MURDER TRIAL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 July 1924, Page 5

MURDER TRIAL

MAHON SENTENCED TO DEATH. 8Y CABLE PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT . . LONDON, July 19. Patrick Mahon was found guilty of the murder of Miss Kaye ac Eastbourne and was sentenced to deatn. Thus ends one of the most gruesome urageclies of recent years. Following tire discovery at a London railway station or a portmanteau containing a woman’s Mood-stained gorments, the police made investigations at a iiungaunv at Eastbourne, where portions ol : a woman’s dismembeieci uody were found. When Mahon called at the station for the portmanteau he was detained by the police, anti a charge of murder was made. Alter being live and a half hours in the box, during three ot which he was subjected to trie severest cross-exam-ination, Mahon completed his evidence.. He. frequently broke down am! cried loudly. At t|ie finish he was in a state of collapse. Mahon’s evidence was practically a recapitulation of liis statement to the police, but he admitted he bought a knife and saw- previous to Kaye’s death, not subsequently, as he had hitherto affirmed.

JUDGE’S REMARKS,

MAHON’S HISTORY. Received July 21, 8.5 a.m. LONDON, July 20. Mr. Justice Avory, in sentencing Mahon to death, said: “The jury arrived at the only proper conclusion on the evidence, not knowing that you had already served a sentence of penal servitude for a crime of violence. There is no question you deliberately designed the death of this woman.” The newspapers publish the life story of Mahon, showing that he belonged to a humble, respectable Liverpool family. Mahon for many years wa s a Sunday school teacher. He committed his first crime in 1911, at the age of twenty-two, when lie was bound over on a. charge of forging an employer’s cheque. In the following year he was sentenced to twelve months for forging and uttering. Finally, in 1916, he was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for wounding a servant girl who surprised him in attempting a burglary on a bank. Mahon is of an attractive personality, and is a good conversationalist and salesman. For years Mahon carried on many affairs with women, with whom he stayed at most expensive hotels. He was a voracious reader of French novels. The life of Landru was found in the Crumbles bungalow, where Emily Kaye died. There is a suggestion that Mahon was trying to imitate Landru’s methods.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.