Patrick Herbert Mahon

Patrick Herbert Mahon was convicted of the murder of 38-year-old Emily Beilby Kaye and sentenced to death. He killed her at the Officers House, Langney Bungalows, Westham, near the Crumbles, Eastbourne on 14 April 1924. After killing her he dismembered her body and boiled parts of it, before putting certain bloodstained items in a Gladstone bag and leaving it at the luggage office of Waterloo train station. However, his wife found the ticket for the bag and asked a former member of the railway police to get it for her and discovered the items. Following the discovery the police were informed and they waited for him to come and collect the Gladstone bag. xxx4xxx Patrick Mahon had been a sales manager to an aerated water company at Sunbury and had lived with his wife and child at Richmond. He was described as having a bad record. In 1911 he was bound over at Liverpool on a charge of stealing cheques to the value of £120, and in 1912 he got 12 months imprisonment at the Dorset Assizes for stealing securities. Then, in 1916, he got 5 years penal servitude at the Surrey Assizes for burglary and wounding. He had broken into a bank at Windlesham during the night and struck the servant girl on the head with a blunt instrument when she came downstairs to the bank premises in the morning. At the time of his conviction for murder, he was also wanted for a burglary at Purton in Wiltshire. Upon his release from penal servitude in March 1920, he appeared to have got employment with the firm at Sunbury where his wife was also employed. Emily Kaye had been unmarried and had kept herself as a typist and secretary from the age of 17. She was described as a quiet respectable woman, fond of tennis and outdoor sports. Patrick Mahon met Emily Kaye when the business at Sunbury went into liquidation. She had been the secretary to the Receiver and Patrick Mahon, as the sales manager, used to call at her office and became acquainted with her in the summer of 1923. Patrick Mahon said that in August 1923 he took her for an outing on the River and that intimacy took place upon that occasion and had continued up to the date of the murder. Early in 1924, Emily Kaye realized her securities, which were savings, to the value of about £400, and she undoubtedly handed to Patrick Mahon at least £300 of that sum in three £100 notes. Patrick Mahon cashed the notes, putting a false name on the back, with at least one of the notes being cashed after the murder. xxx2xxx Patrick Mahon's explanation for the financial transactions was that Emily Kaye had induced him to go into a speculation in francs with her and that he gave her £125 of his own money for that purpose. He then represented that the £100 notes that were given to him were in fact profits from that speculation, he having handed back to her a sum of about £40 on each occasion to equalise the account between them. However, it was noted that there was only his word for that, and that having regards to the other facts of the case, his explanation could not be accepted as the true one. The examination of Emily Kaye's remains by the pathologist disclosed that she had in fact at the time of her death been 3 months pregnant. The pathologist was able to ascertain that by the condition of her breasts. The uterus had disappeared, having been severed from the neck by a perfectly clean cut. About the beginning of April 1924, Patrick Mahon took a lease for two months of the Officers' Bungalow, part of the old Coastguard Station upon the Crumbles, near Eastbourne. He then arranged with Emily Kaye that she should go and stay with him there, and they arrived at the Bungalow on Saturday, 12 April 1924. The case for the prosecution was that Emily Kaye, knowing that she was pregnant, and having informed Patrick Mahon of the fact, had been pressing him to take her away to Paris and then to South Africa. Emily Kaye had in fact announced to her friends that she was engaged to be married to one 'Derek Paterson', and from her letters it appeared that she was certainly under the impression that Patrick Mahon would, at any rate, elope with her to South Africa. It was thought that it seemed probable that Emily Kaye had known that Patrick Mahon had been a married man and that he could not have married her. xxx4xxx On 29 April or 1 May 1924, the Metropolitan Police were informed that a suspicious bag had been deposited at Waterloo station, and a watch was set on it, and on 2 May 1924, Patrick Mahon called for the bag. The bag had actually been found by Patrick Mahon's wife after she found the ticket for it in Patrick Mahon's clothes which she had searched after becoming suspicious that he was seeing someone or gambling, on account of all the time he spent away on business trips. When she collected the bag she found that it contained bloodstained cloth and a cook's knife, and informed the police who said that it would be best to out the bag back and then arrest Patrick Mahon when he came for it. When Patrick Mahon came to collect the bag, and after admitting that it was his, he was detained and taken to Cannon Row Police Station. When the bag was opened it was found to contain pieces of cloth and parts of a woman's garment, all bloodstained, and a cook's knife which was also bloodstained. When Patrick Mahon was asked for an explanation, he gave a lame story about being fond of dogs and having carried meat for them in the bag. However, he soon after confessed and made a full statement. His story was in general effect, the story that he afterwards put forward at his trial, that being that he slept with Emily Kaye at the bungalow on the nights of 12, 13 and 14 April 1924, and that on the night of 14 or 15 April he finally announced to Emily Kaye that he could not carry out his promise to go away with her. He said that she then became enraged and flung a coal hatchet at him and then rushed at him and got him by the throat. He said that he also got her by the throat and that they struggled, and eventually in attempting to push Emily Kaye off, she fell and struck her head on a coal cauldron and never thereafter regained consciousness. He then explained in a great wealth of detailed his feelings when he knew she was dead, and how he felt that the only thing to do was to attempt to get rid of the remains. He said that he then returned to London on 17 April 1924 and purchased the cook's knife, which was later found in the gladstone bag at the station, and a saw, which was later found at the bungalow, from a shop in Victoria Street, and then returned to the bungalow and started to dismember the body. xxx5xxx Upon his confession, the police were at once dispatched to the Crumbles, where they found parts of the remains of Emily Kaye in one of the bedrooms in a lock trunk and other boxes. Her head was missing, as was the whole of her left leg. It was found that attempts had been made to burn and boil parts of the remains. Upon those facts, Patrick Mahon was then charged with murder and upon further investigation, it was determined that he had actually bought the cook's knife and saw on 12 April 1924, the day on which he took up residence with Emily Kaye at the bungalow, and not on 17 April as he had stated. As such, it appeared therefore quite clear that, in spite of his later explanation that he had bought the cook's knife and saw for purely domestic purposes and had made a mistake in saying that he had bought them on 17 and not 12 April, that he had in fact bought them with the intention of murdering Emily Kaye and afterwards dismembering and disposing of her body. Further confirmation of that view was to be found in the fact that on the night of 10 April 1924, that Patrick Mahon had met by chance a woman as he was returning in the rain to his house in Richmond and that on that night he arranged to meet her the following Wednesday, 16 April, and that he kept that appointment, it being noted that he murdered Emily Kaye on 14 or 15 April. They met at Charing Cross and dined at Victoria, and Patrick Mahon then arranged that she should come down to the bungalow and stay with him there for two or three days, which she did. The woman went to the bungalow on Good Friday, the 18 April 1924, which was the very day that Patrick Mahon said he destroyed Emily Kaye's head by burning it in the fire grate and breaking up the bones of the skull and scattering the remains on the beach around the bungalow. xxx9xxx The rest of the remains of Emily Kaye were locked up in one of the spare bedrooms. Patrick Mahon slept with the woman on the nights of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 18, 19 and 20 April in the same bedroom that he had a few days before occupied with Emily Kaye. It was noted that upon these facts and the rest of the evidence that the prosecution founded their theory that Patrick Mahon's story of how Emily Kaye met her death in the course of a struggle was untrue, and they suggested that he had probably struck her on the head with the coal hatchet which was found with a broken handle and that the reason that Patrick Mahon had taken great care to destroy the head was that there should be no evidence of the injuries he had inflicted upon her. It was submitted that there had also been a similar reason for the disappearance of the uterus, as the fact that Emily Kaye had been pregnant at the time would have afforded a motive for the crime. Patrick Mahon was tried at the Sussex Assizes and sentenced to death. He was executed at Wandsworth on 3 September 1924. It was noted that following the discovery of the crime, that The Officers House was opened up to sightseers at a shilling a go and that queues of people were seen to be waiting for their turn to go in and look around. However, it was noted that shortly after, entrance to the bungalow was shut off, and strong sturdy barricades placed around it to stop visitors getting in. Spilsbury admitted to the difficulty of a 1924 case in which he had been involved. It took place in a rented bungalow along a two-mile strip of the Sussex shore known as the Crumbles. Emily Kaye, a 34-year-old secretary, was involved with an Irish crook and philanderer named Patrick Herbert Mahon. When she became pregnant, he invited her for a “romantic” weekend at the Crumbles. In the bungalow, he killed and dismembered her. He used a knife and saw to carve her up and tried boiling pieces of her over the fire. The rest he placed into a trunk, locking it in the bedroom. He then brought back another woman with whom he had made a date, and they spent the weekend there. When Mahon returned to London, he left a bag at the luggage office of Waterloo train station and went home to see his wife. Mahon’s wife found a ticket for the bag and asked a former member of the railway police to check it out. Inside, he found blood-soaked women’s underwear, a case with Emily’s initials on it, and a bloody carving knife. These items were turned over to the police, who placed Mahon under arrest. He quickly contrived a story about how he and Emily had quarreled, whereupon she had come at him with a hatchet. He’d pushed her away, killing her accidentally when she fell and hit her head against a coal pot. He’d worried that he would be charged with murder, so he had dismembered her body. Spilsbury traveled to the bungalow to look at the body and found pieces literally everywhere, including some that had been partially boiled over the fire. There were organs in a biscuit tin, and body grease and human blood splashed all over the place. He would say later that this was the most gruesome crime scene he had ever encountered. His task was rather odious as well: He had to collect the hundreds of fragments, already several days decomposed, and reconstruct the body to prove identity and ascertain the cause of death. He found a bruised shoulder that indicated a sharp blow inflicted ante-mortem. However, once the body was assembled, he discovered that the victim’s head, uterus, and right leg were all missing. Police took dogs all along the train route, in case these items had been tossed out the window as Mahon returned to London. They did not find any of the missing parts. Since Mahon claimed that Emily had hit her head, without it, Spilsbury could not establish a cause of death. Nevertheless, he did determine from the condition of her breasts that Emily had been pregnant. He also found that she could not have died from hitting her head on the coal bucket, as it showed no sign of blood, hair, or damage. But there was more. Mahon claimed to have burned Emily’s head in the fire and broken up the charred remains with a poker. In his usual thorough manner, Spilsbury burned a sheep’s head to try to duplicate these conditions and see if the ashes from the fireplace matched those in the bungalow’s grate. It did turn out to be possible to use fire to turn a head into something brittle enough to smash into pieces. Nevertheless, when Mahon claimed he had purchased a knife and saw after the “accident,” he caused his own undoing, as the police proved he had purchased these items before Emily died. Thus, his intention to kill her was clear. That she had been pregnant provided motive, and the jury took 40 minutes to convict. Age:- 34 Date of Execution:- Wednesday, 3rd September, 1924 Location of Execution:- Wandsworth Hangman:- Thomas Pierrepoint Assistants:- William Willis Tried At:- Lewes Trial Dates:- 15th - 19th July, 1924 Trial Judge:- Mister Justice Avory Crime:- Murder Victims:- Name:- Emily Beilby Kaye Age:- 38 Location of Murder:- Officer's House, Langney Bungalows, Westham, near the Crumbles, Eastbourne Date of Murder:- circa Monday, 14th April, 1924 Method of Murder:- Probably Battered Relationship to Killer:- Girlfriend