#142 DOCTOR, FUGITIVE
HAWLEY HARVEY CRIPPEN
It took the jury just 27 minutes to find Hawley Crippen guilty of the murder of his wife. Today with DNA evidence, there may have been a different verdict.
Born in 1862 in Coldwater, Michigan, Crippen trained as a homeopathic physician specializing in gynaecology and related mental health conditions; he was also an ear and eye specialist. After his first wife died, he left his only son to the care of his parents.
In 1894, Crippen married his second wife. She was christened Kunegunde Mataamotski, but later called herself Concordia, then Cora. As a teenage maidservant in Brooklyn home, she was known as Mrs. Turner to conceal her relationship with her married employer. Cora and Hawley met when he assisted at the abortion she was made to have when pregnant by her employer. She later adopted the stage name of Belle Elmore.
When Crippen met Cora, she was 19 years old, an aspiring performer and opera singer, described as "big-hipped, deep-bosomed, ruddy with life, with a little singing voice...she was no innocent village maid; on the contrary she appears to have had many adventures and had only latterly been deserted by a wealthy American protector." She was an unlikely pairing for the mild-mannered Crippen but he was dazzled by her larger-than-life show business persona ; she by his title of M.D. and the suggested wealth his title promised.
Crippen had Cora undergo an ovariectomy--to cure her painful periods and she never fully recovered from the operation, psychologically or physically. (The scar on her torso helped identify her remains.) If she couldn't have children, Belle decided to pursue her passion for the stage
Crippen became a consultant for a homeopathic mail order company and in 1897, was transferred to London, England Although often referred to as “Dr. Crippen,” his American qualifications did not permit him to practise medicine in Britain so much of his work involved the sale and promotion of patent medicines; he then took up dentistry. Cora followed him to London to pursue her stage career. Hawley spent a great deal of money on her voice lessons, but Cora was already beginning to get stout and after a few unimportant engagements as a song and dance artist, the English halls wanted nothing to do with her. Belle's talents were scant, but she lived the flamboyant theatre life and had outrageous affairs.
The Crippen marriage was troubled. They were always quarrelling. "She was a loud vulgar women of slovenly habits, very vain and extravagant and she not only had no regard for his money or home [an incompetent housekeeper], she also began to treat him in more and more open contempt." Belle was outgoing, sociable, and fond of theatrical life; Crippen was quiet, gentle and reserved. Financial difficulties and her infidelities strained the relationship.
By the early 1900s, Crippen had formed a platonic friendship with his young secretary, Ethel Le Neve, who became devoted to him. Ethel was described as "young, gentle, affectionate, delicate, anemic and liable to neuralgia. She came from the lower classes and in her eyes, Dr. Crippen was a great man, indeed--a man of importance in the community, cultured, educated and entitled to dominate her will and personality. There was no doubt that she was very deeply in love with him." A "demure, intelligent English rose", she was the antithesis of the brash Belle.
After living at various addresses in London, Hawley and Cora finally moved to No.39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road where they took in boarders to augment Crippen's meagre income. Cora had an affair with one of these student lodgers and Crippen, in turn, took La Neve as his mistress. "By 1908, Ethel had become his mistress as well as typist. She was, however, an intensely, respectable girl and the position in which she found herself as the result of her infatuation for a married man worried her terribly. She was often ill, and the fact that her relation with Crippen must remain secret and clandestine aggravated her illness and severely affected her health."
On 31 January 1910, Belle Elmore disappeared after a gathering at the couple’s London home. True crime buffs like to theorize that "Crippen's intention was to fatally sedate Belle [then call his doctor friend to pronounce the death.]...but Belle became hyperactive, rather than sedated and created a lot of noise. Crippen, in desperation, shot her with his revolver and neighbours heard the sound, although they didn't recognize it as a gun shot at the time. With Crippen's neat execution plan now seriously awry, he decided that Belle's body would have to be secreted in the cellar of the house. As the cellar was very small and Belle a rather large woman, he dissected her corpse in the bath, removing her long bones and ribs, which he took down to the kitchen and burned in the open hearth there. He may also have used acid to dissolve her internal organs in the bath. He lifted the stone floor of the cellar and buried her filleted torso there before disposing of her head and other remaining organs, in a [nearby] canal."
The next day Crippen pawned a diamond ring and some earrings, then later more jewelry. Crippen told friends that Belle had returned to America where she had taken ill, died, and was cremated in California. Suspicion, however, grew when Ethel moved into the house and began wearing Belle’s clothing and jewelry and Crippen was calling her "wifey". Friends of the missing woman pressed Scotland Yard to investigate.
At first, police found little evidence. However, when Crippen and Ethel panicked and suddenly fled England, detectives searched the house again and discovered a human torso buried beneath the cellar floor. The remains were identified as Belle's by a piece of skin from the abdomen; the head, limbs and skeleton were never recovered.
The horrific murder, reminiscent of Jack the Ripper's attacks only two decades earlier, quickly became headline news and put Scotland Yard under intense pressure to catch Crippen and solve the crime.
Arrest warrants were issued. By then, Crippen and Ethel were crossing the Atlantic aboard the SS Montrose. They were registered as Rev. Robinson and son. Ethel was poorly disguised as a very busty boy; and the two seemed too handsy to be father-son. If they sailed third-class or stayed low-key and inconspicuous, the ship’s captain might not have recognized them; instead he sent a wireless message alerting British authorities. This led to one of the most celebrated manhunts in history and made Crippen the first criminal captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.
Chief Inspector Walter Dew boarded a faster ship to reach Canada ahead of the fugitives. The two ships were in constant communication and everyday newspapers gave full accounts of "the bloodhound and his quarry." Meanwhile, aboard the Montrose, none of the passengers, including Crippen, were aware of this chase.
Crippen and LeNeve were arrested as the Montrose entered the St. Lawrence River. (Had Crippen sailed directly to the US, it would have required an international arrest warrant followed by extradition proceedings, complicated by the fact that he was a US citizen to bring him back for trial in England. But in 1910, Canada was a crown dominion.)
According to popular accounts, Crippen greeted his arrest with relief, saying, “Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great.” Ethel, overwhelmed, fainted.
Crippen’s trial at the Old Bailey in October 1910 lasted five days and captivated the public. Prosecutors argued that he had poisoned his wife with scopolamine and dismembered her body. Pathologists testified that while they could not identify the torso remains, or even discern if they were male or female, they said they found a piece of skin, an abdominal scar consistent with Cora's medical history.
.jpg)
It was also stated that there was a large quality of scopolamine in the body and that Crippen had previously purchased that drug from a local chemist. (He claimed it was for his dental practice.)
The defense maintained that Cora had fled to the US with her lover, and that the previous owner of the house was responsible for the crime; the defense also asserted that the abdominal scar was just folded tissue. A poison expert was troubled by the circumstantial evidence--that he had never heard of a poisoning case where the perpetrator had dismembered his victim and that poisoners usually did all they could to make death appear an accident. And why would someone dispose of most of the body, yet leave just a few bits of incriminating evidence behind?
Reporters seemed somewhat sympathetic to Hawley. "Every time I met him, he stuck rigidly to the preposterous story that Belle ultimately left the house to fulfill her oft-repeated threat that she was going to run away with another man...he was unable to give any plausible explanation for the string of lies he told to account for her disappearance. Yet, I could not help feeling sorry for him. Looking at him and listening to his slow, hesitating nervous speech, I could not visualize him as a cold-blooded assassin. There he was a little sandy-haired man, with drooping moustache and gold-rimmed glasses, blinking at us and stammering with thin fingers playing at his upper lip. You would have taken him for a timid, kindly little shop-walker, ready to serve you with utmost politeness, but always in the back of his mind, thinking of his neat little suburban wife waiting to greet him at home. Never once, under examination, was Crippen betrayed into any excitement or visible fear. Always apologetic, always deferential, he contrived to remain aloof from the actual drama and terror of his case. To all outward appearance he might have been a client slightly perturbed at the prospect of a summons for riding a bicycle without a light."
Throughout the trial, Crippen showed no remorse for his wife, only concern for his lover's reputation. He refused to allow Ethel to testify as a defense witness.
Several motives were suggested for the crime--that Crippen was using scopolamine as an depressant or anaphrodisiac (sexual suppressant) but gave Belle an accidental overdose and panicked. Another theory was that she had syphilis.
Despite the largely circumstantial nature of the evidence, the jury deliberated for only twenty-seven minutes before finding him guilty. Winston Churchill, Home Secretary denied Crippen a reprieve.
On 23 November 1910, Crippen, aged 48, was hanged at Pentonville Prison. Until the end, he maintained his innocence. His grave on the prison grounds has no stone, although tradition says that after burial a rose bush was planted over it.
Ethel visited Crippen in prison every day and followed each visit with a letter. Before he was executed Crippen wrote a letter to Ethel saying "Face to face with God, I believe that facts will be forthcoming to prove my innocence." Jailors said Crippen was calm, without a quiver and faultlessly dressed when led to the scaffold and that he met death with more dignity than any prisoner they had ever heard of. At Crippen's request, a photograph of LeNeve and her letters, were placed in his coffin and buried with him.
Ethel was tried separately as accessory to murder after the fact. At her one-day trial, the defense painted her as an innocent young woman merely following the orders of her lover. The jury returned a not guilty verdict after only 12 minutes of deliberation. On the morning of Crippen's execution, she sailed to the USA; she lived in Toronto for three years, (under total anonymity as Ethel Allen) working as a typist. Her time in Toronto was defined by isolation and severe financial strain. Before his execution, Crippen left his entire estate to her, but a British probate ruled, in 1911, that because Crippen murdered his wife, neither he nor Ethel could legally profit from the crime.
Suffering from homesickness, emotional trauma from the trial and the lack of financial security Ethel returned to England in 1915, married, and had two children who remembered her as a dutiful, if undemonstrative, mother. It wasn't until the 1980s that her husband and children became aware of their mother's infamous past. Ethel died in 1967, aged 84. It is said her dying wish was to be buried with a locket containing Crippen's face, yet she was ultimately cremated. Historians did not know what happened to her body but a true-crime historian has since discovered that her ashes were left beside a simple tree in London's Honour Oak Crematorium, a stark contrast to Cora's marble grave is St.Pancras Cemetery
The once "most famous house in London", 39 Hilldrop Crescent, remained empty for most of the next 30 years. It was destroyed, along with surrounding homes, by German air raids in World War II.
Questions continue over the evidence and trial. People find it unbelievable that Crippen could be so stupid to bury just his wife's torso under the cellar of his house, while successfully disposing of her head and limbs. Another theory was that Crippen was performing illegal abortions and that the torso was one of his patients, but not his wife. It was also suggested that Scotland Yard, under public pressure to secure a conviction, planted evidence to incriminate him. In November 1910, newspapers reported sightings of Belle in Manitoba and Chicago so perhaps she had left England but these rumours were never verified.
What transformed the case from a notorious murder into a lasting historical mystery was what happened nearly a century later. Modern DNA testing conducted in 2007 suggested that the remains found beneath Crippen’s cellar floor may not have belonged to Belle at all. Some researchers even concluded that the tissue tested appeared to be male. New Scotland Yard will not provide a sample for testing (but will test a hair from the crime for a fee.)
These findings raise questions about the original investigation and trial but British authorities have declined to overturn the conviction nor hear the case to pardon Crippen posthumously.
More than a hundred years after his execution, Hawley Harvey Crippen remains a controversial figure. Was he a calculating murderer who nearly escaped justice, or was he the victim of flawed forensic science and an overzealous investigation? The debate continues, ensuring that the Crippen case remains one of the most intriguing criminal mysteries in modern history. One reason this story still fascinates historians is that it sits at the intersection of several milestones: the rise of modern forensic medicine, the first use of wireless communication to catch a fugitive, and a murder conviction that later scientific evidence has called into question.
Few criminal cases have remained so controversial for so long. Crippen's story forms the basis for Erik Larson's book Thunderstruck and the plotline for many films, plays and TV shows.
There was one more casualty of this event--Hawley's father.
.jpg)
HAWLEY HARVEY CRIPPEN b. Sept 11, 1862 in Coldwater, Michigan m. Charlotte Bell (-1892) m. Corrine "Cora" Henrietta Turner (-1910) in 1894 in New York City d. Nov 23 1910 in Pentonville Prison, London, England my 6th cousin, 3x removed (Kinne, Farnum, Netterfield lines) calculated by famouskin.com
Comments
Post a Comment