Was Dr. Crippen innocent?

Dr. Hawley Crippen has gone down in history as one of the most notorious murderers in English history. An American homeopathic physician  from Coldwater, Michigan, Crippen was accused of murdering his estranged wife, Cora, and burying a small part of her remains in a "coal cellar" adjacent to the kitchen of their apartment. Crippen was carrying on an affair with a much younger woman. He claimed that Cora had eloped with a lover and returned to the United States, where she had died and been cremated. He later admitted to fabricating the story of her death out of humiliation.

When Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Walter Dew interviewed Crippen at his home to inquire about Cora's disappearance, he was initially satisfied. But when he returned with further questions, he discovered that Crippen- and his lover, Ethel la Nieve, who had moved in with him- had suddenly vacated the apartment. Their suspicions aroused, the police searched the apartment more completely, discovering the  remains- including a pajama top matching bottoms found elsewhere in the apartment, conclusively proven to have been purchased during the Crippens' residence- buried under a loosely- laid brick floor in the cellar.

The captain of a Canadian cruise ship bound for Quebec  recognized Crippen as one of his passengers and notified Scotland Yard, The captain wired regular reports back to England, acting in effect both as a spy for the police and a reporter for the British press, Crippen's day-by-day life became front-page news in a kind of trans-Atlantic "O.J. in his white Bronco" trip. Taking a faster vessel, Scotland Yard Inspector Walter Dew intercepted Crippen's ship just before it arrived in Quebec, arrested him, and brought him back to England for trial. The incident inspired a popular song:

Dr. Crippen killed Belle Elmore
Ran away with Miss la Nieve
Right across the ocean blue
Followed by Inspector Dew
Ship's ahoy, naughty boy!

"Belle Elmore" and "Belle Rose"  had been used by Cora- a former singer- as stage names.

The prosecution had in its possession evidence that Cora had in fact moved several trunks out of the apartment in the days leading up to her disappearance, but concealed it from the defense. They also had a letter (generally agreed to be a forgery) from Cora to Crippen saying that she had eloped with a lover to the States, and refusing to return to save him from the gallows. But Bruce Miller, whom the defense claimed was Cora's lover with whom she had fled to America, admitted on the witness stand to the relationship, while denying knowledge of her current whereabouts.

The most damning evidence against Crippen was the claim of forensic pathologist Bernard Spilisbury that a piece of skin discovered by Dew and his colleagues bore an identifying scar which proved that the remains were Cora's. The defense argued that since the "scar" contained hair follicles- which scar tissue does not- it must therefore be a mere fold in the skin, and not the identifying scar at all. The jury believed Spilisburn. Crippen was convicted, and hanged on November 23, 1910 at Pentonville Prison, mere blocks from the apartment the Crippens had shared. La Nieve, who was tried separately as an accomplice, was acquitted.

But there were large flaws in the prosecution's case. To begin with, if- as the Crown charged- hydrocine (also known as scopolamine, an alkaloid Crippen used in manufacturing his homeopathic medicines) was the poison which did Cora in, hers is apparently the only murder on record anywhere in the world in which it was used! Crippen, by the way,  could easily account for having hydrocine in his posession; he was known to have used it in a number of his patent medicines. so his possession of the drug was itself in no way suspicious. Secondly, poisoners seldom attempt to destroy the corpses of their victims, preferring to play instead for a ruling of natural death by carefully selecting the poison, the circumstances of administration, and other factors to conceal the nature of the death from authorities. And if- as novelist Raymond Chandler has pointed out- Crippen did set out to destroy the body, it made no sense to destroy most of it while burying such a small quantity of remains in the cellar! Finally, Dew made much of the foul stench the decomposing remains supposedly made in the coal cellar. Yet he had not noticed it when he interviewed Crippen in the adjacent room on his first visit- the very room in which Crippen customarily took his meals!

Proponents of Crippen's guilt argue that he used lime in an effort to destroy the corpse, but that it did an incomplete job. One of the prosecutors at Crippen's trial recalls that lime was found with the corpse- and it has been pointed out that when water is added to lime, it not only ceases to destroy tissue but actually preserves it. But if so, whence the alleged odor? Whatever the explanation, only a small quantity of remains were found in the coal cellar. Wouldn't the use of lime have almost entirely eliminated the odor?

The case against Crippen unraveled in October of 2007, when  Michigan State University forensic pathologist David Foran announced that a comparison of mitochondrial DNA extracted from surviving skin samples from the corpse with that of three matrilineal  grand-nieces of Cora Crippen proved conclusively that the remains in the cellar were not Cora's. Further tests- utilizing controversial new techniques whose reliability is disputed by some- led to the conclusion that the remains were, in fact, male!  The defense had claimed at Crippen's trial that the remains in the cellar predated the Crippens' residence at the apartment. Foran has expressed the belief that the pajama top may have been planted by police under intense pressure to solve what at the time was a hugely sensational case.

Skeptics claim that the DNA samples may have been compromised, or that the grand-nieces may not, in fact, have been matrilineal relatives of Cora Crippen. They also point to the controversial nature of the test which identified the corpse as having been male. Attempts by the Crippen family in Michigan to have the doctor's remains repatriated have thus far been unsuccessful, and the British government has rebuffed attempts by the family to obtain a pardon for Crippen in light of the new forensic evidence. The Michigan State team responds that any possible contamination of the sample by alien DNA could not have been sufficient to have altered the result. The relationship between Cora and the grand-nieces whose mitochondrial DNA was used as a control was established by Beth Wills, an American geneologist.

The 1920 census for Brooklyn, New York lists Cora's sister, Bertha Mersinger, as living with a woman named Belle Rose- Cora's stage name. It should be said that- contrary to claims made by a documentary on the case recently shown on PBS- her occupation is listed on the census report, not as "singer," but as "designer" (of millinery goods). Further, her given age did not match Cora's.

Nevertheless, the least that can be said is that much more than a reasonable doubt exists that the man commemorated in wax museums and in British folklore as one of the most notorious murderers of all time was, in fact, a murderer at all.

BELOW: The wax sculpture of Crippen from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London.