Donald Hume biography

The next day, on October 5, Hume began work on his macabre plan in the early hours. He first took the stained carpet to the next-door dry cleaners and instructed them to dye it dark green. While Cynthia and the baby were having breakfast, Hume touched up bare patches on the floor with varnish. There were still stains on the sofa that troubled Hume,

but his main worry was to get the body dismembered and out of the apartment while Cynthia was away.

Hume had a bank appointment that morning at 10 a.m., and, having pocketed some of the money he found on Setty's body, he decided to deposit it in order to pay off an overdraft. Most of the 1,000 pounds was bloodstained, but Hume was able to retrieve 100 pounds of undamaged notes for himself.

When Cynthia left the flat with the baby for an appointment at the Hospital, Hume had only 90 minutes in which to dismember the body in the flat before the cleaning lady arrived.

The grisly operation was easier than Hume had imagined.

I felt no squeamishness or horror at what I was about to do," he recalled about how he dismembered the body using a linoleum knife to cut to the bone, and then a hacksaw.

He dismembered the legs first and packaged them up into a parcel using carpet felt. It was only Setty's staring eyes that upset Hume, which he then covered as he continued to cut up the body. It took several strokes to remove the head which he placed in a box that contained baked beans. He also added pieces of brick and rubble to make the parcels heavy. The torso was the most problematic, and after an abortive attempt to put it in a cabin trunk he pushed it back into the coal cupboard. The one thing that broke his heart was having to burn the damaged 900 pounds.

At 2:30 p.m. Hume left the apartment with two packages, the legs under one arm and the box with the head in it. He got into a hired car along with Tony, his loyal dog, and sped towards Elstree Air field where a light blue Austin aircraft was waiting.

It was 3 p.m. by the time he put the gruesome parcels in the plane and set off for Southend, despite his real destination being the English Channel.

Ninety minutes later he could see the French coast. He first threw out the SS dagger and tools before dumping the parcels which sank out of sight. Later he arrived at Southend airfield and made sure he was seen by as many people he could. It was 8:30 p.m. by the time he got back to his London flat.

The torso, however, deeply troubled him. All the time while chatting with Cynthia and trying to keep up the pretense of everyday life, the grisly reminder of the murder lay only a few feet away hidden from view.

The following morning Hume arranged for a decorator to come to the flat. The unsuspecting man also helped Hume carry the torso, which was heavily packed with lead weights, out of the flat and into Hume's car. It had even gurgled while the two men carried it to the vehicle, but Hume made a convincing excuse for its strange sounds. Amazingly, while Hume went back to the flat to clean the coal cupboard he left the torso in the car for an hour.