In May 1927, a large black trunk deposited at Charing Cross railway station in London began to emit a foul smell. When police opened it on 10 May, they found the dismembered body of a woman, her limbs individually wrapped in brown paper. A laundry tag traced the victim to Minnie Alice Bonati, a domestic servant who supplemented her income through prostitution. She had gone to the Rochester Row office of estate agent John Robinson, 35, and died there following an argument over money.
Robinson claimed Bonati had attacked him, that he pushed her away and she fell and struck her head. Forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury contradicted this at trial, testifying she had been knocked unconscious and deliberately asphyxiated. Tried at the Old Bailey, Robinson was convicted on Spilsbury’s evidence and hanged on 12 August 1927.
