08

Dr Crippen and the Transatlantic Chase

12 August

Dr (in air quotes) Hawley Harvey Crippen, who was put on trial for murdering his wife Cora Crippen (stage name Belle Elmore), is the infamous snake oil selling criminal we're discussing in this episode. Joe (the hormone monster) feels like his forensic education is under scrutiny, and Sandra reads telegrams and gets told she needs to get out more.

Sandra got her information wikipedia, as well as these articles:

• The notorious case of Dr Crippen, The History Press
• Bio of Hawley Harvey Crippen, Encyclopedia Brittanica
• Mutilating the evidence, The Oldie
• Belle Elmore, Into the Limelight

Joe got his information from wikipedia, which is also where we found the images:

• Photo of the alleged scar tissue present on the torso found underneath the floorboards
• Photo of Belle Elmore (Cora Crippen)
• Photo of iconic strongwoman Vulcana

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised. He did a very good job in vikings, the series, he was like the weird magic guy and... Oh yeah the typical character that's cast in all of these historical documentaries, the magic guy. He made boats, so not that magic I guess. No you're a typical shipwright carpenter, the magic guy is probably the least apt description for someone who makes boats. I think it was like, because he's very like... Go and see the magic guy! You need a special remedy? Oh what can he help me with? Well if you need to get across a small body of water, he's your guy. But i've got pancreatitis. Well, you know, maybe open water will help. [Music]

Oh wait no i've got another impression. Yeah? I can do harry potter impersonating aragog. What the fuck, and also please do it. So I assume you've seen the films at least once? Yeah. But in yeah, in half blood prince harry takes the felix felicis to get their memories from slughorn, remember that? Yep. So I don't know if they included it in... I know they definitely included it in the books. Duh [Laughter] So the whole point of taking the felix felicis is to go and meet slughorn and to get the memories of riddle for the horcruxes. So both in the book and the film, harry's like you know what, I'm actually going to go and see hagrid. I just got a really good feeling about this, hagrid's gonna be great! And then on his way to meet hagrid he comes across slughorn collecting tentacular leaves for a potion and he sneaks up on him, and I don't know if this is in the books but it's definitely in the films, harry acts like he's kind of drunk. So aragog's dead and slughorn asks to collect some of the venom from his pincers and then harry's like, ah yeah, but you know don't forget that and does like a little finger motion with his two index fingers to imitate aragog's pincers. And that that was my impression of harry impersonating aragog. Was just (clicking noise). Because I was like, this does not translate in a podcast.

Okay so are you ready to start the case? You're listening to Midweek Murders, that means it's time to talk about crime. I'm your host jay bear and this is... (whispers "It's your turn"). Is Sandra! Listen to our podcast we're hilarious! We talk about crime, we make some funnies... You sound like a character on the one with the puberty monster. I'm the fucking hormone fairy! What is it called? (sings "I'm going through changes"). What is it called? I don't remember. Me neither. If this makes it into the cut. Fucking hormone fairy?! I'm the puberty monster! Yeah people are gonna scream at us being like it's called this, you morons. We've got a lot going on okay? We have a very stressful life. You guys need to chill the fuck out, yeah? You listen to this for pleasure, just chill out with the comments, okay? We never receive any comments it would be nice if somebody could speak to us. We're very lonely. This is funny. So true. Okay you're listening to midweek murders, I'm your host sandra. And I'm your co-host Joe.

So the case we're gonna talk about today is Hawley Harvey Crippen and my references is: britannica biography about Hawley Harvey... Hawley Harvey Hawley?! Hawley Harvey Crippen, what a fucking joke! Written by the editors of encyclopedia britannica. The oldie.co.uk, which I first thought was a website about me. The article it's called mutilating the evidence, and it's a blog by Bob Woffinden. Bob?! Bob?! What a fucking guy! I love Bob. I also read... He comes from the bronx, everybody loves Bob. I also read about the victim in into the limelight dot org which is funny, because i thought that thing was like dead in the 90s, dot org? But it's still kicking. And the history press.co.uk extracted from a century of london murders and executions, by John J Eddleston. You know dot org just means it's a website for a specific organization like, dot co dot uk, is a company from the uk. And dot com is the us, and dot d e is from germany. Like dot org is not a thing that only existed in the 90s, it's still very much a live domain for any organization that is international. Okay, I should have known that. I did not. You should have known that given you're the tech freak in this whole dynamic. Yeah yeah yeah in this whole dynamic. I got my information from wiki wiki waa, wikipedia. Didn't you research evidence that said he was innocent? I already know about mitochondrial dna from my forensics training, so if you want to reference that, that was from anglia ruskin university 2010 until 2013. You're welcome. Okay oh god, I have a forensic science bsc honorary degree 2.1, does anybody need my personal bank details? Don't do that we'll already given them... Never felt so much under scrutiny than i have right now for my fucking forensic education. We've already given them our birthdays. Oh, no one's gonna remember because nobody knows that 9 11 happened in september.

The disappearance of, and this is strange, but there's lots and lots of different names in here. And this woman who was born konigunde makamotsky, changed her name to cora turner in the u.s because she was living there with her parents, and then changed her name again to Belle Elmore which was her stage name. She married Hawley Crippen. Hawley Crippen. Sorry Hawley. No way. What kind of bronx are you living in chump?! Not any kind of bronx just london england. Ey up govna', I can do the english! Oh yeah she was 11 years younger than he was when they married, and then they moved to london england, and moved into a house in hilldrop crescent which is very very close to where I live. Don't tell them that, you fucking internet amateur. Very, very far away from anybody associated with this podcast. Yes cut that over so that it appears really awkward. They moved into there because they wanted separate bedrooms and they also had lodgers. And they had a party at their home on the 31st of january 1910 where one of the guests wanted to go to the bathroom, and she got annoyed at her husband because the husband didn't show him to the bathroom, so she was like this is not the proper way to treat guests. And then when they left the party, that was the last time anyone saw her. And she was a very colorful character, she was, as I read it in the sources, not a very good music hall performer. She tried to be an opera singer, didn't work out, she tried to be a vaudeville entertainer, didn't work out. And she once during the strike of music hall artists she arrived to perform at the theater and one of the protesters that was supporting the strike was like oh let her in, because everyone is gonna leave anyway. Oh savage! So savage, yeah.

Police first heard of Coras disappearance from her friend, the strong woman Kate Williams better known as Vulcana. And I was like, good lord let there be a picture, and there was a picture of strong woman Vulcana which is so... Did she look sexy? Oh yeah she was very strong, very strong. Look at the source, it's a very good picture. So Hawley Crippen, Dr Drippen, who was uh I would say, not really a doctor. Because he was like I have medicine training blah blah blah, but what he did actually was more like selling snake oil. He was a doctor of homeopathy. Yeah also known as doctor of bullshit. Yeah. Apologies to anybody who finds homeopathy effective, but you are victim to placebo. I thought you were gonna say who sells snake oil, but you... Then another friend, who was a personal friend of scotland yard superintendent Frank Forrest, asked them to look into the fact of Belle Elmore or Cora Crippen, or the other name that i'm not gonna try to pronounce again. They asked to look into the fact, because his secretary Ethel was seen wearing Cora's jewelry and furs. So they thought that if she had, as Hawley Crippen said, gone to america then she would have probably brought her jewelry and furs. So they... I suppose it depends on how much of an emergency she was in. If you're packing for general life relocation, then yeah, sure, fine, take everything. If you're packing for safety of your own life, not sure you'd pick your jewelry to be your most essential items. Yeah, but I think her friends didn't find it plausible because of the fact that he said that she was going to look at some property because of a family situation, and they were like what. He put out a statement saying that she would had fallen ill in california, and then he also said that she had died in california, and was cremated in california because of natural circumstances which is um question mark. So the house was searched, the house in hilldrop crescent, was searched four times by chief inspector walter drew, and then dr crippen admitted that he had fabricated the story about his wife. I think we should distinguish that the first search happened while he was still in london, and everything was found to be okay, and then he didn't realize that the police were fine with the initial search so he fled to belgium. I'm getting to it. No but when he fled to belgium, is when they conducted the extra three searches. Okay. So i think it's important to say that after the first search he ran away and it was his disappearance that led to the extra searches.

Okay so the first search was conducted and doctor (in air quotes) Crippen admitted that he had fabricated the story of his wife having died, and explained that she had run away to america with one of her lovers, a music hall actor named bruce miller. They left, the police left, and they fled to brussels and then boarded a canadian pacific liner called the ss montrose for canada. So after that, the scotland yard performed, as you said, another three searches of the house. Of the house. They said that during the fourth and final search they pried up the floorboarding, and found a torso of a human body buried under the floorboarding. During an autopsy of this torso, a senior scientific analysist found traces of the drug called scopolamine in the torso parts, and they also said that her scarring from a surgical, wait... She had an ovariectomy. What does that mean? A removal of an ovary. Yeah, so she couldn't have children and the ovariectomy was like, they said that the scar on the torso that they found underneath the floorboards, was identified as Cora because of that scar. Some people said that the scar had hair follicles, which would mean that it's not a scar I guess? Does that make sense? Yeah so scar tissue doesn't have the capability of producing follicles or sebaceous glands or anything like that.

So the later revival of the forensic evidence on that scar led to question marks about how it could be used in the conviction of hawley they said that they just found the torso, not the heads, not the limbs because dr cripple (in air quotes) tried to dissolve her remains in in quick lime. Yeah. Yeah but accidentally preserved it. Yeah so quicklime is commonly used as a substance to decompose a body and so it's quite possible that the limbs and head were successfully decomposed, however I think there was a leak of some sort under the flooring, which uh, when quicklime is exposed to water it actually acts as a preservative. So I think probably her torso ended up being preserved, while the quick lime served its function with the rest of her body. Yeah so Crippen and le Neave were crossing the atlantic on the montrose, and captain henry george kendall recognized the fugitives and said that he recognized dr Crippen and said that he had taken off his mustache and had grown a beard and his companion on the trip that was disguised as a boy was mannered and built undoubtedly like a girl was captain kendall's telegram so he had sent that telegram i think before they departed it was before they reached canada. They'd already departed. Yeah and drew from the police boarded a faster ship and arrived in canada before crippen and le neve, Ethel.

I think it's quite funny to mention a couple of factors in their transatlantic journey one of them is that they'd opted to go to canada which at the time was still part of the british empire which meant that the telegram going to the british police was still under commonwealth jurisdiction when they got to canada so they were still under the law of the uk when they landed whereas if they'd chosen to depart at a u.s destination they would have been subject to extradition which would have elongated the whole process and would have needed the approval of the united states so they probably would have been able to get off if they'd gone to the united states rather than canada yeah and secondly harvey crippen was an american citizen yeah and second of all because of dr crippen's self-esteem and high opinion of himself he traveled in first class and if he had actually traveled in a lower class he probably would have evaded the attention of the captain so because he was in and around the upper echelons of the classes of that bow that's what gave the captain the opportunity to recognize him and send that telegraph back whereas if he'd traveled under a lower class second or third then he would have been lower down in the ship and the captain probably wouldn't have seen him at all and been able to identify him so there's a couple of opportunities that he could have got away with if it weren't for his arrogance and uh high self-esteem which i found quite amusing which is funny that you would mention that because belle elmore or korra was described as an overbearing and domineering personality he was called like meek and diminutive just because he's quiet doesn't mean that he's nice which is a very common misconception to me true story bro yeah his first wife died of a air quotes heart attack but they aren't sure that she actually died of a heart attack because he might have killed her too it was very funny i thought that chief inspector dew from the scotland yard boarded the ship and they invited crippen to meet the pilots and then do removed his pilot's cap and said good morning dr crippen do you know me i'm chief inspector dew from the scotland yard and then after pause krippen said thank god it's over that suspense has been too great i couldn't stand it any longer and i thought that that was just so funny because it sounded like dialogue from like agatha christie you need to count more [Laughter] and then crippen and lenev or ethel were arrested on board the montrose on the 31st of july 1910. Crippen was returned to england on another ship.

I just wanted to say like the trial mentioned as we spoke about before that the scarification of the torso that they said had hair growth on it which would say that maybe it wasn't a scarf or it wasn't her scarf from the what is it called, what did i say? the thing overectomy. Yeah, the ovarectomy and they also said that toxic compound hyoscene hyacine were found in the remains do you know what how your scene is yeah so uh hyacine is typically used as a treatment for motion sickness or nausea typically present in first trimester pregnancy and it was shown that hawley had actually taken out an order for hyacine i don't know whether it was prescription at that time or whether he just bought some but uh pharmacy records show that he had purchased it within the applicable time frame of Cora dying they did find toxic levels in the torso they recovered yeah and they also said that the torso was wrapped in a pajama top or had epidemic fragment on it that was not sold prior to 1908 yes so in in his trial the prosecution argued that because they found this franklin of his pajama top which had been established that corey had given him as a gift that indicated that he was involved in the crime now his defense said that prior to 1908 there had been another family that had lived in the house and it was perfectly possible that the crime of the body was committed by them and that could explain the presence of the pajama top so the prosecution got in contact with the manufacturer who stated that it wasn't available for sale before 1908 which basically ruled out the defense's argument that it was the other family because that was three years before the production of this particular pyjama set and then crippen was found guilty and then hanged at the pentonville prison on wednesday the 23rd of november 1910 and after that which is where i found well i kind of found this whole case interesting because of the fact that it all seems to be like a plot from Agatha Christie novel or something like that because of the chase and the lines and everything. Iconic, I would say.

but nowadays people think that he might have been innocent because of the evidence from dr david ferran in october 2007 did you read about that there's been a lot of attempts to retrial due to the evidence one of the main ones was they did a mitochondrial dna analysis of the skin that they recovered and found that the mitochondrial dna was almost certainly belonging to a male which would rule out the fact that it was cora's body but also this evidence has been refuted by a couple of different sources for a couple of different reasons one of the reasons being that the technique that was used to interpret the dna isn't a widely accepted scientific method for mitochondrial dna analysis is performed by one lab in the world and the second is that the only reference that they've got is a sample of tissue that's over a hundred years old so given that they were testing it in the early 2000s and the sample itself is from the early 1900s although mitochondrial dna has got a longer life than nucleic dna it's still not really a suitable source of evidence to be able to use this kind of dna manipulation to be able to determine whether it's a match or not now the lab that performs the dna analysis have said that it was almost irrefutable that the evidence that they came up with was linked to a male's dna but you only need to have a little bit of experience in dna analysis to know that a sample that's over a hundred years old isn't going to give you the best results so there's a little bit of question marks as to whether this technique is actually suitable to be able to say that the sample isn't a match i understand why people are like oh but the dna evidence say that it's a male because of the fact that dna sounds so inherently much better than like oh this scar yeah so when they convicted at the time the only real evidence that they had was that they recovered some scar tissue and that matched cora's medical records which if you convert that into a case today probably wouldn't stand they also said that they had found the drug yes so we can we can get onto that into a little bit but if we talk about the scar tissue yeah it's perfectly possible for other women to have the same scar tissue that's not individual evidence at all mitochondrial dna is slightly different to nucleic dna in that it is almost identically passed down through the maternal line so your maternal dna mitochondrial dna will be exactly the same as your mom's mitochondrial dna there's no split between the mother and the father like there is with nucleic dna it's really easy with modern techniques to find a link along the maternal line so they track down a couple of korra's great granddaughters and took a sample from them yeah sorry yeah grand nieces who would have the same mitochondrial dna that mitochondrial dna according to this one lab didn't match what they recovered from the scar tissue which is what they used to determine the dna link because that was presented in court just yes yes yeah the biggest problem with that is that any kind of dna evidence will degrade over time so given that the sample is over 100 years old and that the more that we progress with dna evidence the more that we know what kind of conditions it needs to be stored under the amount of mitochondrial dna that they could have possibly recovered from the scar tissue is so negligible that they would have had to amplify it so many times that that introduces a possibility of error which is where people are arguing that it's not entirely reliable source of scientific evidence so it might have been the person doing the autopsies dna not necessarily that but the dna would have degraded to such an extent that you wouldn't be able to amplify it enough to give a 100 assurance that this amplified dna is 100 a replicant of the original sample tissue.

Just looking at the behavior from him being like okay i'm gonna flee the country with my lover ethel and him they had a relationship during the time that he was married to Cora feels like why would he flee the country if he was not guilty of the murder yeah a lot of the circumstantial evidence is quite suspicious. but also i read in one article that she had one month earlier said to him that she was gonna leave him and that she was gonna take the money out of her account that kind of sounds like she might have been murdered to me because if she would take the steps to withdraw her finances from her account then she would have probably brought her jewelry her first which was probably worth more than most people owned at that time because in that time the only possessions that you had were like land or property or jewelry or first because selling that on would have given her a lot of money and because his girlfriend at the time was wearing her jewelry and her furs i'm like um because she was going through the trouble of withdrawing her money and stuff she would have brought her jewelry you just thought so yeah yeah that's what i think so what do you think do you think he's guilty or innocent i think he's guilty yeah me too mostly because of the circumstantial evidence which is again not enough to sentence someone but why would he flee the country if he was innocent also a person who sells snake oil always suspicious yeah.

what are you gonna do now? furiously masturbate of course to volcana volcana yeah like that i just thought that it was funny that she was called volcano the strong woman i was like oh yeah it's just like a volcano you want to say goodbye to the listeners [Music] bye listeners love you russian boss bye bye see you next week thank you so much for listening to midweek murders ciao ciao motherfuckers

Topics

• Dr Crippen
• famous british crime cases
• Belle Elmore
• Hawley Harvey Crippen
• british executions
• Edwardian era crimes
• old crimes
• crimes during the turn of the century
• crimes in the 1900s
• homeopathy criminals
• Music Hall artists
• Vulcana the strongwoman
• Cora Crippen
• old murder mysteries
• London crime cases
• Transatlanic chases
• Scotland Yard
• detectives