Hawley Harvey Crippen

Hawley Harvey Crippen (September 11, 1862 – November 23, 1910), colloquially known as Dr. Crippen, was an American

Having qualified as a homeopath, Crippen started to practice in New York City. In 1894 he married his second wife, Corrine "Cora" Turner (born Kunigunde Mackamotski), a music hall singer who performed under the stage name Belle Elmore.^[5][7] That same year, Crippen started working for prominent homeopath James M. Munyon, moving to London with his wife in 1897 in order to manage Munyon's branch office there.^[5]

Crippen's medical qualifications from the United States were not sufficient to allow him to practise as a doctor in the United Kingdom.

After Crippen was sacked by Munyon in 1899 he worked for other patent medicine companies, ultimately being hired as the manager for the Drouet Institute for the Deaf. There he hired Ethel Le Neve, a young typist, in 1900. By 1905, the two were having an affair.^[5] After living at various addresses around London, Crippen and his wife finally moved No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road, Holloway, where they took in lodgers to augment Crippen's meagre income. Cora had an affair with one of these lodgers, and in turn, Crippen took Le Neve as his mistress in 1908.^[5]

Murder and disappearance

On the evening of 31 January 1910, Cora disappeared following a party at the Crippen residence at Hilldrop Crescent. Crippen claimed that she had returned to the US and later added that she had died and had been cremated in California. Meanwhile, Le Neve moved into Hilldrop Crescent and began openly wearing Cora's clothes and jewelry.

Police first heard of Cora's disappearance from her friend, the strongwoman Kate "Vulcana" Williams,^[11] but began to take the matter more seriously when asked to investigate when two other friends, the actress Lil Hawthorne and her husband/manager John Nash, pressed their acquaintance, Scotland Yard Superintendent Frank Froest.^[12] Crippen's house was searched, but nothing was found.

Under questioning by Chief Inspector

Meanwhile, Crippen and Le Neve were crossing the Atlantic aboard Montrose, with Le Neve disguised as a boy. Captain

As Montrose entered the St. Lawrence River, Dew came aboard disguised as a pilot. Canada was then still a dominion within the British Empire. If Crippen, an American citizen, had sailed to the US instead, even if he had been recognised, it would have taken extradition proceedings to bring him to trial. Kendall invited Crippen to meet the pilots as they came aboard. Dew removed his pilot's cap and said, "Good morning, Dr. Crippen. Do you know me? I'm Chief Inspector Dew from Scotland Yard." After a pause, Crippen replied, "Thank God it's over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn't stand it any longer." He then held out his wrists for the handcuffs. Crippen and Le Neve were arrested on board Montrose on 31 July 1910. Crippen was returned to the UK on board the SS Megantic.^[14]

Trial

Crippen was tried at the Old Bailey before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Alverstone, on 18 October 1910. The proceedings lasted four days.

The first

Other evidence presented by the prosecution included a piece of a man's pyjama top, supposedly from a pair Cora had given Crippen a year earlier. The pyjama bottoms were found in Crippen's bedroom, but not the top. The fragment included the manufacturer's label, Jones Bros. Testimony from a Jones Bros. representative stated that the product was not sold prior to 1908, thus placing the date of manufacture well within the time period of when the Crippens occupied the house and when Cora gave the garment to Hawley the year before in 1909.[18] Curlers, and bleached hair consistent with Cora's, were also found with the remains.^[19]

Throughout the proceedings and at his sentencing, Crippen showed no remorse for his wife, only concern for his lover's reputation. The jury found Crippen guilty of murder after just twenty-seven minutes of deliberations. Le Neve was charged only with being an

Although Crippen never gave any reason for killing his wife, several theories have been propounded. One was by the late Victorian and Edwardian barrister Edward Marshall Hall, who believed that Crippen was using scopalamine on his wife as a depressant or anaphrodisiac but accidentally gave her an overdose and then panicked when she died.^[8] It is said that Hall declined to lead Crippen's defence because another theory was to be propounded.^[20]

In 1981, several British newspapers reported that Sir Hugh Rhys Rankin claimed to have encountered Le Neve in Australia, where she told him that Crippen murdered his wife because she had syphilis.^[21]

Execution

Crippen was hanged by

Le Neve sailed to the US before settling in Canada finding work as a typist. She returned to Britain in 1915 and died in 1967.[24] At Crippen's request, a photograph of Le Neve was placed in his coffin and buried with him.^{[citation needed]}

Although Crippen's grave in Pentonville's grounds is not marked by a stone, tradition has it that soon after his burial, a rose bush was planted over it. Some of his relatives in Michigan have begun^[when?] lobbying for his remains to be repatriated to the US.^{[citation needed]}

Crippen's guilt

Questions have arisen about the investigation, trial and evidence that convicted Crippen in 1910.

The American-British crime novelist Raymond Chandler thought it unbelievable that Crippen could be so stupid as to bury his wife's torso under the cellar floor of his home while successfully disposing of her head and limbs.^[27]

Another theory is that Crippen was carrying out illegal abortions and the torso was that of one of his patients who died and not his wife.^[28]

Another theory put forward is that the torso was Belle’s former lover killed by Belle herself due to her having a short fuse temper and psychotic behaviour, and that Crippen may or may not have known about it.

New scientific evidence

In October 2007, Michigan State University forensic scientist David Foran claimed that mitochondrial DNA evidence showed the remains found in Crippen's cellar were not those of his wife. Researchers used genealogy to identify three living relatives of Cora Crippen (great-nieces). By providing mitochondrial DNA haplotype, researchers were able to compare their DNA with that extracted from a microscope slide containing flesh taken from the torso in Crippen's cellar.^[29][30] The original remains were also tested using a highly sensitive assay of the Y chromosome that found the flesh sample on the slide was male.^[31]

The same research team also argued that a scar found on the torso's abdomen, which the original trial's prosecution argued was the same one Mrs. Crippen was known to have, was incorrectly identified. The scientists found hair follicles in the tissue which should not be present in scars, a medical fact which Crippen's defence used at his trial.^[30] Their research was published in the August 2010 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.^[32]

However, the new scientific evidence for Crippen's innocence has been disputed.^[33][34] In The Times, journalist David Aaronovitch wrote: "As to the body being male, well the American team was using a 'special technique' that is 'very new' and 'done only by this team' and working on a single, century-old slide, described by the team leader as a 'less than optimal sample'".^[34] Foran responded by saying "tests showed unequivocally that the remains were male".^[18]

Traces of the blonde hair found in curlers at the scene are now preserved in the Metropolitan Police's

In December 2009, the UK's Criminal Cases Review Commission, having reviewed the case, declared that the Court of Appeal will not hear the case to pardon Crippen posthumously.^[35]

Media portrayals

• The case inspired the 1910 Australian play By Wireless Telegraphy
• The murder inspired
  El Esqueleto de la señora Morales
  .
• The gang defeated by
  H.G. Wells
  -scripted crime comedy Blue Bottles (1928) is revealed to be related to the Crippen case.
• It is thought to have inspired the 1935 novel We, the Accused by Ernest Raymond.^{[citation needed]}
• The German 1942 feature film Doctor Crippen on Board, directed by Erich Engels, stars Rudolf Fernau in the title role. (A 1958 Engels film Doctor Crippen Lives is neither a sequel nor about Crippen.)
• The character of Mr. Pugh in the radio drama Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas, is described as sporting a "nicotine-eggyellow weeping walrus Victorian moustache worn thick and long in memory of Doctor Crippen". Throughout the play, he obsessively fantasises about murdering his wife, but never attempts to do so.
• The 1961 Wolf Mankowitz-Monty Norman musical Belle, or The Ballad of Dr Crippen at London's Strand Theatre was based on the case.^[36]
• The British 1962 feature film Dr. Crippen stars Donald Pleasence in the title role and Samantha Eggar as Le Neve.
• The British 1968 film
  Negatives features Peter McEnery and Glenda Jackson
  as a couple whose erotic fantasies involve dressing up as Crippen and Ethel le Neve.
• The American TV series
  Ironside
  presented an episode (season 2, episode 16, January 23, 1969: "Why the Tuesday Afternoon Bridge Club Met on Thursday") in which a neurotic man assumed Dr. Crippen's identity and committed a similar murder.
• In Carry On Loving, which was made and set in 1970, there is a jokily anachronistic reference to the Crippen case: Peter Butterworth appears in Edwardian costume as 'Dr Crippen', visiting a marriage bureau to seek a third wife, having dispatched both his first two.
• In the 1972 season of Australian TV soap opera, Number 96, a plot line involving the death of Sylvia Vansard (in which her estranged chemist husband and his mistress are the main suspects), deliberately homages the Crippen story. It was referenced in the official synopses provided to the screenwriters.
• The Crippen saga is the basis for 1982's The False Inspector Dew, a detective novel by Peter Lovesey.
• The 1989 BBC series Shadow of the Noose, about the life of barrister Edward Marshall Hall, includes an abortive attempt on Hall's part to defend Crippen (played by David Hatton).
• John Boyne wrote the 2004 novel Crippen – A Novel of Murder.
• Erik Larson's 2006 book Thunderstruck interwove the story of the murder with the history of Guglielmo Marconi's invention of radio.
• Martin Edwards wrote the 2008 novel Dancing for the Hangman, which re-interprets the case while seeking to adhere to the established evidence.
• The PBS series Secrets of the Dead episode "Executed in Error" (2008) explored new findings in the Crippen case.
• Dan Weatherer's stage play Crippen (2016) explores the life and crimes of Dr. Hawley Crippen while taking into account new evidence and presenting an alternative theory as to who lay buried beneath the cellar floor.

See also

• John Reginald Christie, English serial killer
• John George Haigh
  , English serial killer known as the "Acid Bath Murderer"
• Michael Swango, American serial killer
• John Tawell, British murderer and the first criminal to be captured with the use of telecommunications technology
• Dorothea Waddingham, English nursing home matron and murderer

References