The Torso Murder Flushing, Queens October 28, 1926

Nurse Robina Lyttle was murdered and dismembered by her lover, Patrick McClafferty, in the basement of an apartment they shared in Flushing, Queens, New York City. The Irish Catholic woman met the Scottish Protestant man in February 1926. McClafferty, a janitor's helper, was encouraged to immigrate to America from Scotland by John Kelly, the superintendent of the Sanford Arms Apartments in Flushing. In court the killer insisted that his girlfriend had died from alcohol poison. Before and after his confession McClafferty described the pathetic circumstances of the couple's final two weeks together. Apparently Lyttle ate hardly anything and was almost always in a stupor. For many days before her murder she had writhed on the apartment floor. Finally the little Scotsman finished her with a single blow from a rusty ax.