down and said he would tell all. He caused the most stout-hearted murderer to lose his nerve, this self-oossessed young family man set about the grisly work which, he hoped, would enable him to escape punishment for a crime which he had not committed but of which no one would be likely to believe him innocent. This was the story Mahon clung to when he was put on trial for his life. The prosecution, of course, charged that he had deliberately killed the woman to get rid of her.

It laid stress on the fact that the saw and knife he had used to dismember her body had been bought on April 12, three days before her death, and not on April 1 7, as he had claimed. It asserted that he had planned the murder some time before committing it. "DUT the really clinching evidence against him came from Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Sir Bernard had gone down to the cottage and had made the most thorough examination Emily Kayc, the London girl icho thought she was going to South Africa on her honeymoon and who met, instead, a dreadful fate in a little English seaside bungalow. Editor's Note: This is the fifth of a series of articles describing the exploits of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, England's "medical Sherlock Holmes." Milton Bronner LONDON IT was just another pleasant little seaside cottage, from the outside.

It was near the English channel at a place quaintly named The Crumbles, near the great and fashionable British resort of Eastbourne. The crowds that passed it in the Whitsuntide holiday crush of 1924 probably never thought twice about it except, perhaps, to notice that it was a charming little place. But within there was a horror unspeakable a crime whose description shocked the most case-hardened of newspaper readers. The details of the case burst upon newspaper readers almost without warning, and for a while "The Crumbles case," as it was called, was the sensation of the day. And when it was all over, and the drop had been sprung and the limp, dangling body, revolving horribly, had been cut down, it went into the records as one more victory to the credit of Sir Bernard Spils-bury.

Sir Bernard is by way of becoming a legend in British police history. He is a handsome, soft-spoken, well-dressed scientist who is chief pathologist to the Home Office. The newspapers have often described him as a "medical Sherlock Holmes." and the title is an apt one. Time after time have his methodical and grimly efficient scientific investigations brought murderers to the gallows. Never did they appear to better advantage than in the case of the quiet bungalow at The Crumbles.

THE first intimation of this case came quickly enough a brief paragraph in the London newspapers stating that the police had arrested a man who had come to claim a valise left at the luggage room of the Waterloo Station, in London. The valise contained a woman's bloodstained clothing, a butcher knife, and a little vanity case bearing the initials E. B. The man was being detained for questioning. That was all.

There was nothing to make any reader think about it twice. But it was the prelude to a tale of great horror. The man being detained seemed a nice enough sort of chap. His name was Patrick Mahon. He had settled recently, with his wife and family, in a good residential district of London, having moved there from Liverpool.

He held a good job, he and his family alway. dressed well, he was a well-spoken man and he took an unobtrusively active part in the social and sports events of his community His neighbors were surprised when they read of his being held for questioning in connection with the mysterious valise. A few days later their surprise was redoubled when he was formally accused of the wilful murder of Emily Kaye. And the surprise turned to shudders when the details of what had happened in the he said, seemed to shriek at him." organs showed conclusively that she had not died a natural death. There was a possibility that she might have been strangled.

It was much more likely, however, that she had been struck a tremendous, crushing blow on the skull. The condition of the whole body was consistent with this theory. So, too, wai the significant fact that the head had been completely destroyed. Sir Bernard gave his evidence in a cool, unemotional voice, just as if he had been addressing a class in medical school. Mahon turned pale as he listened to him; almost fainted when the pathologist reached the climax of his story for he knew, as well as anyone, that that quiet, class-room voice was sounding his own doom.

Mahon took the witness stand in his own defense, and stuck to his original story. He wa obviously under a terrific nervous strain. Sev-eral times in the course of his testimony he broke down and sobbed. His nervousness, after all, was only natural. His defense rested upon a very shaky and improbable story; the rough handling Sir Bernard had given it made his conviction appear a certainty.

But he persisted in the account he had given to the police. It was dearly his hope that he would leave enough doubt in the jurors' minds to keep them from bringing in anything worse than a manslaughter verdict TTIS hope was vain. Sir Bernard A had made obvious that the girl had been killed bv a willful blow, and not by an accidental bump re- ceived a fall. The jury lost little time in finding Mahon guilty, and he was sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed the verdict But in England there is no such long delay between verdict and appeal there is in America, where a criminal case may be dragged out for two or three years.

Mahon 's appeal was heard within a verv few days. The court speedily dismissed it, remarking that Mahon was clearly guilty of a cruel, repulsive and care fully-planned murder. Mahon broke down utterly, and had to be almost carried back to his cell. He recovered his composure while in jail, however the same cool composure that had him to spend days in that cottage at The Crumbles, busy at his frightful task and when he was led to the scaffold on Sept. 3, 1924, he went to his death with stoical calm.

And another triumph was recorded for Sir Bernard Spilsbury. told them, halting and stammering, a tale which sent them at once to the cottage at The Crumbles. TT wasn't pleasant, what they found there. A There was evidence that the grate in the living room had been used to burn part of a human body. Among the ashes they found charred, blackened human bones.

A trunk in another room held parts of a human body. In a cracker tin were found parts of a woman's internal organs. In other boxes were more bones from which the flesh had either been burned or boiled off. Wherever they looked they found more ghastly remains. The quiet little cottage was as grisly a enamel house as they had ever seen.

What Mahon had told them was this: Some time ago. he said, a Miss fs.aye had come to the offices of the firm which he was secretary. He and for she had become friends; before long they were lovers, although she knew that he was a married man. ently she had told him that she was going to become a mother. She had suggested that they pool their money and go away together to South Africa.

Meanwhile, she had bought a wedding ring and had told her friends that she was going to South Africa shortly to be married. Mahon had tried to stall her off; eventually he had rented this bungalow at The Crumbles and they had formed the habit of going there together, week-enda. 0N 15, he said, thev had come up to London toepiher she to collect some belongings, he to get passports for their trip to South Africa. When they returned to the cottage he admitted he had done nothing about the passports. She flew into a frenzy of rage and threw an ax at his head; then she rushed at him like a mad woman.

They struggled, he pushed her away, and she fell, striking her head against a coal scuttle. The fall, Mahon said, killed her Panic then seized him. The very walls he said. seemed to shriek at him. He remained for days in me Dungalow, destroying the body bit bit, and burning the head completely.

He knew, he said, that he mnni by of murder, but he feared that no one would ever De it. Disposing of her body seemed his only hope. So, amid surroundings that might have England's famed medical sleuth action. Sir Bernard Spdsbury the apron) carrying' out an c.aminaln the garden of the bungalow at "The Crumbles." of the dreadful things that had been found there. His testimony was nothing less than an amazing scientific triumph.

For although the of the young woman had been completely destroyed he was able to testify that she had not oeen Killed by a relatively light blow, si as she would have received had she fallen such in me way described by Mahon. His examination of the remains recovered-bones, bits of flesh, parts of limbs and internal.