A LIFE OF CRIME

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1073, 21 July 1924, Page 5

A LIFE OF CRIME

CULMINATES IN MURDER. MAHON TO PAY THE PENALTY. By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. LONDON, July 20. Mahon, the “bungalo” murderer, was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Miss Kaye. After five and a half hours in the box. during three of which he was subjected to the severest cross-exami-nation, Mahon completed his evidence. He frequently broke down and cried loudly. At the finish, he was in a state of collapse. Mahon’s evidence was practically a recapitulation of his statement to the police, but lie admitted lie bought a knife and saw previous to Miss Kaye’s death, not subsequently, as lie had hitherto affirmed. Mr justice Avory, in sentencing Mahon to death, said: “The jury has arrived at the only proper conclusion on the evidence, not knowing that you had already served penal servitude for a crime of violence. There is no question that you deliberately designed the death of this woman.”

The newspapers publish the life story of Mahon, showing that he belonged to a humble and respectable Liverpool family. Mahon for many years was a Sunday school teacher. He committed his first crime in 1911, when he was 22 years of age, when he was bound over on a charge of the forging of his employer’s cheque. In the following year he was sentenced to 12 months for forging and uttering. Finally in 1916 ho was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for wounding a servant girl who surprised him in attempting the burglary of a batik. Alalion is of an attractive personality and 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 the suggestion that Mahon was trying to imitate Landru’s methods.—A. and N.Z. cable.