Patrick Mahon

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Patrick Herbert Mahon (1890 - 5 September 1924) was a British man who perpetrated one of the so-called "Crumbles murders" - two unrelated murders which occurred on the Crumbles shingle beach in Sussex in the 1920s. He killed his lover Emily Kaye in 1924 and dismembered her body.

Biography

Mahon, employed as a salesman in Richmond, had multiple criminal convictions for burglary. He received a five-year sentence for attempted murder after battering a servant girl with a hammer during a burglary. He met Emily B. Kaye in in 1922 and embarked upon an affair with her under the alias of "Derek Patterson" despite being married. Kaye became pregnant by Mahon after three months. Panicking, Mahon convinced Kaye to come and stay with him at a holiday bungalow on the Crumbles beach in Eastbourne in April 1924. Prior to travelling to Eastbourne, Mahon bought a carving knife and a tenon saw.

On 16 April, another mistress of Mahon's named Ethel Duncan was invited to the holiday bungle by him. When Duncan arrived in Eastbourne, she observed that Mahon had a bandaged wrist, who claimed that he had saved a woman from falling off a bus that morning. She left after three days, and at no point saw any indication that anyone else had been staying with Mahon. He remained in Eastbourne until 26 April, when he left on the train with a Gladstone bag and a travelling suitcase. The latter case he threw from the train during the journey, before depositing the Gladstone bag at Waterloo Station to pick it up later.

However, Mahon's wife was suspicious that he was having an affair and had hired a private detective to investigate him. Discovering a luggage ticket for a Gladstone bag in Mahon's jacket, the detective went to Waterloo Station and examined the bag; while it was locked, he was able to discern that it contained bloodstained cloth and a large knife. The detective alerted Scotland Yard, and Mahon was arrested by undercover police officers on 2 May when he tried to collect the bag. Upon being prized open the bag was found to contain heavily bloodstained women's clothes, a bloodstained knife and a canvas bag with the initials "E.B.K." emblazoned on it. Testing revealed the blood in the bag was human, despite Mahon's claims he had been using the bag to carry dog's meat.

After several hours of questioning, Mahon admitted that the blood belonged to his mistress Emily Kaye, claiming they had quarrelled on 15 April before Kaye threw an axe at him and they got into a scuffle which ended in the two falling over and Kaye fatally hitting her head on the coal scuttle. Mahon further admitted that he had spent the next week or so dismembering Kaye's body before burning her head, feet and legs in the fireplace and pulverizing them with a hammer, boiling several sections of her body and stuffing her arms, hands and torso into the suitcase he had thrown from the train. This suitcase and the remains inside were later recovered, but Kaye's head, feet and legs were never found apart from some teeth and part of her bottom jaw, which were found on a refuse heap. A search of the holiday bungalow uncovered charred bone fragments and spattered body fat in the fireplace, a box containing boiled flesh, muscle and bone, a bloody tenon saw, a saucer containing boiled human fat and numerous bloody items of clothing.

Mahon was charged with the murder of Emily Kaye. He continued to insist at trial that Kaye's death had been accidental; however, forensic pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury testified that the coal scuttle against which Kaye had hit her head could not have produced a fatal injury. He further testified that his examination of Kaye's remains after reassembling them had led him to believe that she had been bludgeoned to death, likely with an axe handle missing from the bungalow, due to extensive bruising on her left shoulder, although he could not conclusively determine her cause of death because her skull was never found. Furthermore, no part of the bungalow showed signs of being hit with an axe despite Mahon's claims that Kaye had thrown an axe at him, missed and hit the wall. The prosecution also pointed to the fact that an invoice proved Mahon had bought the knife and saw before Kaye's death and not afterwards like he claimed as evidence that he already planned on killing her, alongside the fact that shortly before her death Kaye told her friends that she and Mahon planned to marry and emigrate to South Africa. Mahon admitted that he had not planned on doing this, suggesting that he had been trying to explain her imminent disappearence.

The jury convicted Mahon after only 45 minutes of deliberation. He was sentenced to death. An appeal claiming that the trial judge had misdirected the jury was rejected and Mahon was hanged on 5 September 1924.