I care not for the stars that shine,
I dare not hope to e’er be thine’
I only know I love you.
Love me and the world is mine.
HAWLEY HARVEY CRIPPEN recited this to his young mistress, Ethel Le Neve, during their ill-fated, passionate affair that was ended by the hangman’s noose. The case of Dr Crippen is one of the most famous cases in criminal history, made so by the combination of sexual betrayal, a flight from justice, an arrest at sea involving the latest wireless technology and a high-profile trial full of gory details followed by an execution.
The man who was to become one of Britain’s most famous murderers was an American, born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1862. An only child, he grew up opinionated and self-centred, keen to follow in the footsteps of his uncle Bradley, the town doctor. Crippen studied medicine at the University of Michigan, and took his MD at the Homeopathic Hospital College in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1884, subsequently endorsed by Philadelphia Medical College. In 1885 Crippen qualified as an ear and throat specialist at the Ophthalmic Hospital in New York. He had previously studied medicine in London for a few months in 1883. When he returned to England in 1897, he was entitled to call himself a doctor but could not practice medicine, homeopathy being considered rather eccentric at the time.
In the years preceding his final move to London, Crippen practiced in a number of towns and cities across America. Trying his hand at dentistry, he eventually found himself in New York. There, while an intern at Hahnemann Hospital Manhattan, he met and married Irish nurse Charlotte Jane Bell in 1887. They soon had a son, Otto Hawley Crippen. Sadly, Charlotte died of apoplexy in January 1892, at Salt Lake City, only a few days before giving birth to another child. Crippen, unable or unwilling to bring up his son alone, sent him to live with his parents in San Jose, California. Back in New York, Crippen met 19-year-old Cora Turner, an erstwhile opera singer, who became his second wife on 1 September that same year. Subsequently, Crippen discovered that Cora’s real name was Kunigunde Mackamotski, born into poverty in Brooklyn to a Polish-German family, a deception for which he never forgave her. Crippen later claimed that his young, moderately pretty, coarse and boisterous wife was mistress of a Mr Lincoln, a minor industrialist, when they met, who set her up in a flat and paid for singing lessons. It was only by telling Crippen that Lincoln intended to elope with her that made the infatuated doctor propose. For her part, while Crippen did little to excite her, and she did not love him, he did have ‘MD’ after his name and a life of diamonds and furs was visualised. She was to be disappointed. The fad for homeopathy was on the wane, with both patients and money in short supply.
Married only a year, the great depression of 1893 forced Crippen to move in with Cora’s parents. She then persuaded him to commence employment with Munyon’s Homeopathic Remedies, a company dealing in patent medicines, in 1894. ‘Professor’ Horace Munyon, owner of the company, had supposedly found a cure for piles and his advertisement, featuring a picture of himself with upraised finger, was the cause of many bawdy jokes. Munyon took a shine to Crippen, making him general manager of his central office in Philadelphia within a year. He was then placed in charge of the Canada office before being offered promotion overseas in early 1897, at the guaranteed and almost unheard of salary of $10,000 a year. Prosperous at last, Crippen and his young wife settled unhappily in London. For although Cora had the furs and jewellery she wanted, she was less than enamoured with the husband who had paid for them. Initially, Cora did not sail with Crippen to England, preferring a dalliance in America with former Chicago prizefighter turned showman, Bruce Miller, before rejoining her spouse in August 1897.
Cora’s ambition was to be an opera star but she was prevented by her modest talent and her dumpy figure, at a time when the svelte, sophisticated ‘Gibson Girl’, created by American artist Charles Dana Gibson, was in vogue. Reluctantly, Cora became a music-hall entertainer instead, having dabbled in vaudeville back in the States. Unfortunately, in November 1899, Horace Munyon came across a full-page advert Crippen had placed declaring himself her business manager, thereby discovering that Cora Crippen and music-hall singer Belle Ellmore were one and the same person. Believing Crippen to be less than committed to his company, Munyon sacked him.
Crippen then tried a number of independent ventures before finding a job with a less salubrious employer in December 1901, Drouet’s Institute for the Deaf, on Regent’s Road, as an ear specialist, purveyor of outlandish potions and general manager. Drouet’s was basically a mail-order establishment offering quack remedies for ear infections. Crippen’s duties included ‘diagnosing’ ailments from correspondence and suggesting remedies from the Drouet’s inventory. His salary was substantially less than that he had enjoyed at Munyon’s. It was at this difficult time he also found love letters from Bruce Miller to Cora, signed off with ‘love and kisses to brown eyes’’
In 1902 Crippen was recalled to America for six months. Cora did not follow and continued her numerous affairs with a number of lovers, primarily from the world of the stage.
Mrs Crippen was no retiring Victorian Lady – with her profession she never could be. She was boisterous and big hearted, embarrassingly frank and popular with her London audience, especially men, who pursued her ardently. It was not that she was merely extrovert but her incessant bullying of her mild-mannered husband and open contempt for him that probably drove him into the sympathetic arms of another. Cora was domineering, with dreams of stardom that outweighed all other considerations, demanding that Crippen pay for her to train as a singer on the music-hall stage, despite his repugnance at her choice of career. Prone to histrionics, Cora often had screaming tantrums during which she belittled and threatened to leave her unexciting little husband whom she only just towered over. Hating the name Hawley, she called him ‘Peter‘ instead. To keep her in the style to which she was acquainted, like many people of the day, the Crippens took in lodgers, and not a few of whom ended up in bed with the lascivious Cora. Crippen and Cora never had children together. He blamed a ‘miscarriage’ she supposedly had years earlier while cavorting with Mr Lincoln that resulted in the removal of her ovaries.
A small man, Crippen was only 1.6m tall (5’3’) and had metallic grey eyes, hidden behind the thick lenses of gold-rimmed spectacles, a bushy moustache and light sandy-coloured hair. He walked with his shoulders tensely bunched and truly seemed a man most unlikely to stimulate amorous thoughts in a much younger woman. Crippen was also prone to dress outlandishly for an ostensibly quiet and unassuming man, wearing loud shirts, a yellow bow tie and huge diamond stickpin. He also developed a reputation for meanness, offering to buy a round of drinks only to ‘discover’ he had no money on him. To Cora’s friends he was ‘the half-crown king’, as he was always borrowing that amount. Crippen himself neither drank nor smoked.
Drouet’s went bankrupt when the firm was found guilty of gross negligence following the death by infection of a customer. Crippen went into business as a dentist with a Dr Gilbert Rylance, opening as the Yale Tooth Specialists in Oxford Street in the same building as Munyon’s Homeopathic Remedies. He employed as a bookkeeper a woman he had met at Drouet’s when she was an 18-year-old typist working in the same building as him.
Ethel Clara Le Neve, Crippen’s mistress and some 20 years his junior, would inflame passions in Crippen that eventually led to the hangman’s noose. Ethel’s real name was Neave, although Crippen was not as perturbed by this ‘deception’ as he had been by Cora’s name change. Born in Diss, Norfolk, Ethel was a moaning, chronic hypochondriac and known to all by the nickname of ‘not very well thank you’. Miserable as a child because she was jealous of her vivacious, younger sister Nina, Ethel had a hang-up about a supposed deformed ‘frog foot’ and hated her father for correctly informing her it could be ‘cured’ by simply walking normally.
Crippen liked to play the gentleman with Ethel and from summer 1903, he took her to fine restaurants, behaved impeccably and always walked her home in the evenings. For his part, Crippen was enchanted by her pretty face, sensuous mouth, and apparently sweet, reserved and ladylike countenance. A pathological liar, who some speculated was not just the inspiration but the instigator of Mrs Crippen’s murder, Ethel loved Crippen but only agreed to surrender herself to him after he caught Cora in bed with their German lodger, Richard Ehrlich and she realised his marriage was a sham. That very day, 6 December 1906, Ethel Le Neve became Dr Crippen’s lover. The two would always refer to it as their ‘wedding day’. She lived with her parents and so the lovers met for trysts in cheap hotels.
The Crippens lived well, despite the occasional failure of some business ventures and the slow progress of his dental practice. From September 1905, they rented a three-storey house in Holloway, 39 Hilldrop Crescent, decorated tastelessly throughout in Cora’s favourite colour, pink. It was always dirty and shockingly untidy. Crippen tolerated his wife’s numerous infidelities before and after he began his affair with Ethel and it appears that both women dominated him. Certainly, he seemed in no hurry to extricate himself from the marriage and met his mistress in the afternoon, always returning home at night. Even when Ethel became pregnant, Crippen hesitated to leave Cora. Ethel set up home in Hampstead and fruitlessly awaited her lover. Cora, by now aware of the affair between her husband and Ethel Le Neve thanks to local gossip, told her friends who considered Crippen a ‘sponger’, that Ethel did not even know who the father of her baby was. This incensed Crippen, even more so when Ethel miscarried.
Forgetting her own behaviour, Cora called Ethel a ‘whore, trollop and home-wrecker’ whom she mocked as ‘the little typewriter’. By January 1910, Crippen was told that if he did not give up Ethel, Cora would leave him and take their joint savings of £600, a lot of money at a time when his business was struggling. The bank was advised on the 15th that a withdrawal could soon be expected from the Crippens joint bank account.
Crippen snapped. He could not give up the woman with whom he was passionately in love. A divorce would bring scandal but, more importantly, Cora would have taken his modest life savings long before he could get her into court. Murder was on his mind.
On Monday, 31 January 1910, Dr Crippen and his wife hosted a dinner party at home for a couple of close friends; the retired mime artiste Paul Martinetti and his wife Clara. The evening progressed well, with both couples enjoying dinner, followed by cards. It was not to last. Mr Martinetti felt unwell and needed to go to the bathroom. Dr Crippen assumed that he could find his way without difficulty. When he got lost, Mrs Crippen yelled at her husband for being a poor host, incapable of looking after his guests properly. At 1.30am the Martinettis departed, hearing Cora screaming abuse at her husband as soon as the front door of number 39 closed, as she repeated her threats to leave him.
The following day, Crippen arrived at his work at 9.00am as normal and treated some patients before stepping out to pawn Cora’s diamond ring and earrings. To allay suspicions, the doctor travelled to the Martinetti home in Shaftsbury Avenue, arriving around noon. He was concerned at his friend’s discomfort from the previous night and wanted to check if Paul was feeling better. Mr Martinetti was in bed but Clara spoke to Crippen and asked after Cora, who the doctor cheerfully replied, was in good health and spirits. In fact, the very opposite was true! That night, for the first time, Ethel would sleep in the Crippen home.
Dr Crippen had poisoned his wife with a lethal dose of hyoscine hydrobromide, purchased on 17 January from Lewis and Burrows, the chemist he frequented throughout his profession. Crippen had witnessed it being used to quieten alcoholics and the violently insane at the Bedlam Institute in London’s Royal Bethlehem Hospital. It is an alkaloid derived from the plant henbane and also found in the leaves and roots of deadly nightshade; it was also used to sedate patients undergoing anaesthesia and as a sexual depressant. He brought the poison home on 19 January and probably administered it via a glass of stout Cora habitually drunk before retiring, as an aid to sleep.
To dispose of Cora’s body, Crippen dissected it, removed the bones and buried the remains in his cellar. It is likely this was carried out, at least in part, before he nonchanantly called on the Martinettis.
At his place of employment, Crippen permitted his wife to hold meetings of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild, of which she was honorary treasurer and an enthusiastic and popular member. The guild was an organisation dedicated to raising money for destitute former ‘artistes’. On 2 February at their next gathering, the normally dedicated attendee, Cora Crippen, failed to show. Upon commencement of proceedings, Ethel Le Neve handed two typed letters to secretary Miss May. These appeared to bear the signature of Belle Ellmore, Cora Crippen’s stage name. They explained the reason for Mrs Crippen’s absence. She had been urgently recalled to the United States due to a sudden family illness. This was a surprise to the ladies but they assumed that it must be something very grave and Cora herself only very recently informed.
On 20 February, the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild held a dinner and ball. The attendees were astonished when Dr Crippen appeared with Miss Le Neve not only on his arm but wearing Cora Crippen’s jewellery and clothes. Gossip spread like wildfire and suspicions were aroused. Friends checked with shipping lines and discovered that no woman with the name Cora Crippen/Turner or Belle Ellmore had travelled to America in February. She could, of course, have travelled under Kunigunde Mackamotski, a name unknown to her London friends, but it was highly unlikely.
Lil Hawthorne, a music-hall friend of Cora, made enquiries in New York where she was touring, to no avail. Crippen’s excuses for his wife’s absence grew increasingly feeble and when Ethel Le Neve moved into the Crippen home on 12 March, after insisting her lover first dispose of his wife’s stage costumes, foul play was suspected. This was compounded when Crippen spun a tale that his wife was taken ill while in California visiting her sick relative. He soon added that she had died in Los Angeles. The Martinettis received a telegram from Victoria Station, not as one might expect directly from Crippen or the United States, informing them that Cora was dead. Dr Crippen tried to show his distress by going into mourning, having memorial cards printed and an obituary notice published in show business newspaper The Era using Cora’s Belle Ellmore stage name on 26 March. Few people were fooled and Dr Crippen must have believed the game was up. He gave three-months’ notice to his landlord. Taking fright, the lovers fled to Dieppe.
On the cross-channel ferry, Dr Crippen was observed to carry a large bag, which was missing when he disembarked. Did it contain the head, bones and other dismembered remains of the late Mrs Crippen?
In France Crippen awaited news. Nothing untoward happened and the lovers soon returned to London. As April and May passed uneventfully, he advised the landlord that he would stay longer in Hilldrop Crescent than previously anticipated. Unfortunately for Crippen, he was not yet out of the woods. Two old acquaintances of Cora, Mr and Mrs Nash (Lil Hawthorne), arrived on his doorstep out of the blue to tell Cora of their recent adventures touring the music halls of America. When a flustered Crippen tried to explain his wife’s demise, failing to answer questions in specific detail, the Nashes became concerned. A close friend of theirs just happened to be Detective Superintendent Froest, the head of Scotland Yard’s homicide investigations. The Nashes told him of their concerns on 30 June and he too thought the explanations of Dr Crippen to be both furtive and unconvincing. He agreed to have the matter fully investigated.
Meanwhile, Crippen wrote to Otto, his estranged son in California with whom Cora had supposedly stayed. He told him she had died of pneumonia in San Francisco. Otto Crippen did not cover for his father. When Melinda May of the Ladies’ Guild asked him about it, he truthfully admitted no knowledge of Cora’s whereabouts.
Although the murder of Cora Crippen later appeared to have been premeditated, with not a single bloodstain ever found, for example, it is extraordinary how little thought the murderer gave to how he would explain her disappearance. By making up stories ‘on the hoof’, he sealed his doom.
After speaking to members of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild and other friends of Cora Crippen, the police began to take a serious interest in her disappearance. On Friday 8 July, Detective Chief Inspector Walter C Dew and Detective Sergeant Mitchell arrived at Hilldrop Crescent. Crippen was apparently not at home but Ethel Le Neve was. In plain view she wore a brooch previously described by ladies of the guild as belonging to their friend and colleague, Cora Crippen. Shocked at the police appearing at ‘her’ home, Miss Le Neve disappeared upstairs returning with Dr Crippen himself.
Explaining the reason for his visit was the unsatisfactory explanations Dr Crippen had given for the death of his wife, Detective Chief Inspector Dew asked for an explanation directly from the man himself. Crippen, without emotion, agreed to provide a statement. He outlined not only his wife’s death, but also how they met in the first place and the condition of their marriage up until her disappearance. It was not a happy picture. The couple had long ago stopped sleeping together and occupied separate rooms. While in the United States on business, he believed his wife had embarked on an affair with Bruce Miller. It was his embarrassment and humiliation at being allegedly cuckolded by Mr Miller, whom Crippen believed had now eloped with his wife that persuaded him to lie and inform all and sundry that his wife was dead.
It seemed on the surface a plausible enough story but for experienced detectives like Dew and Mitchell it simply did not ring true. Why had no one else heard of this ‘elopement’, not even her closest friends? More pertinently, if Cora Crippen had left her little husband, why leave her clothes and jewellery behind? Crippen stuck doggedly by his flawed story, continually elaborating. He clearly hated his wife, as he recounted Cora taunting him with tales of Miller’s presents, love letters and wealth. How, as a music hall artiste himself, Miller could more easily empathise with her thwarted ambitions while being in a position to help realise them. The detectives were shown letters from Miller, whom Crippen now explained was probably with Cora in Chicago. Trying to appear co-operative, Crippen eventually agreed to circulate an advert in America, seeking the whereabouts of Cora Crippen/Belle Ellmore. Leaving Hilldrop Crescent, the police were almost persuaded by the doctor’s story. Had he kept his nerve, he may even have escaped justice.
The police released a missing person’s description of Mrs Crippen and tried to check the doctor’s story. Returning to 39 Hilldrop Crescent the following Monday to seek further information, it was discovered that the lovers had flown the nest on 9 July, having terminated their maid’s employment. Now thoroughly suspicious, the police obtained a warrant to search the house. It was a house no one would ever sleep in again. Derelict for 30 years after the Crippen trial, 39 Hilldrop Crescent was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1940.
The police found nothing in their search of the Crippen home. A second rummage around the following day also revealed nothing but Dew had a hunch that the house would eventually yield something. The coal cellar in particular had drawn his attention, he knew not why. On 14 July Dew searched again. At first, as on the two previous searches, nothing seemed unusual. He stared at the brick floor. Using a poker, Dew prodded the plaster between the cellar floor bricks. The plaster was soft. The bricks lifted easily. One by one the bricks were removed. With a spade, Dew dug and dug, deeper and deeper until eventually, buried in slaked lime, he came upon human remains.
Dr Marshall, the police surgeon, assisted Dew in digging out the remains, after which pathologist Dr Augustus Pepper examined them. Curiously, not a single bone was discovered. The body had been eviscerated and the entire skeleton removed. What was left were the flesh and organs of the unfortunate victim. No doubt it was anticipated that these would swiftly decompose in the soil, mixed with the lime to further expedite the process. Unknown to Crippen, unlike quicklime, slaked lime actually preserves decaying tissue. Why Crippen did not dispose of Cora’s soft tissue with the bones and skull which were never found, is a mystery.
Brown hair, wrapped around a Hinde clasp, a handkerchief, woman’s chemise and a labelled man’s pyjama jacket were also found. The expert removal of flesh from bone indicated the employment of an experienced and skilful, professional hand – a doctor perhaps?
What of the lovers?
Spooked by the police visit on 8 July, Crippen and Le Neve once again fled across the channel. After spending a few days in Brussels and Rotterdam, the couple arrived in Antwerp, with the intention of boarding a ship for New York. As it happens, a White Star liner, the SS Montrose, a cargo vessel converted to transporting passengers was in harbour and on 20 July set sail, not for New York but Quebec, Canada. It would have to do. Among with 280 passengers, travelling second class, were Mr John Philo Robinson and his 16-year-old son, also called John. Mr Robinson was a short, clean-shaven middle-aged man in grey hat, brown suit with white canvas shoes. His ‘son’ was a slim youth wearing trousers split at the back and held together only by a safety pin. To Captain Henry Kendall, the Robinsons appeared quite odd, particularly their habit of holding and squeezing each other’s hands, something one does not see often between father and teenage son.
As the voyage progressed, Captain Kendall kept a watchful eye on the Robinsons. Young John spoke rarely and had a high-pitched English, feminine voice. The ‘father’ had an educated American accent and would inform other passengers and crew that Master Robinson was in poor health. They were bound for California, where the climate would be more to his liking.
A warrant was issued for the arrest of both Crippen and Le Neve. Handbills were given out at ports and posters displayed, describing and featuring the couple under the heading, in block capitals: WANTED FOR MURDER AND MUTILATION. A £250 reward was offered for information leading to capture of the fugitives. The press were alerted and Captain Kendall soon read in the Daily Mail of the third and successful search of the Crippen home and the furore surrounding the disappearance of Dr Crippen and his mistress on suspicion of murder. The newspaper carried a picture of the wanted ‘cellar murderer’ and Kendall was convinced Robinson was he. Crippen himself remained blissfully unaware of the intense publicity he engendered. Kendall tried to keep it that way, asking his crew to hide any current newspapers that might mention the case from ‘Mr Robinson’s’ view. Using the new Marconi radio, for which the case would become even more famous, Captain Kendall made history by sending the first ever wireless telegraph resulting in the apprehension of a fugitive. Sent from 120 miles west of Cornwall, England, it read:
Have strong suspicion that Crippen London Cellar Murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Moustache taken off growing Beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl. Both travelling as Mr and Master Robinson. Kendall.
Received at the offices of the White Star Line in Liverpool, the cable was immediately forwarded to Scotland Yard. On 22 July, Detective Chief Inspector Dew read the telegraph from the Montrose and immediately set off with Sergeant Mitchell for Liverpool. Accompanying them were two wardresses, Miss Foster and Miss Stone, who would handle Miss Le Neve, post-arrest. On 23 July they boarded the SS Laurentic bound for Quebec, a much faster ship than Captain Kendall’s vessel.
Blissfully unaware the net was closing Crippen and Le Neve enjoyed their last few days together, dreaming of a new life in the New World. No news reached them of their notoriety back in England, the Montrose being devoid of newspapers. For their part, the police hoped against hope that they were not on some wild goose chase. After all, others had already been arrested in England on suspicion of being Crippen, one of them on two occasions. They need not have worried. They would soon have their prey.
The Laurentic passed the Montrose on 27 of July at dead of night and reached its destination on 30 July, 24 hours before the vessel carrying Crippin and Le Neve. As the Montrose approached Quebec Harbour, Crippen realised his plans had come to naught. A ship’s quartermaster had already tipped him off that he would be arrested on arrival. Hoping desperately to escape his fate, Crippen later alleged that he tried to bribe the quartermaster into saying he had fallen overboard, even writing a suicide note to cover his tracks. Perhaps he thought better of it, the quartermaster could not be bribed or, possibly, it was a figment of his imagination.
When the police approached him, Crippen was shocked to find the same two officers who had called at his home only a few short weeks previously. By way of a re-introduction, Dew said, ‘Good morning Dr Crippen. I am Inspector Dew. I am here to arrest you for the murder of your wife, Cora Crippen, in London on or about second February last.’ Crippen was crestfallen. He knew the likely outcome of a trial. Turning to Captain Kendall, he shouted: ‘You shall pay for this treachery sir!’ Curiously enough, disaster did later strike Kendall. While Captain of the passenger liner Empress of Ireland his ship collided with a Norwegian coal freighter, the Storstad, while on a voyage from Quebec to Liverpool on 29 May 1914. Of 1,477 passengers and crew on board, all but 465 drowned. Kendall did not fall victim to what the press called ‘Crippen’s curse’. Declining to go down with all hands, he lived to the ripe old age of 91.
Extradition proceedings against Crippen and Le Neve commenced swiftly and on 20 August, Dew and his prisoners were aboard the SS Megantic, bound from Montreal to Liverpool. Miss Le Neve was handcuffed to Miss Stone and Crippen to Sergeant Mitchell. Only once did the lovers meet, although no words were spoken.
On 28 August, to great commotion, the prisoners and their escorts arrived in Liverpool. The case had caught the attention of the world’s press. Again, when alighting the Euston train, curious and boisterous crowds surrounded the man accused of the abominable murder and dismemberment of his wife. Deputy Chief Inspector Dew was the hero of the hour. He did not feel like it and was to retire three weeks after the Crippen trial concluded, aged only 47. Perhaps the sympathy he felt for Crippen was too much to let him become involved in such a case again. Certainly his memoirs, I Caught Crippen, published in 1938, strongly gave that impression.
To entertain a fascinated public, music-hall ditties were written, such as ‘Miss Le Neve’.
Oh Miss Le Neve, oh Miss Le Neve,
Is it true that you are sittin’
On the lap of Dr Crippen
In your boy’s clothes,
On the Montrose, Miss Le Neve?
Even 51 years after the trial, Crippen’s fame was such that a musical Belle, or the Ballad of Dr Crippen opened in London’s West End, none too successfully, however.
While Crippen lay incarcerated in Pentonville, his case gripped the imagination of an enthralled public, as gruesome details of the victim’s demise were revealed daily in the newspapers and more and more detail of the convoluted lives of the accused became known. He was even called a latter-day ‘Jack the Ripper’. Articles appeared with fabricated quotes in the name of inspector Dew, in which he supposedly heard the ‘confession’ of Crippen in every detail. So incensed was Dew by this assault on his reputation that he sued nine newspapers for libel, winning damages from all, including the Montreal Star, Evening Standard and Daily Chronicle. In the meantime the public, probably the jury too, were convinced of Crippen’s guilt.
Crippen’s solicitor, Arthur John Edward Newton did him no favours, seeing him not as a man on trial for his life, but a source of money and publicity. Newton cobbled together a group of fraudsters and swindlers who agreed to fund the defence in exchange for exclusive rights to Crippen’s story.
The greatest barrister of the day, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, KC, who actually believed in Crippen’s innocence, was sought to defend him. However, he insisted on a fee up front and Newton would not pay. As a result, Crippen was defended by a KC with much less talent and no belief in the innocence of his client.
As the day of the trial dawned, over 1,000 curious citizens of all social classes, a horde of pressmen and their photographers lined the streets, held back by scores of police officers. Three hundred people packed into court, including 50 reporters.
The trial of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen opened to a packed and bustling Court Number One at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, 18 October 1910. Mr RD Muir assisted by Mr Travers Humphreys and Mr Ingleby Oddie represented the Crown; Mr Alfred A Tobin KC, assisted by Messrs Roome and Huntley Jenkins, defended Crippen. The Lord Chief Justice of England, the Right Honourable Lord Alverstone, presided. Asked to plead, the defendant replied, ‘Not guilty my Lord.’
Packed by the press corps and members of an intrigued public throughout, the trial of Crippen lasted five days. Mr Muir for the prosecution opened by presenting a series of key witnesses, including not only the Martinettis but also, arriving recently from America, Bruce Miller, the man Crippen had implied had eloped with his wife. Miller was adamant that no ‘illicit relationship’ with Mrs Crippen had ever existed, dismissing the defendant’s claims as preposterous. The correspondence between Mr Miller and Cora was innocuous and the defence could not unsettle the witness.
On the second day of the trial, Detective Chief Inspector Dew and Dr Pepper provided damning evidence against the defendant. Dew produced Crippen’s statement, offered when first they met and informed the court of a pyjama jacket found in the coal cellar and three pairs of pyjamas in the house, one of which had a missing jacket. After detailing further the gruesome discovery in the Crippen coal cellar and the transatlantic pursuit of Dr Crippen, Dew was easily able to deal with any points raised by Crippen’s defence.
Dr Pepper explained that the missing pyjama jacket matched the one found in the coal cellar. No bones or reproductive organs had been found to indicate the sex of the remains. From the flesh and organs found, only a piece of skin, with what looked like the scar from an operation, appeared to offer a clue as to the victim’s identity. Tellingly, the Martinettis in their evidence had testified that Cora Crippen had such a scar, from removal of her ovaries years before. Pepper also stated that the person (or persons) placing the remains in the cellar must have had knowledge, skill and experience of human anatomy. The hair from the Hinde clasp matched Mrs Crippen’s from her home and, Dr Pepper added, the remains could have been buried not more than eight months prior to discovery. Dr Crippen’s team disputed the findings of Dr Pepper but made little headway.
As the trial reached its midpoint, the renowned pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury (soon to be knighted) gave his expert opinion on the evidence, in this the first of many important trials at which he would appear. He said that, without a doubt, the piece of flesh under dispute contained the remnant of an operational scar. Gruesomely, the jury asked to see the flesh itself and it was duly passed round on a soup plate. Grandstanding by the defence failed to have much impact on the young pathologist and two more doctors, William Willcox and Arthur Luff, who followed him into the witness box.
Dr Willcox had examined the viscera and found evidence of hyoscine in the organs. Dr Luff supported the findings of his colleague. Mr Charles Hetherington, a pharmacist, then testified that Dr Crippen had purchased five grains of hyoscine hydrobromide on 17 or 18 January that year, only a fortnight or so before Cora Crippen disappeared. A therapeutic dose was only one hundredth of a grain. A fatal dose was a quarter of a grain and Willcox and Luff proved that at least twice that amount was present in the body of Mrs Crippen and had been ingested orally. The defence called a Dr Blyth to refute that hyocine was even in the remains. He could not.
The prosecution rested, confident it had exposed Crippen as an adulterous, cold-blooded murderer who planned the poisoning of his wife well in advance, attempted to destroy the evidence in a brutal, ghastly way, concocted a tissue of lies to explain her disappearance and then fled from capture with his mistress.
Opening for the defence, Mr Tobin tried to paint a picture of his client as a rather sad and pathetic figure; a man much maligned and misunderstood. Dr Crippen, as witness in his own defence, agreed with this assessment, adding that in his professional capacity he had not the necessary skill, training or experience to eviscerate a corpse. With regards to Mr Miller, Crippen stressed that a relationship did exist and that is why his wife left him. As for the hyoscine, he needed it to carry out his job.
With the trial nearing its zenith, more and more people tried to gain entry to the public gallery, as the entire country remained enthralled by the case. Members of the public had to write in requesting a seat in court. Only a few who did so were lucky enough to be chosen to view the drama unfolding.
After adjourning for the evening, cross-examination began early next morning with Mr Muir immediately on the attack. He was cold, calm, polite and relentless. Crippen buckled beneath a barrage of questions that slowly but steadily revealed the truth about the events of late January/early February 1910 in the Crippen home.
Seemingly innocuous questions were designed to catch out the suspected murderer. ‘When had he last seen her? Did she eat breakfast? What did she have? What did she say? Did he give her money? Why did she leave her clothes and jewellery? Why did he pawn it/give it to Miss Le Neve? When did his mistress move into number 39 Hilldrop Crescent?’ Mr Muir then quizzed Crippen about letters concocted by him concerning Cora’s supposed death in America, the telegram to the Martinettis and his trip to Dieppe with Ethel.
After expanding on previous questions to further expose Crippen’s deceptions, Muir moved onto the remains in the cellar. The courtroom hushed as the matter of the pyjamas was addressed. Muir asked when the three pairs of pyjamas were purchased. Crippen responded vaguely, insisting that the pair in question were bought separately in 1905. Muir proved they were manufactured from the same batch of cloth and purchased together. A Mr Chilvers was called. An employee of Jones Brothers, from whom Crippen confirmed he bought the pyjamas, he had a record of their sale. Mr Chilvers added that the label on the pyjamas bore the words ‘Jones Brothers Holloway Limited’, adding that the company had existed only since 1906, a year after Crippen claimed he purchased them. It was now clear in the minds of the jurors that the pyjamas found in the coal cellar must have belonged to the Crippens and could only have been buried there by the man standing before them in the dock.
Moving onto the defendant’s flight from justice, Mr Muir comprehensively dismantled Crippen’s feeble responses to questions now asked in short staccato bursts.
The defence had one last card to play before closing speeches – Dr Turnbull, Director of the Pathological Institute, was called to identify the incriminating piece of flesh marked with a scar. Arthur Newton, Crippen’s solicitor, had promised he would not have to testify and Turnbull was both aghast and ill-prepared. He tried to identify the skin as being from a thigh and said the scar was a ‘fold’. Spilsbury calmly showed that the skin was attached to a rectus muscle, using forceps to clearly show Dr Turnbull’s mistake. Dr Wall, called to back up Dr Turnbull, admitted they were wrong. Mr Muir, Scottish-born with a hankering for the stage in his youth, had shaken the usually placid Dr Crippen and turned the testimony of defence witnesses to his advantage. Few now doubted the outcome.
After closing speeches and the summing up, the jury retired at 2.15pm, Saturday 22 October. Returning a mere 37 minutes later, they gave their verdict: guilty. As Lord Alverstone placed the black cap solemnly on his head, Crippen blurted out, ‘I still protest my innocence’. Facing the now convicted murderer, the judge read out the sentence of death.
Crippen had been badly advised by his defence counsel and Mr Newton, who was jailed and disbarred three years later for forging Crippen’s ‘confession’. Crippen should also never have placed himself in the witness stand. Once he did, his conviction was guaranteed. Possibly he no longer really cared. Had Crippen pleaded guilty to killing Cora in a fit of passion, revealing the way she had humiliated and laughed at him, he could have possibly saved himself, but at the price of years, possibly life, in prison for manslaughter without his beloved Ethel. He would also have had to divulge Ethel’s pregnancy, miscarriage and the whole sordid tale. In fact, throughout his own case he seemed distracted, more concerned for his mistress than himself and he constantly asked after her.
On Tuesday 25 October it was the turn of Ethel Le Neve to face trial, as an ‘accessory after the fact’ in the murder of Cora Crippen.
The prosecution case, led by the same team that secured the conviction of Crippen, presented their evidence in a similar vein, denouncing Miss Le Neve as a woman who profited from the death of her rival in love and well aware of that woman’s fate when she moved into the Crippen home. Her decision to flee twice with her lover implied, to the Crown at least, full knowledge of Dr Crippen’s crime.
Defended by England’s youngest King’s Counsel, Frederick Edwin Smith, no evidence was submitted on behalf of Miss Le Neve, who wisely did not give evidence. Mr Smith made an impassioned and emotional speech on behalf of his client instead, telling the jury she was merely the love-struck dupe of an older, cunning and wicked man. She had known nothing of the murder of Cora Crippen/Belle Ellmore. Her only crime, he added, was to love and trust in Dr Crippen so unreservedly. Finally, he asked the jury to find Miss Le Neve guilty only if they believed she had actively participated in the murder itself and its immediate aftermath by assisting in the disposal of the body.
Following a sympathetic summing up from Lord Alverstone, in less than 20 minutes the jury found Ethel Le Neve not guilty. She had been tried and acquitted in less than a day.
Crippen’s spirits rose briefly following the exoneration of his mistress. He appealed. The appellate jury dismissed it. Only Home Secretary Winston Churchill could offer any reprieve now. He did not and so Crippen sought to cheat justice by cutting his wrists, using his spectacles as a razor. It was to no avail. He was quickly discovered and saved for execution.
While awaiting his fate, Crippen wrote constantly to his beloved Ethel, who now visited him daily. Eleven of these letters are still extant. He told her how kind prison governor Major Mytton-Davies was in breaking the news that, finally, he was to die. Ethel refrained from telling him the governor had nonchalantly chased her from his door when she went to plead for her lover’s life. A letter followed each visit. Crippen’s always had a poignant heading such as, ‘Not even death can come between us … ’ and ‘I first kissed your face … ’. All displayed heartfelt love, devotion and concern for the love of his life. In Ethel’s letters we can only assume similar sentiments were expressed. It was Crippen’s last wish that Ethel’s letters and photograph go to the grave with him. Prison staff, by now quite fond of their infamous, polite and well-mannered inmate, honoured his request. Crippen in anguish romantically and tearfully declared to Ethel, ‘How am I to endure to take my last look at your dear face; what agony must I go through when you disappear forever from my eyes?’ His final words to her were, ‘We shall meet again!’
By now the press and public who had howled for Crippen’s head a few short weeks earlier were muted. The murder, dismemberment and burial of Cora Crippen was not forgotten but people were touched by the obvious love Crippen and Le Neve had for one another. On 20 November Lloyds Weekly printed his ‘Farewell letter to the World’, in which he took great pains to declare the innocence of his amour, while hinting at his own.
Executioner John Ellis carried out the sentence of hanging at 9.00am on the morning of Wednesday, 23 November 1910, in Pentonville prison.
The irony in this case is that Crippen possibly did not kill his wife with poison after all. Dr Ingleby Oddie, who had served on the prosecution team, speculated that poisoning was the plan. The hyocine would give the appearance of a heart attack and a death certificate soon follow – the murder would never be detected. Unfortunately for Crippen, Oddie postulated, hyocine does not always sedate. The shouting and hysterical screaming neighbours heard in the early hours of 1 February could have been the death throes of Cora. Such cries might have panicked Crippen who, fearing an inquest and discovery of the poison, shot her instead and then disposed of the body as best he could. Dr Crippen had possessed a gun, ammunition and at least one neighbour said a loud bang ‘like a pistol shot’ was indeed heard. Inspector Dew did find a gun in his first search of the Crippen house. No bloodstains were found either, even though a bloody dismemberment had taken place. Only in the enamel bath could dissection have been carried out with minimal evidence remaining. One thing is certain; no one will ever know the truth.
On the very day her former lover was hanged, Ethel, calling herself ‘Miss Allen’, boarded the SS Majestic bound for Canada. There she worked as a secretary and wrote her memoirs, returning to England in 1916. She changed her name again, to Nelson, met an accountant, Stanley Smith, married and had a son and a daughter. The Smiths settled in Bournemouth and opened a teashop. They were very happy together and Mr Smith was apparently the spitting image of Crippen. No one, including her husband until his death, was aware that she was Ethel Le Neve.
In 1954 an author, Ursula Bloom, who wanted to write a book telling the story from the lovers’ perspective, visited Ethel. By now 71, and 13 years from her own death on 6 August 1967, she would not co-operate and the book was never written. Frustrated, Ms Bloom asked Ethel whether, if Crippen were alive today would she marry him? Staring at her intently, Ethel replied, ‘Yes I would.’
It seems that there our story ends. Or does it? A hundred years after Dr Crippen was hanged scientists at Michigan State University led by forensic biologist Dr David Foran carried out DNA tests on the remains found at Hilldrop Crescent. It was concluded they were not the remains of Cora Crippen.
Using one of Dr Spilsbury’s histological slides secured from the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum, DNA from the remains was compared to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited through the maternal line only, from three of Mrs Crippen’s living female relatives. They found no match. Further DNA testing proved that the tissue was in fact that of a male.
The findings were published in the Journal of Forensic Science in January 2011 and co-authored by poisoning expert John Trestrail III of the Centre for the Study of Criminal Poisoning in Los Lunas, New Mexico, who pursued the sampling of tissues from the case.
Scotland Yard still retains a lock of hair trapped in a curler that was found with the remains. That hair sample intrigued Mr Trestrail, who kicked off an effort to sample tissues from the case that culminated in the study.
The study authors argue that there was no contamination from latter-day handlers of the slide that would have delivered the wrong conclusion in terms of the sex to which the flesh belonged. If they are correct, then the genealogical and DNA investigation proves that that the remains did not come from Cora Crippen.
Professor Allan Jamieson of the Forensic Institute in Glasgow, agrees that the study provides powerful evidence that the body did not belong to Cora, while genetics professor Mark Jobling of the University of Leicester is more cautious, fearing that contamination of the slide still might explain the results. Like the study authors and Professor Jamieson, he believes it is unfortunate that the lock of hair found with the remains was not made available for testing and comparison with the tissue to provide important corroboration – or not as the case may be – and reduce the risk of a false result.
But if the researchers are right, one can only speculate about who the remains belonged to, how they got there and what happened to Cora. Is it possible that Crippen murdered someone else and those were the remains discovered? Or could the evidence have been planted? Could Ethel have known the true identity of the remains foiund in the garden?
Crippen’s relatives now hope to secure an official pardon but the authorities in London have refused such requests as they are not related closely enough to raise legal questions about the case.
It seems that the case of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen will remain a fascinating and tantalising one, for many years to come.