The Body in the Trunk

At 1.45pm on 6 May 1927 a trunk is left at the left luggage office of Charing Cross railway station in central London. When, after a while, it begins to emit an over-powering smell, railway workers call the police. They make the not uncommon discovery of the dismembered body of a woman, stations being a common dumping place for bodies at the time — anonymous and unchecked.

There are three immediate clues, a discarded left luggage receipt, a destination label, and a pair of knickers marked with the number 447.

The label is traced to a laundry revealing the murdered woman to be 35-year-old Minnie Roles, a former servant who had fallen on hard times.

Ms Roles’ world reveals no end of potential suspects. There was the jilted husband Bianco Bonati. Could he have killed her in a fit of jealousy? Or could her lodger and lover Fred Roles have been the killer? Then there was a mysterious Smithfield butcher called Tom, who had been involved in a three-way tryst with Minnie and her best friend, Frances.

A post mortem revealed that the dismemberment had been carried out with skill, suggesting a butcher, but a cab driver remembers picking up the trunk from outside an address in Rochester Row and the description of its carrier does not match that of Tom. Checking the alibi of Bonati and Roles make it difficult for them to have been the passenger, and the cab driver fails to pick either out in an identity parade. But who lived at the pick-up address? It turns out to be bankrupt estate agent, John Robinson, but what was the connection to Minnie?

Going back to the trunk, police discover a tea cloth belonging to The Greyhound. Two pubs are implicated — one in Smithfield which is the centre of illegal meat trading, and one in Hammersmith where Robinson's wife Anne worked as a barmaid.

When confronted by police, Robinson confessed to the murder. Desperate for money, Minnie had propositioned him, they had quarrelled over her price and he had struck her. He was found guilty and hanged on 12 August 1927.

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