Unsolved June Murder
The first murder came to light on 17 June 1934, when an unclaimed plywood trunk was noticed by William Joseph Vinnicombe at the left luggage office of Brighton railway station as he investigated a smell. He alerted the police and Chief Inspector Ronald Donaldson opened the trunk to find the dismembered torso of a woman. When other stations were alerted a suitcase at King's Cross railway station was found to contain the legs. The head and arms were never found. The press named the victim 'The Girl with the Pretty Feet' or simply 'Pretty Feet' because the corpse had 'Dancer's Feet' thought beautiful.
The post-mortem by Sir Bernard Spilsbury revealed that the woman was about 25 and five months pregnant. Neither the victim nor the murderer were ever identified.
Chief Inspector Donaldson suspected a local abortionist named Massiah based on what was known about him and on Spilsbury's notes:
Internal examination of the torso had not revealed the cause of death; the legs and feet found at King's Cross belonged to the torso; the victim had been well nourished; she had been not younger than twenty-one and not older than twenty-eight, had stood about five feet two inches, and had weighed roughly eight and a half stones; she was five months pregnant at the time of death.
Donaldson asked officers to watch Massiah covertly. One, drafted from Hove, confronted Massiah, expecting him to come quietly. Instead the doctor wrote a list of names and "...it seemed to the policeman that the sun had gone in: all of a sudden the consulting room was a place of sombre shadows...." (A Coincidence of Corpses by Jonathan Goodman).
The policeman did not tell Donaldson, who only heard when he was warned by a senior officer to back off. Massiah moved to London where a woman died while he was performing an abortion, yet he evaded prosecution. He remained on the General Medical Register and was only removed when he failed to re-register in 1952, following his retirement to Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Read more about this topic: Brighton Trunk Murders
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