research the case of dr. hawley harvey crippen

20th October, 2017 in True Crime

The notorious case of Dr Crippen

By John J Eddleston

In 1893, Hawley Harvey Crippen married his second wife, Cora Turner, in Jersey City, America. Seven years later, in 1900, they moved to London.

Crippen was employed as a representative for Munyon’s Remedies, a company making homeopathic remedies while Cora, using the name Belle Elmore, had aspirations to be a music hall artist. Unfortunately, Belle had no talent whatsoever.

In fact, neither Belle nor Cora was the real name of Mrs Crippen. She had been born Kunigunde Mackamotzki and was the daughter of a Russian-Polish father and a German mother. She was also a most overbearing and dominant character. Her long-suffering husband supported her ambitions to be first an opera singer and, when that didn’t work out, a singer in the music hall but she had very little success. All she did manage to get out of her ‘career’ was a few showbusiness friends and the position of Treasurer of the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London.

In September 1905, Dr Crippen and his wife took a lease on 39 Hilldrop Crescent in Holloway. Part of the thinking behind this move was that the pair could now have separate bedrooms. Belle had never really been a sexual person and according to what Crippen would later say, all physical relations between them ceased in 1907. Crippen, meanwhile, had fallen in love.

The object of his desire was Ethel Le Neve, a typist who worked for him. At about the same time that Crippen stopped having sex with Belle, he and Ethel became lovers. This situation continued until 1910.

On the evening of Monday, 31 January 1910, the Crippens threw a dinner party for two close friends of Belle’s: Paul and Clara Martinetti. The meal passed pleasantly enough, except for one incident. Paul Martinetti had asked to use the toilet and because Crippen didn’t escort him upstairs to show him where it was, Belle berated him. By the time the Martinettis finally left, it was around 1 a.m. on Monday, 1 February. It would be the last time that anyone saw Belle Elmore alive.

Over the next week or so people began to ask where Belle was. Crippen said that she had gone to America. As the days passed, this story was amended and now she had fallen ill. Finally, Crippen told people that his wife had passed away. There was, however, one problem with this. Ethel Le Neve had started wearing some of Belle’s jewellery and, by the end of February, she had moved in with Crippen at Hilldrop Crescent. Friends grew suspicious and in due course those suspicions were passed on to the police.

On 8 July, Chief Inspector Walter Dew called at Hilldrop Crescent where he found Ethel alone. Crippen, it seems, was at work, so Dew visited him there and the two returned together to Hilldrop Crescent where Crippen happily showed the officer around the house. He also told Dew a different story. Belle had left him for another man, almost certainly Bruce Miller, an American she had met in late 1903. Dew told Crippen that it would be better if Belle contacted him to confirm this story and Crippen said that he would place an advertisement in certain newspapers, asking for her to make contact.

Things now moved very quickly. The next day, 9 July, Crippen shaved off his distinctive moustache and with Ethel Le Neve disguised as a boy, travelled to Brussels. There they bought tickets for passage to Canada, travelled on to Antwerp and there boarded the SS Montrose , travelling as father and son.

At about the same time, Chief Inspector Dew returned to Hilldrop Crescent. He was surprised to find Crippen and Ethel missing and decided to make another routine search of the house. In the cellar he noticed some loose bricks in the floor. Officers were ordered in to make a more thorough search and beneath those bricks they found the remains of a body. The body was headless, limbless and boneless – little more than pieces of flesh, but it was female. It was time to find Crippen.

Aboard the Montrose , the father and son were watched with interest. They seemed to be unduly affectionate and were constantly holding hands. Added to that, the boy’s clothing seemed to be very ill-fitting. Captain Kendall had his suspicions and telegraphed a message to Scotland Yard. Dew, now determined to intercept the ‘father and son’, boarded a faster ship, the SS Laurentic , and the hunt was on.

On Sunday, 31 July, Dew and other officers boarded the Montrose as it sailed up the St Lawrence. The father and son were identified as Crippen and Ethel Le Neve, both were arrested and, after three weeks, were escorted back to England to face trial.

It was decided that the pair should not be tried together. Crippen would face his trial first and, once that verdict had been determined, Ethel Le Neve would take her turn in the dock, to be tried as an accessory. So it was that on 18 October, Crippen stood alone in the dock at the Old Bailey before the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone. The proceedings would last until 22 October.

Crippen’s defence was simple. The body found in the cellar of his home was not Belle’s. The body must have been of some poor unknown woman and been placed there before he and Belle had moved in. It was, therefore, crucial to the prosecution to prove that the body was Belle’s.

One piece of the flesh found in the shallow grave had borne a scar and medical records showed that Belle had such a scar on her lower abdomen. More conclusive was the fact that the remains had been wrapped in a pyjama jacket and a tag inside that jacket led to the manufacturers: Jones Brothers. They confirmed that this particular cloth and pattern were not issued until late 1908, proving that the body must have been placed there after that date. This, and the scar, was consistent with the body being that of Belle Elmore.

Medical tests had shown that the flesh contained traces of hyoscine, a poison, and it was known that Crippen had purchased five grains of that substance on 17 January, two weeks before Belle had vanished. It was enough for the jury, who took just under thirty minutes to find Crippen guilty of his wife’s murder.

On 25 October, Ethel Le Neve was put on trial as an accessory to murder and found not guilty. A subsequent appeal on behalf of Crippen was dismissed and his death sentence was confirmed.

On Wednesday, 23 November 1910, 48-year-old Crippen was hanged at Pentonville by John Ellis and William Willis. Crippen’s last request had been for a photograph of Ethel and some of her letters to be buried with him in his unmarked grave. The request was granted.

Extracted from A Century of London Murders and Executions by John J. Eddleston

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Hawley Harvey Crippen

The murder of cora crippen.

• April 2, 2024
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"Accomplice dressed as boy."

The infamous case of dr. crippen: a twisted tale of murder and justice.

In the annals of criminal history , the name Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen stands out as a symbol of heinous acts committed in the shadows of Victorian London.

His infamous tale unfolded in the early 20th century and left an indelible mark on the public’s perception of crime , forensic science, and justice.

Dr. Crippen, an American-born homeopath and salesman, moved to London in the early 1900s with his wife Cora Turner, a music-hall singer known by the stage name Belle Elmore.

The couple appeared to be living a seemingly ordinary life, yet behind closed doors, a storm of marital discord was brewing.

As tension mounted, rumors of Dr. Crippen’s involvement with his secretary, Ethel Le Neve, began to circulate.

The sinister climax of this domestic turmoil occurred in January 1910 when Cora Turner mysteriously disappeared.

Dr. Crippen told acquaintances that his wife had returned to the United States, citing her alleged infidelity as the cause.

However, suspicions arose when Cora’s absence persisted, and friends began to question the doctor’s credibility.

The turning point in this chilling narrative came when Dr. Crippen’s neighbors, alarmed by Cora’s prolonged absence and the doctor’s erratic behavior, contacted the police.

Inspector Walter Dew was assigned to the case, and what followed was a ground-breaking investigation that would shape the course of forensic history.

Upon searching the Crippen residence, Dew discovered human remains buried in the basement, beneath a layer of quicklime.

The remains were mutilated and missing the head and limbs, making identification challenging. Dr. Crippen and Ethel Le Neve had fled the scene by then, further fueling suspicions of their involvement in Cora’s demise.

A transatlantic pursuit ensued as the fugitive couple boarded the SS Montrose bound for Canada. Their escape, however, was short-lived, thanks to the revolutionary use of wireless telegraphy.

The ship’s captain, Henry George Kendall, received a message alerting him to the possible presence of Dr. Crippen on board.

The captain relayed this crucial information to Scotland Yard, resulting in a swift interception.

The dramatic capture of Dr. Crippen and Ethel Le Neve marked the first time in history that wireless communication played a pivotal role in solving a major crime.

The couple was brought back to London to face trial for the murder of Cora Turner.

The trial of Dr. Crippen became a media sensation, captivating the public with its elements of passion, betrayal, and forensic intrigue.

The prosecution argued that Dr. Crippen had poisoned his wife with hyoscine, a potent drug used for calming nerves, and then dismembered her body to dispose of the evidence.

The defense, led by Sir Edward Marshall Hall, attempted to cast doubt on the evidence, emphasizing the lack of concrete proof linking the remains to his wife Corrine “Cora” Turner.

Despite the defense’s efforts, the jury found Dr. Crippen guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Ethel Le Neve, charged as an accessory after the fact, was acquitted. Dr. Crippen’s execution took place on November 23, 1910, at London’s Pentonville Prison, marking the end of a dark chapter in criminal history.

The Crippen case left an enduring legacy, not only as a sensational crime story but also as a watershed moment in the evolution of forensic science and criminal investigation.

The use of wireless telegraphy demonstrated the potential for technology to aid law enforcement, setting a precedent for future innovations in crime-solving techniques.

Dr. Crippen’s crimes and subsequent punishment serve as a cautionary tale, a reminder that even the most calculated attempts to conceal heinous acts can be un-raveled by determined investigators and advancements in forensic methodology.

The chilling story of Dr. Crippen remains a testament to the resilience of justice in the face of deception and the enduring pursuit of truth.

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The Execution of Dr Crippen

Richard Cavendish remembers the execution of a notorious murderer on November 23rd, 1910.

Hawley Harvey Crippen was 48 years old when he was hanged in London’s Pentonville prison at 9am on November 23rd, 1910. He had spent the previous hour with the Roman Catholic prison chaplain and two warders. His plan to commit suicide with broken glass from his spectacles had been forestalled and now, though unable to finish his breakfast, he seemed perfectly calm. The hangman, a Yorkshire barber named John Ellis, who had spent time with him the day before, recalled that ‘Crippen came across to me as a most pleasant fellow.’ He was smiling as the cap was put over his head on the scaffold. The drop broke all the bones in his neck and he must have died instantly. The body was buried in the prison graveyard.

The Crippen story aroused enormous public interest at the time and Crippen himself has always attracted considerable sympathy. He was a small man, 5ft 3 or 4in tall, bespectacled and moustachioed, an American who had trained originally as a homeopathic doctor. Quiet, mild and polite, a docile husband and apparently entirely unremarkable person, he had a wife who is always described as a blowsy, heavy-drinking nightmare, vain, bullying and promiscuous. She came from a Polish family in New York City, called herself Cora (her original name was Kunigunde Mackamotzki) and tried without much success for a career as a music hall singer under the stage name of Belle Elmore.

The Crippens moved to London in 1897 and he worked at a centre for treating the deaf, where one of the typists was an attractive girl called Ethel Le Neve. They fell in love, but the relationship was at first platonic. In 1905 the Crippens moved to a house in the Holloway area of north London, 39 Hilldrop Crescent, where they took lodgers. Crippen came home one day and found Cora in bed with one of them. She had been unfaithful to him before and he and Ethel now began an affair. Ethel was his ‘wifie’ and he was her ‘hub’.

On February 1st, 1910 Cora Crippen vanished. Her husband said she had gone back to the United States for a few months. In March Ethel moved into the Hilldrop Crescent house with Crippen, who now gave out that Cora had died in America. Cora’s friends grew suspicious, Scotland Yard was alerted and Detective Inspector Walter Dew talked to Crippen in July. Crippen took fright and fled to Brussels with Ethel, who was dressed as a boy. The police searched the Hilldrop Crescent house and found the gruesome remains of a body beneath the coal cellar. Wrapped in a male pyjama jacket, which was later identified as Crippen’s, it had no head, no limbs, no bones and no genitals, but there were traces of a poison that Crippen was discovered to have bought not long before Cora’s disappearance. A hue and cry began, followed excitedly by the press. Ports and stations were watched and police forces abroad were alerted.

On July 20th Crippen and Ethel sailed from Antwerp for Canada on the liner Montrose . He called himself Robinson and Ethel posed as his teenage son, but they behaved too lovingly and the captain grew suspicious and informed the ship’s owners by telegraph. They passed the word to Scotland Yard and Dew pursued the fugitives across the Atlantic in a faster liner, the Laurentic , which reached Father Point in the Gulf of St Lawrence ahead of the Montrose . Dew was waiting, went aboard with the pilot vessel and arrested Crippen and Ethel. He afterwards said that he had never in his life felt such a sense of triumph and achievement. The Montrose took all of them on to Quebec, accompanied by reporters who had swarmed on board. Dew regarded the latter as an infernal nuisance, but the dramatic story that George Orwell said no novelist would have dared to make up created a frenzy of excitement in the press.

So did the trial at the Old Bailey in October, which made the name of the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury, who had examined a piece of flesh and confirmed that a scar on it corresponded to an operation that Cora Crippen was known to have had for the removal of her ovaries. This has since been challenged, but it helped to demolish Crippen’s claim that the corpse must have been there all along, unknown to him and Cora. However, he did succeed in his heroic effort to persuade everyone of Ethel’s innocence. Tried as Crippen’s accomplice, she was acquitted. 

American academics in 2007 claimed that the DNA of the dead body in Hilldrop Crescent did not match that of some of Cora Crippen’s distant relatives, which meant that the body was not Cora’s and Crippen was innocent, but their case was generally considered unconvincing.

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The Twisted Case Of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, Hung For Poisoning And Dismembering His Wife

It was Feb. 1, 1910 when anyone last saw Crippen's wife, Corrine "Cora" Turner, alive, a disappearance that kicked off an investigation that led to the doctor being hung for her murder after running off with a lover disguised as a teen boy.

From extramarital affairs to poisoning, murder, dismemberment and an eventual hanging — the case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen has it all.

It was in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, 1910 when anyone last saw his wife alive, a disappearance that kicked off an investigation into their unconventional marriage and eventually led to Crippen being hung for her murder after running off with a lover disguised as a teen boy.

The wife in question was Corrine "Cora" Turner, a performer who used the stage name Belle Elmore, and whom Crippen married in the early 1890s after his first spouse died from a stroke, according to The Telegraph .

Born in Michigan, Crippen was a homeopath working in New York at the time of his marriage to Cora. In 1900, the couple moved to London while Crippen was a rep for the homeopathic remedies company Munyon’s Remedies, and Cora was an aspiring music hall singer, according to John J. Eddleston’s 2008 book, “ A Century of London Murders and Executions .”

The book describes Cora — whose birth name was Kunigunde Mackamotzki — as “overbearing and dominant,” while her husband was said to have been supportive of her desires to be an opera singer and music hall performer.

While she wasn’t very successful, she made a few contacts in the industry and got a job as treasurer of London’s Music Hall Ladies Guild.

Cora also carried out several love affairs with other men, according to Encyclopædia Britannica .

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The married couple took out a lease in 1905 on a place at 39 Hilldrop Crescent in Holloway, a district in the London borough of Islington. The fact that they could have separate bedrooms here was part of their decision to move in, according to "A Century of London Murders and Executions."

They took in lodgers at the address and in 1906, Crippen found his wife in bed with one of them, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .

Meanwhile, Crippen had already fallen in love with his typist, Ethel Clara Le Neve, a few years earlier. Finding his wife with a lodger prompted him to consummate his relationship with Le Neve, according to Oxford.

Crippen had said that all physical relations between himself and Cora stopped around 1907, the book states.

Still together though, the couple hosted a dinner party on the night of Jan. 31, 1910 for a pair of close friends of Cora’s, Paul and Clara Martinetti. There was one incident that stood out that evening.

Paul had asked to use the bathroom, and after Crippen didn’t show him where it was located upstairs, Cora berated him in front of the guests. 

The Martinettis left around 1 a.m. on Feb. 1, which was the last time anyone saw Cora alive. 

When people asked where Cora was in the coming days, Crippen told them she'd left for America. He later changed his story and said she had fallen ill. Finally, he started saying that his wife had died.

But people noticed that Crippen’s lover, Le Neve, started wearing Cora’s jewelry and had moved into the Hilldrop Crescent home by the end of February. Friends made police aware of their suspicions. 

In Autopsy Shocker, 'Cold-Hearted’ Man Planted Evidence Inside Wife's Body To Frame Her Lover

On July 8, Chief Inspector Walter Dew, of the Metropolitan Police, visited Crippen at work after showing up at his home and finding only Le Neve there. The two men came back together and Crippen showed Dew around the house.

The doctor also again changed his story. He told Dew that Cora had left for another man, likely an American she’d met in 1903 named Bruce Miller, according to the book. 

Crippen had said he lied about being left by Cora because he was humiliated by it, according to Oxford Dictionary.

The doctor, sent into a panic by Dew’s visit, fled the next day. Police searched the home and initially found nothing, until Dew removed the flooring of the kitchen coal cellar. 

It was under there that authorities found a human torso, missing its head and limbs, and “desexed,” according to Oxford. The remains were wrapped in a pajama jacket and were found to contain hyoscine, a poison that Crippen was said to have bought before his wife vanished.

By July 9, the day after Dew’s visit with Crippen, the doctor had shaved off his mustache and fled to Brussels — with Le Neve disguised as a boy. 

The lovers then headed further north in Belgium to Antwerp, where they boarded the SS Montrose, pretending to be father and son as the ship made its way toward Canada. 

But the ship’s captain, Henry Kendall, spotted the pair holding hands and suspected they were really Crippen and Le Neve. The quick-thinking captain had staff use wireless telegraphy to get a message to Scotland Yard, passing along descriptions of the pair. 

Dew set out on a faster transatlantic ocean liner, the Laurentic, and was able to get to Montreal three days before the Montrose and have the couple arrested on the ship.  They were eventually taken back to England to face trial.

Crippen claimed at his trial that the body found in the cellar must have already been there when he moved into the home. However, prosecutors were able to prove that the pajamas found with the body were made after he moved to the address.

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And a pathologist said that the flesh found at Crippen's home had an abdominal scar that was consistent with Cora’s ovariectomy. 

Additionally, medical tests showed that the flesh found had traces of hyoscine, a poison that Crippen bought five grains of two weeks before Cora disappeared.

A jury took less than 30 minutes to find Crippen guilty of the murder. He was hanged on Nov. 23, 1910, at Prison Pentonville in north London at age 48.

Le Neve, meanwhile, was acquitted in a separate trial on Oct. 25 for the charge of being an accessory after the fact.

Crippen’s last request before being hung was for a photo of Le Neve and some of her letters to be buried in his grave with him, a request that was reportedly granted.

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100 years on, DNA casts doubt on Crippen case

It is one of the most notorious cases in British legal history, the story of an apparently mild-mannered doctor who poisoned and dismembered his showgirl wife, then fled across the Atlantic with his young lover - only to be caught after a sharp-eyed captain recognised him from the newspapers.

Dr Hawley Crippen was hanged in 1910, after an Old Bailey jury took just 27 minutes to find him guilty of murdering his wife, Cora, who had vanished earlier that year.

Nearly a century later, research appears to show that the evidence which sent Crippen to the gallows was mistaken: the human remains discovered under his London house could not be those of Cora.

Working from a sample kept at the museum of the Royal London Hospital Archives, a team of American forensic scientists compared mitochondrial DNA from the remains presented at the trial with samples taken from Cora Crippen's surviving relatives.

The results were conclusive, said Dr David Foran, the head of forensic science programme at Michigan State University. "That body cannot be Cora Crippen, we're certain of that," he said.

Police found the mutilated remains with no head and no bones. Newspapers at the time described Crippen as "one of the most dangerous and remarkable men who have lived this century".

But according to John Trestrail, the toxicologist who led the new research, poisoners rarely inflict external damage on their victims. "It is so unusual that a poisoner would dismember the victim, because a poisoner attempts to get away with murder without leaving any trace. In my database of 1,100 poisoning cases, this is the only one which involves dismemberment," said Mr Trestrail, who heads the regional poison centre in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The discrepancy prompted him to re-examine the evidence in the Crippen case. Working with a genealogist, Beth Wills, he set about finding Mrs Crippen's surviving family. After seven years, the team tracked down three distant relatives in California and Puerto Rico.

The challenge then was to find viable DNA from samples presented at the trial. At the archives of the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel, researchers found the microscope slide which helped hang Crippen. In court, a pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, identified it as an abdominal scar consistent with Cora's medical history.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down in the egg from mother to daughter and remains relatively unchanged through generations, but the DNA in the sample was different from the known relatives of Mrs Crippen.

"We took a lot of precautions when doing this testing," Dr Foran said. "We just didn't stop. We went back and started from scratch and tested it again.

The evidence offers no suggestion of who may have been buried in the coal cellar at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Holloway, north London. But, according to Mr Trestrail, Crippen is innocent of the crime for which he was hanged. "Two weeks before he was hanged he wrote 'I am innocent and some day evidence will be found to prove it'. When I read that the hairs stood up on my arms. I think he was right."

The team concede that they may never discover what happened to Mrs Crippen, but several intriguing clues emerged during the research. Cora sang on the British stage under the name of Belle Elmore. Ten years after the trial, a singer with a similar name was registered as living with Cora's sister in New York. Records show that the same woman entered the US through Ellis Island from Bermuda in 1910 shortly after Mrs Crippen disappeared.

"Are Belle Rose and Cora Crippen one and the same?" asked Mr Trestrail. "We can't prove any of that - that is another investigation".

Mr Trestrail believes Crippen should be given a posthumous pardon.

Last night J Patrick Crippen, his closest living relative, told the Guardian: "Those of us in the family who have ever taken the time to explore the circumstances surrounding the trial, conviction and hanging of Dr Crippen have never been convinced that this was the finest example of English justice."

Hawley Crippen was an American doctor who moved to England in 1900 with his wife, Cora Turner . When Cora disappeared in 1910, Crippen said she had returned to the US, and later said that she had died in California . After his lover, Ethel le Neve , moved into the couple's home in Holloway , London, Cora's friends alerted the police , but a search revealed nothing. Crippen and Le Neve fled to Belgium before embarking on the SS Montrose to Canada . They were disguised as father and son, but the ship's captain became suspicious and alerted police using the newly invented wireless telegraph . Crippen was convicted and hanged at Pentonville Prison. He protested his innocence to the end.

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A New Man for a New Century: Dr. Crippen and the Principles of Masculinity

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In London, 23 November 1910, the American Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged for the murder of his wife, Cora. In October Crippen’s trial had lasted five days, but the case itself commanded newspaper attention for nearly six months. Further, it has not only earned Crippen a place at Madame Tussaud’s, but also prompted an array of fictionalized retellings, and has figured in retrospective accounts of sensational British crimes for over 80 years. 1 Even with numbers of new entrants to the field, Crippen continues to jostle among a select few contenders for the title of Britain’s second most famous murderer.

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See Tom Cullen, Crippen: the Mild Murderer (London: Bodley Head, 1977), 185.

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Peter Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot: a Life (New York: Simon, 1984), 143, and Goodman, Crippen File , 197.

Sidney Theodore Felstead, Sir Richard Muir: a Memoir of a Public Prosecutor (London: John Lane, 1927), 116, 117.

Sir Travers Humphreys, Criminal Days (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1946), 113.

Edward Marjoribanks, The Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall (London: Gollancz, 1934), 279.

Frederick W.F. Smith, 2nd Earl Birkenhead, F.E.: the Life of F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959), 101.

Filson Young, ed., The Trial of Hawley Harvey Crippen . Notable British Trials Series (London: Hodge, 1920), p. xxxii.

G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (New York: Dodd, 1910), 166–7.

G.P. Gooch, Edwardian England (London: Ernest Benn, 1933), 28.

Ethel Clara Le Neve, Ethel Le Neve: Her Life Story with the True Account of Their Flight and Her Friendship for Dr. Crippen (London: Cowes, 1910), 10.

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Early, J.E. (1999). A New Man for a New Century: Dr. Crippen and the Principles of Masculinity. In: Robb, G., Erber, N. (eds) Disorder in the Court. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403934314_11

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The Mysterious Case Of Dr. Hawley Crippen

Dr. Hawley Crippen was born on September 11, 1862, in Michigan, where he obtained a homeopathic medical degree, had a wife and son, and subsequently became a widower (via The Famous People ). After this, he left for New York to practice medicine, where he met his second wife, Cora Turner. The Crippens eventually moved to England, and he continued to sell remedies while she continued to pursue singing, acting, and other men. Hawley himself had a typist working for him named Ethel Le Neve, who by this point had become his own lover (via The History Press ).  

After Cora disappeared in 1910, Le Neve and Hawley were seen in public with the former often wearing Cora's clothes, which led to a police investigation. Hawley initially gave an account that Cora had died before telling Chief Inspector Walter Dew that she left for America to be with another man. After finding nothing suspicious in the house, Dew made it clear that he wished to verify the story with Cora herself, and in response, Hawley and Le Neve vanished. Upon reinspecting the house, a mutilated torso was found buried in the basement (via PBS ).

New DNA analysis complicates things

The two disguised fugitives attempted to flee via a Canada-bound ocean liner in Belgium, but according to Britannica , the captain recognized them. His discovery was relayed to Scotland Yard, and Dew traveled to Canada, where he arrested them as they departed. During the trial, Dr. Hawley Crippen claimed that the remains must have been there before they moved in. To convince the jury, the prosecution had to make do with an abdominal scar that seemingly matched Cora's medical records, a pajama top of Crippen's that the remains were wrapped in, and the presence of drugs that he had bought prior to her disappearance (via History Today ). He was found guilty and executed. 

However, there is a problem. Recent DNA testing revealed the remains are likely male (via BBC ). 

Does this mean Crippen was innocent after all? If not, perhaps it was one of her suitors, murdered by Crippen while Cora herself met some unknown fate. If so, then where was Cora, and why did he flee from remains that he didn't even know were there? While those questions may go unanswered, if he is innocent it may be that Dew framed him (via The Sun ). He had access to anonymous remains and, after his past failure in finding Jack the Ripper, may have wanted to restore his public image by making Crippen into a monster he could defeat. 

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A Crime Sensation in Memory and Modernity

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Boydell and Brewer
• Copyright year: 2020
• Audience: Professional and scholarly;
• Main content: 262
• Other: 20 b/w illus.
• Keywords: Crippen ; Edward VII ; Edwardian murder ; Edwardian London ; Edwardian crime ; Edwardian press ; Edwardian police ; Scotland Yard ; jurisprudence ; forensic history ; crime history ; Victorian murder ; murder ballads ; murder broadsides ; Jack the Ripper
• Published: May 15, 2020
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The conviction of Dr. Crippen: new forensic findings in a century-old murder

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• 1 Forensic Science Program, School of Criminal Justice and Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 20735704
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2010.01532.x

Dr. Hawley Crippen was accused and convicted of murdering his wife in London in 1910. Key to the conviction was microscopic analysis of remains found in the Crippen's coal cellar, which were identified as Cora Crippen based on a scar she was said to have. Dr. Crippen was hanged, always proclaiming his innocence. In this study, genealogical research was used to locate maternal relatives of Cora Crippen, and their mitochondrial haplotypes were determined. Next, one of the pathology slides of the scar was obtained, DNA was isolated, and the haplotype was determined. That process was then repeated. Finally, both DNA isolates were assayed for repetitive elements on autosomes and repetitive elements specific to the Y chromosome. Based on the genealogical and mitochondrial DNA research, the tissue on the pathology slide used to convict Dr. Crippen was not that of Cora Crippen. Moreover, that tissue was male in origin.

© 2010 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

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Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen

• The Epilogue

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete."

Henry James

Number 39 Hilldrop Crescent remained virtually vacant for the next thirty years. In the decade following, a Scottish comedian attempted to turn it into a museum devoted to Crippen, but his timing was off. Londoners either too vividly remembered the ghastly murder or they felt that it was impolite to Ethel Le Neve, who was still very much alive and had suffered enough. Unlived in and unloved, the house met a sad end at the hands of the German Luftwaffe during the bombing Blitzkrieg over London during World War II.

Montrose captain Harry Kendall nearly died four years after the Crippen incident, in 1914, when the ship he than commanded, the Empress of Ireland , sank off Father Point, Quebec, the very spot where Crippen and Ethel had been arrested. More than a thousand lives were lost, but a rescue crew saved Kendall. The captain lived to 91 years old.

In 1914, the same year as the Empress tragedy, the Montrose sank in the shadows of the white cliffs of Dover.

The Crippen case had been the last for Scotland Yard's Walter C. Dew. At 47 years old, he retired from active duty three weeks before Dr. Crippen was hanged. It is believed his decision came about due to the sympathy he felt for his prisoner, swearing he never again wanted to play a role right or wrong in another such human tragedy. Testimony to this is the affectionate way he treats the meek killer in his memoirs entitled, I Caught Crippen , published in 1938. Dew died in Worthing, England, in 1947.

Refusing to live in England where memories were too vivid, Ethel exchanged life in London for that in Toronto. She boarded the Majestic in 1911 the afternoon of her Hawley's death and couldn't bear to look back. She worked as a secretary in Canada for five years, in the meantime writing her memoirs, but eventually yearned to see her family again. In 1916, she sailed back to London.

Not long after her return to England, she changed her name to Nelson and married an accountant, Stanley Smith, from Croydon, England, where the couple lived. Many say that Smith greatly resembled Hawley Crippen. The marriage was blissful and produced a son and daughter. Her husband, however, died young of a heart attack while at work, never knowing that Ethel Nelson had once been the famous Miss Le Neve.

Widowed, she lived between London and Addiscombe where her life centered basically around a few good friends and, mostly, her children. She took up needlework. Cataracts her only old-age complaint, Ethel passed away in 1967, a content grandmother.

Ethel never forgot Hawley Crippen, and kept his memory dear in her heart but in silence. When a successful novelist named Ursilla Bloom played detective and traced her down in 1954, with the object of writing a true-life account of her story with the doctor, Ethel didn't budge. Although the ladies became great friends in the ensuing months, Bloom found her unwilling to talk except in very general terms about Crippen and the period. The book envisioned by Bloom was never written.

One afternoon over tea, however, Bloom drummed up enough nerve to ask the old lady. If Crippen could come back today, would you marry him?

"Her eyes almost pierced me," writes Bloom. "'Yes, I would,' she said."

Curtain down.... Finis.

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