Norman Thorne

Who was Norman Thorne?

Norman Thorne was an English chicken farmer and murderer. He strangled his mistress Elsie Cameron on 5 December 1924 after she claimed he had made her pregnant, and later dismembered the body. Suspicion fell on him when he claimed the girl had hanged herself in the barn but it was discovered that the beam in his barn was covered in a thick layer of dust. This made his story of discovering her lifeless body and cutting her down seem improbable. Police also discovered newspaper cuttings about a murder that had occurred in 1924, one committed by Patrick Mahon, who had also dismembered the corpse of his victim. This finding hinted at pre-mediation on the part of Thorne and he was quickly arrested.

Thorne was tried at Lewes Assizes on 11 March 1925 before Mr Justice Findlay. The prosecution was led by Sir Henry Curtis Bennett and the defence by J. D. Cassels. The defence claimed that Elsie had hanged herself and that he had concealed the death out of panic. The evidence of Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury was that she had been beaten to death which is at odds with the claim that she had been strangled.

Thorne was hanged on 22 April 1925 on the same gallows at Wandsworth prison used to dispatch the Crumbles killer, Patrick Mahon, whose method of killing it was argued that Thorne had copied.