Forty-four-year-old Penelope Mogano and her husband Carlo were quite well known in the old-time dance circles of Radford, Coventry, England, and Penelope was also active in the Radford Townswoman’s Guild, though she resigned from it in the autumn of 1953, claiming she wanted to be able to rest in the afternoons. The Moganos had two children.
On January 18th, 1954, Carlo came home to find his wife had been savagely beaten to death while sitting in a dining room chair. The victim had not been sexually assaulted, and the home had not been ransacked, leaving authorities puzzled as to the motive behind the shocking crime. There was also a bloody carving knife discovered next to her body, which had been used to mutilate her face and tongue. The cause of death was a smashed skull, and the murder weapon—which was never found—was believed to be a hammer.
Penelope had planned to go out that afternoon at three p.m. to meet friends and had even laid out a dress that she was planning to wear, but her killer had made sure that hadn’t happened. In fact, as the police investigation deepened, it was revealed that Penelope often went out in the afternoons, and it seemed that no one really knew where she was going.
Investigators followed several leads to determine who might have killed Penelope. One promising avenue concerned a con man who had talked his way into the Moganos’ neighbor’s house by pretending to be there to read the meter. The man then made sexual advances toward the neighbor; this happened on the same day as Penelope Mogano was killed. The suspect, described as a black-haired man with a London accent, clad in a dirty, dark blue overcoat, was thought to have pulled the same scam at five other houses in the area.
There had also been an intruder who had set fire to a pantry in a nearby home only a few days before the murder. The owner of the targeted home was also active in the local dance community, and detectives speculated that perhaps the culprit had some sort of vendetta against dancers in general or particular dancers in Radford. According to one witness, someone had also tried to set fire to the Moganos’ car not long before the murder, suggesting that perhaps the assailant had a specific grudge against the family or against Penelope herself.
Though police were confident that Penelope Mogano likely knew her killer, his identity has never been established, and no arrests have been made in the strange case. The brutal slaying of the Coventry dancer remains unsolved, seven decades later.
Crime Immemorial 