The Reid Scale: Classic Unsolved Murder Cases

[sdreid]

Mancini, Robert Blake, OJ and Casey Anthony are all cases where I think most people think they did it but the jury said not guilty. I can't come up with an explanation for Mancini or Anthony but I believe OJ was misguided racial loyalty while Blake was because he was better liked than the victim.

[Graham]

Hi Graham



Sorry but I only just spotted your post...Mancini certainly was a bit of a lad, in later life at least...one small correction...the house is in Kemp Street, but that's nowhere near Kemp Town (which is to the East of the city centre)...Kemp Street is more central, fairly close to the Station, on the northern margins of what we used to call the "back terraces" or "back parallels" - the area has risen from being near-slum and as "North Laine" is now somewhat gentrified...

All the best

Dave

Dave, the mistake is entirely mine. I simply confused Kemp 'Street' with Kemp 'Town', not being all that familiar with Brighton. This was the best part of 45 years ago, so hopefully I can be forgiven.

I knew someone who actually rented a room in Kemp Street, just a few doors away from 'the' house. Obviously the memory of Mancini was still alive and well even in the late 1960's.

Graham

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Graham

I too was showed (back in the 1960's) the 'murder house' in Kemp Town, Brighton. I'd never heard of Tony Mancini at the time, but have read what I've been able to find about the case. He was a lad, wasn't he?

Sorry but I only just spotted your post...Mancini certainly was a bit of a lad, in later life at least...one small correction...the house is in Kemp Street, but that's nowhere near Kemp Town (which is to the East of the city centre)...Kemp Street is more central, fairly close to the Station, on the northern margins of what we used to call the "back terraces" or "back parallels" - the area has risen from being near-slum and as "North Laine" is now somewhat gentrified...

All the best

Dave

[sdreid]

Yeah, Hitler also loved his mom and his dog and cried when his parakeet died.

[Graham]

I too was showed (back in the 1960's) the 'murder house' in Kemp Town, Brighton. I'd never heard of Tony Mancini at the time, but have read what I've been able to find about the case. He was a lad, wasn't he?

Colin Wilson says that Mancini was found not guilty by reason of the brilliant defence put up by his lawyer Norman Birkett, and also by Mancini's not-inconsiderable skills as an actor during his trial. He confessed to the murder (in fact to Stephen Knight) in 1976 but made it appear that although he had much ill-will towards Violette, her death was unplanned and that he lost control of himself.

Mancini in earlier years was tied in with London gangs, notably Harry Sabini, and once chopped off the hand of someone the gang didn't much like. It's also said he turned the handle of a mincing-machine while someone's hand was forced into it. But he luvved his mum....

G

[sdreid]

Thanks Dave. I've seen a pic of the inside of the place but I don't believe I've seen the outside.

[Cogidubnus]

Kemp Street

I was born a Brighton boy Stan, and as a youngster (circa 1962) was shown the house (or what he reckoned was the one) by my grandfather who always reckoned Mancini was guilty as sin...

Here it is:-

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&q=52+kemp+street+brighton&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x48758575a9cb41c3:0x1b7f012fc32563a2,52+Kemp+St,+Brighton+BN1+4EF&gl=uk&ei=MzycULT9FbKM0wWS4oHYAQ&ved=0CCAQ8gEwAA

All the best

Dave

[sdreid]

I have been informed that Mancini didn't actually die until 1987 so it wasn't shortly before his death as some reports indicate.

Lord only knows how Mancini was found not guilty.

[sdreid]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy

No Roy - I guess I will have to keep an eye open for it.

[RivkahChaya]

If you want to amuse yourself for about ten minutes, here's the website of some loon who claims he is the real Lindbergh baby. I heard a radio interview with him once, and he rants like someone who forgot his medication that morning, going from one topic to another, without fully finishing a thought. He says that the Lindbergh's other children refuse to acknowledge him, because they think he wants money, despite the fact that they have acknowledged their father's illegitimate children by a mistress he had while married to their mother.

The family has been harassed by hundreds of false claimants over the years, and apparently they have paid a little more attention to this guy, to the point of having a private detective check him out. On his website, he says "Why do you think the Lindbergh family has paid so much attention to me for so long and yet refuses to engage in any dialogue to sort out the facts of my life?"

Maybe because you are a crazy stalker?

The body of the baby found in the woods shortly after the kidnapping was cremated, so it can't be exhumed and tested, and Lindbergh's children have refused to satisfy every crazy person who comes out of the woodwork with a DNA test. Aside from the trouble and expense, people like that don't usually stop when they hear "No," they just move the goalposts. When the non-matching DNA test comes back, Crazy Guy is likely to come back with something like "Then Anne Morrow must have cheated on her husband, and none of her other children are really Charles Lindbergh's kids." They just don't give up that easily.

[RivkahChaya]

Well, it's also sad, but true that police need to allocate resources wisely, and spending a lot of time and money on very cold cases is not the best way to do that, especially on ones that are so old the chances of the culprit still being alive and criminally active are not good.

It's also probably true that most people in prison have committed more crimes than just the ones they have been convicted of, and sentenced for.

I'm less concerned about police closing old cases because So-and-so who is now in prison for life in another state probably did it, than I am with the media hounding police over high-profile cases, so that they in turn hound truly innocent suspects, and occasionally even extract false confessions from them (the Central Park jogger case), or just provide a feedback loop for the media (John and Patsy Ramsey).

The police never arrested anyone for any of the Whitechapel murders probably mostly due to the shortcomings of police knowledge and forensic resources in 1888. But the incompetence of the police in the JonBenet Ramsey case was at least partly due to the interference of the media, I think, and I also think that the media frenzy over Casey Anthony caused the District Attorney to charge her with 1st Degree Murder, which was inappropriate, and then when he couldn't prove planning, and prior malice, didn't get a conviction. If he'd charged her with only manslaughter, I think he would have gotten a conviction, but the press would have assassinated him. Don't even get me started on what the New York city police did to the teenagers in the Central Park jogger case, and that was the media, too. People in the city wanted an arrest before the day was over.

[RavenDarkendale]

Perhaps another scale category would be: Serial Killers Created By Police Too Lazy to Investigate All the Crimes

Wayne Williams almost certainly was saddled with the crimes of others.

A lot of Bundy's crimes just went away, he probably was guilty, no need to investigate, seemed to be the attitude.

Here in our small area of Southwest VA, Upper Northeast TN, Northwest NC we had a serial killer. I had been in high school with the guy, a man named Reeves, who as I recall him would be far down on the list of people I would suspect. He dumped his final victim, who survived and testified at his trial, about six miles from my house on a forest service road crossed by the AT.

One of his "victims" who was slightly related to me, had all of the evidence of her murder vanish mysteriously. He was saddled with the crime, it was his MO, but he was never tried for the murder. He was convicted in both VA and NC, not sure about TN

He wasn't even a nationally known suspect and police dropped the investigation into local murders that fit his MO.

Sad. Truly sad

[Roy Corduroy]

So, what, are you getting a commission

Hot dog! that's what I wanna hear Send your certified check or money order payable to

Roy Corduroy
14 Mud Island Cutoff
Trailer D
c/o the Flora-Bama Lounge

[RivkahChaya]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy

So, what, are you getting a commission, or are you just going to tell us who it is?

And, FWIW, even if Hauptmann didn't act alone, I'm still not sure I'd call the person ultimately responsible a "mastermind."

ETA: I checked on this book; you're aware that it's published by a vanity press, right?

[Roy Corduroy]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy