Files on the Brighton Trunk Murders

<p>As well as three volumes of photographs of the two bodies (SPA 11/3/2-4), albums of similar format relating to two other murders (SPA 11/3/5-6) have been preserved in association.</p>

On 17 June 1934 the torso of a woman was discovered in a trunk at Brighton railway station, and the following day a similar trunk containing what proved to be the limbs of the same body was discovered at Kings Cross railway station, London. The victim remained unidentified and the crime unsolved.

In the course of police investigations, on 14 July Jack Notyre alias Toni Mancini alias Cecil Louis England, a waiter at the Skylake Café in Brighton, was interviewed concerning the disappearance of Violet Kaye. The following day, Kaye's body was discovered in a trunk at Mancini's lodgings at 52 Kemp Street, Brighton. Mancini was tried for Kaye's murder at Lewes assizes on 10-14 December 1934 and acquitted.

Mancini's subsequent public confessions to the murder of Violet Kaye have resulted in occasional police involvement, and, coupled with the notoriety of the crimes, have almost certainly led to the preservation of this group of papers, which has accordingly been listed as part of the archive of the Central Division which (see SPA 11/3/7), investigated Mancini's latest public confession in 1976.