Dr. Crippen - Wife Murderer?

Hawley Harvey Crippen had already lost his first wife from a stroke in 1892, when her husband was just thirty years old. She left him with a two-year-old son that Crippen could not look after on his own and, so, had to leave with his parents. He travelled to New York to get a job and found a second wife, Cora Turner, perhaps better known by her stage name, Belle Elmore.

Although Crippen was not a medical doctor but one specialising in homeopathy which neither earned him much money nor had a good reputation, he had chosen to marry a lower class singer who increased her income by having affairs. One could not exactly call her a prostitute but, in late nineteenth century America, even in a large city like New York, Crippen’s new partner can’t have helped his career. Perhaps for this reason – although we cannot know – the couple emigrated to England three years after they married in 1897.

However, Crippen’s American qualifications were not accepted in England and he was forced to sell medical products instead. He did not make much money from this and, anyway, was sacked for spending too much time managing his wife’s stage career. He got another job as a manager of a deaf school but the couple still had to rent their spare rooms to lodgers to help with their income. Crippen met a typist called Ethel le Neve at his new job in 1903. He later started sleeping with her, but by then his wife was also having an affair with one of their lodgers. Crippen’s marriage to Cora was not then a very happy one.

In 1910, Cora disappeared. Crippen said she had gone back to the States and died there. His lover, Ethel, moved into his house with him and began wearing Cora’s dresses. But not everybody believed Crippen’s story about his wife’s departure and the police visited his home to investigate. Although they believed that he had done nothing wrong, Crippen panicked and left with Ethel for Belgium that night. To make matters worse, they got a ship to Canada the next day. This made the police wonder. Why had an innocent man run away so suddenly? They returned to Crippen’s house several times and, eventually, found part of a body under the floor in the basement.

Meanwhile, the captain of the ship that Crippen was travelling on had noticed him and Ethel, who, for some reason, was dressed as a boy. He made a call to the police in London, taking advantage of the new radio telephone on his ship. Crippen was arrested as he arrived in Canada. The police officer arresting him reported that he said, “Thank God it’s over! I couldn't stand it any longer.”

However, the famous pathologist investigating Cora’s death could not say for certain even if the body part under the floor was male or female. The head and limbs were gone and the prosecution said the body was Cora’s only from a scar on her skin. The defence argued that there was hair growing on the skin and so it could not be a scar and, so, was probably not Cora’s. But the pathologists also found a large amount of a poison called hyoscine in the skin and Crippen had recently bought that same drug from a local chemist. To make matters worse, a piece of Crippen’s nightshirt was found with the body.

During the trial, Crippen showed no sadness about his wife’s death but only seemed worried about Ethel’s reputation. He was found guilty by the jury in just twenty-seven minutes and hanged the same day that Ethel left Britain for the United States. He was buried with her photograph in his coffin.

Even at the time there was doubt about the verdict. For instance, why would a man cut off his wife’s head, arms and legs and get rid of them but leave her chest under the floor of his house? However, more worrying evidence was discovered nearly a hundred years after the murder. In 2007, the University of Michigan showed that the hundred-year-old skin found under the floor was, in fact, a man’s.

But why did Crippen try to escape to Canada if he was innocent? Why did he say “Thank God it’s over” when he was arrested? Some people have suggested that the police put a piece of Crippen’s nightshirt under the floor with the skin because there was a lot of pressure on them to solve the case. But there was no pressure. The story only got into the newspapers after he was arrested.

In England, after considering the new evidence, the police decided not to re-open the Crippen case. So, one of the most famous murder cases in the English courts will remain a mystery. But, of course, there are other questions. Who was the man under the floor? And what happened to Cora?