EASTBOURNE MURDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18767, 22 July 1924, Page 9

EASTBOURNE MURDER.

MAHON'S BAD RECORD. FORMER CRIME OF VIOLENCE. a. and N.Z. LONDON. July 20. Mr. Justice Avery, in sentencing Patrick Mahon to death for murdering Mjss Emily Kaye at the bungalow near Eastbourne, said: "The jury arrived at the only proper conclusion on the evidence, not knowing that you had already served a term in prison for a crime of violence. There is no question but that you deliberately designed the death of this woman."

The newspapers publish the life story of Mahon. He belonged to a humble and respectable Liverpool family, and was for many years a Sunday-school teacher. He committed his first crime in 1911, at the age of 22 years, when he was bound over on being charged with forging his employer's name to a cheque.

In the following year he was sentenced to 12 months in gaol for forging and uttering.. Finally, in. 1916, Mahon was sentenced to years' imprisonment for wounding a servant girl who had surprised him in attempting a burglary at a bank. •He had an attractive personality, and was a good conversationalist and salesman.

For years Mahon carried on many affairs with women, with whom he stayed in the most expensive hotels: He was a voracious reader of French novels. '.'The Life of Landru" was found in the bungalow where Miss Kaye was murdered. The suggestion is that Mahon was trying to imitate Landru's methods.

Owing to the smell arising from a portmanteau which a man left in the cloakroom at Waterloo station, London, early in May, the bag was opened in the presence of the police. It was found to contain a woman's blood-soaked lingerie, and a blood-stained butchery knife, to which human hair and flesh were adhering. Detectives maintained a watch for the claimant of the portmanteau. In due course Patrick Mahon unsuspectingly arrived and presented the cloakroom ticket. He was immediately taken to the police station and questioned. In consequent of the man's replies the police searched an unoccupied bungalow behind the former coastguards' house, in a lonely spot, between Eastbourne, tlje famous Sussex watering place, and Langney. They discovered in various rooms dismembered portions of a. woman's body. Some were wrapped up <in parcels. A leather trunk found in the bungalow contained four parcels and a biscuit tin. There were also piecee of flesh and bone wrapped in articles of clothing. Two large metal stewing pans were found in the kitchen, in which parts of the woman's body had been boiled. Later the murdered woman was identified as Miss Kaye. Mahon had leased the bungalow from a lady who was then travelling around the world. He paid a substantial sum, saying he was in London in connection with the Empire Exhibition. The victim of the murder was 28 vears of age. She had been living at a women's club in the West End of London. She was identified by means of a skirt found in the bungalow. Her clubmatea said that Miss Kaye was a pretty, swee£natured girl, and wildly happy over her prospective marriage. She was. never yisited by men, tennis being her chief hobby. '