Her torso was found stuffed into a trunk deposited at the left luggage office at Brighton railway station. Next day her legs were found in a suitcase at Kings Cross station. She was in her early 30s, between four and five months pregnant and her tanned skin suggested she had spent some time abroad. Her head and arms were never found.
The pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury surmised that a wealthy man had made her pregnant and a quarrel ensued on Wednesday, May 30th, 1934, the day he estimated she was killed.
She was the victim of what came to be known as the first Brighton trunk murder. The second arose when, during police inquiries about young women who had gone missing, another body in a trunk was discovered, this time in the basement of a house in Park Crescent, Brighton.
This time the victim was identified as Violette Kaye, girl friend of Tony Mancini, a small-time hoodlum who was charged at Lewes Assizes with her murder. His defence was that he returned home and found her battered to death. He put her body in the trunk in the basement because he was convinced that the police would not believe his story, on account of his criminal record. He was acquitted but later confessed in a newspaper that he killed Violette accidentally during a quarrel.