They were among the grisliest crimes committed - the Brighton trunk murders earnt the city the unwanted title of Queen of Slaughtering Places.

The discovery of two dismembered bodies in the Thirties stunned the city and catapulted Brighton into the spotlight. The city suddenly became the crime capital of England, awash with vice and shady characters.

Tomorrow, the crimes will be examined again in a TV programme called London's Scariest Mysteries on ITV1.

In the first case, the headless torso of a woman was found in a trunk at the left luggage office at Brighton station. The arms and legs had been sawn off. The legs were later found at London's King's Cross station.

The murder was never solved and the head of the woman never found.

The second trunk, discovered in a house in Kemp Street, contained part of the body of dancer and prostitute Violette Kaye, 41. The rest of her remains were discovered in another flat.

The stench of rotting flesh was so bad that men carrying out repairs at the house called police who made the gruesome discovery.

Miss Kaye's lover, former boxer Tony Mancini, was arrested and charged with her murder. But, despite substantial evidence against him, he was sensationally acquitted at Lewes Assizes.

Forty years later he admitted to a national newspaper that he had committed the crime but the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled he could not be tried again.

In a further twist, in 1986, police said they had new evidence to link Mancini to the first trunk murder.

However, when The Argus tracked him down to an address in south London, Mancini, by then 78 and frail, protested his innocence and vowed to fight the "lies" until the day he died.

Setting the scene for the macabre murders will be tour guide Glenda Clarke who will introduce each of the locations in the show.

She specialises in themed tours around the city and the darkest of those is the Murder and Mystery walk.

She said: "The trunk murders are a pretty awful story but they are fascinating. For the programme, I took the interviewer on one of the walks and pointed out all the sights, like the town hall which, in those days, was the police station and where the first trunk was brought before it went to the mortuary and where Mancini was brought for questioning.

"The murder and mystery walks are among the most popular I do but it's not all ghoulish. I also talk about the punishments people were given. One Brighton murderer was hanged and another was sent to Australia."

The whole of Friday's 30-minute programme, part of a series, is devoted to the trunk murders.

For more information about the murder walks, call 01273 888596.