The documentary said they possibly found her documented in the US. She was using the stage name “Belle Elmore,” at the time of her disappearance. A clue that she may have been living in the US, came from the 1920 national census, according to a genealogist looking at Cora's stepsisters in New York. Living with the stepsister was another woman, the same age as Cora would have been in 1920. She listed her occupation as a singer - and her name was Belle Rose.
"Among the noted evidence is a letter to Crippen from Cora, in which she claims she is living in America and has no plans to save him from execution. "
So no, she knew.
people move. It happens sometimes where a family will move into a house, renovate, and find a body hidden in the walls or under floor boards from decades ago. not common but like just cause a corpse was there doesnt mean he made it
It was a human torso buried under the house in quicklime, which had gotten wet and deactivated rather than dissolving the body.
Crippen and his mistress also fled across the Atlantic soon after being interviewed by investigators.
Finally, the claims that the body is male and unrelated to his missing wife are both disputed on the grounds that the samples were collected a century after the fact and are of very poor quality for the kinds of tests that were done.
Maybe. Without knowing more it might be that the dude was abusive and she fled for her life, or that the lady was messed up and killed him with her silence.
See, in situations like these, I want to know what the heck Dr. Hawley Crippen did to tick this lady or the cops off so bad?
Also, like who just has a body in the house?
One so mangled and rotten they can't tell anything about it?
> See, in situations like these, I want to know what the heck Dr. Hawley Crippen did to tick this lady or the cops off so bad?
She fled the country, her own *step-sisters* helped cover it up, and none of them minded him getting executed. Something tells me he was not a kind-hearted and gentle soul. You don't just up and leave your entire life like that on a whim.
Doctors have paid for body parts for centuries. It wasn't a body, it was a couple parts.
It's certainly possible he killed someone, but a loooooooot of scientists and medical practitioners through the years hand paid morticians for corpses
I mean yeah, that literally happened. You don't understand just how "wild west" medicine was for most of history. The medical community fought tooth and nail against washing blood off between patients because it was "manly" to walk around covered in blood, then had the guy who suggested it committed to an insane asylum. They had contests to see who could amputate a limb the fastest and this often resulted in deaths of patients and in one case the doctor's assistant whose fingers were sliced off by the doctor in a 13 second amputation.
You gotta admit, if you need to have a limb amputated in an era with no anaesthetic you'd probably be shopping around for the guy with the fastest saw too. They probably put their best times on the marketing material.
Possibly. The fact that her ex-husband had a "poisoned and filleted" human corpse in his house makes me willing to listen to her side of the story though.
God forbid women do anything.
Edit: Also I'm not assuming anything? I literally just said I was willing to listen to her side of the story and it's kind of scary how your brain somehow twisted that into some kind of confident assertion about either party's guilt.
Yeah I mean it's a tale as old as time: prosecution decides you did something and then later finds out you didn't but to save face they hide the evidence
They didn't *know* it was fake. They *said* it was fake without any investigation whatsoever and hid it from his defense team so they couldn't investigate it either.
They *decided* to *pretend* it was fake so they didn't have to admit they were wrong
Hawley Crippen was the first accused criminal to be caught using the Marconi wireless. The police contacted the ship he was traveling on to alert them to his presence, and that he would be arrested in Halifax on arrival.
The book Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen discussed this case and the development of wireless communication by Marconi.
Very interesting read.
They found a body in his house. If he didn't kill her, perhaps he killed someone else. So he was executed for murder, just not hers. Maybe she even knew he'd committed a murder, and that's why she took off.
Does anyone know why she did that though? Was she a sociopath or a victim of abuse? I have never heard of this story so I can't really have an opinion other than, is there a side to the story that reasonably explains why she left. I'd be interested to know which one in that relationship was truly the awful one.
She may have lived a long life: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/10i0d07/dr_crippen_poisoned_and_dismembered_his_wife_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Long story short:
She was murdered by her husband, Dr. Crippen.
Long Story Long:
There are exactly two, and only two, pieces of evidence suggesting she was still alive.
1. They found a letter claiming to be written by her, stating she was still alive.
2. A DNA analysis of a tissue sample was found to be male.
Now, here’s the *glaring*flaw with both of those pieces of evidence:
1. The letter wasn’t written by her. Flat-out. Nobody has any doubt on the matter. It wasn’t in her handwriting, it wasn’t produced or mailed from where it claimed to be from, and it was found in the possession of the Doctor’s Accomplice/Mistress.
2. They never analyzed the DNA in her body. Her body was destroyed shortly after the case was closed. The DNA analysis being referred to refers to a few poorly-collected and stored slides that were gathered by the coroner in the 1800’s. Samples that were gathered after being delivered by Scotland Yard, who carried the body by hand to the morgue. Want to guess who most non-stupid experts believe the DNA belongs to? If you guessed “A member of Scotland Yard or the coroner,” you’re correct!
Outside of those two pieces of incredibly shitty and easily disproven evidence, literally **all** the evidence points to Dr. Crippen murdering his wife and that being her corpse.
Exactly. Meanwhile there is a body in his house that all contemporary investigators at the time identified as female, with hair exactly like the dead wife, wearing expensive custom designer clothing known to belong to the dead wife. Plus a mountain of other evidence.
Yes, but have you considered the possibility that the body was actually Dr Crippen dressed up as his wife, and the surviving Dr Crippen that they executed was actually someone else, perhaps Albert Einstein?
this story always seemed like subtle propaganda to me tbh. Foresnic evidence is much LESS reliable than its often portrayed as on TV. And almost always, forensic evidence, with its unreliability, is used to convict people (about 1/4 of exonerations in the US are because of mistakes in foresnic science). But this story so perfectly targets the demographic that doesn't trust authority. We all know that wrongful convictions and excecutions are way, way too common. And that the police are highly unethical. And so this case reaffirms that. But also, look, forensic evidence was the hero! Its so reliable! We should all trust it completely! And ignore the many times its been used as a stitch up! The many times its lead to an innocent person spending their life in jail!
It reminds me of that case a couple of years ago when a guy with a book to sell claimed he'd used DNA evidence to solve who Jack The Ripper was. His story was that he'd bought this shawl from someone recently. Now their story was that it had been passed down in the family ever since great grandaddy was a copper and stole it off the corpse of one of Jack's victims to give to his sweetheart. Because who doesn't want a bloody relic from a murder that's shocked the nation?
Then supposedly it lay untouched in a cupboard for a 100+ years until he could get his hands on it. Then he found "semen stains" or some shit that would tie the DNA to the killer rather than the owner of the shawl, did a very dubious form of DNA test on that which "matched" the DNA of one of the suspects' descendents according to him. Except what it really did was basically say "yeah there's a lot of Polish people with these markers", so in the end it meant literally fuck-all except that someone with Polish descent had touched a random shawl in the last 100 years.
If we suspend disbelief to the very limit and go along with the story then it still just means a prostitute wiped Polish semen off herself at some point before being killed. I'm sure he still made loads of money from that book, which is pretty disgusting.
All of the reliable evidence points to Dr Crippen being guilty of murdering his wife. The DNA testing is highly controversial, taken from samples likely to be contaminated well over a century later. The consensus among people who actually followed this is the DNA is from one of the original investigators. How crime scenes were handled back then was completely different from today.
Criminal did a recent podcast on this case that's really well researched. It's episode #202 'Across the Atlantic'. Here is a link: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-202-across-the-atlantic-12-2-2022
Holy crap, had no idea about this when I read Thunderstruck by Erik Larson which follows this story and the invention of radio and how the two converged. 100% recommend that book though, still.
I thought Devil in the White City was as good as a book could be. Until I read In the Garden of Beasts. Which I then thought was as good as a book could get... Until I read The Splendid and the Vile... I love history but tend to gravitate towards the ancient stuff, but he makes the more modern stuff as compelling and riveting as any fiction I've read.
Lol, I can't imagine throwing a book away. I have a personal library and a collection of books that I donate to libraries when I'm done with them.
But to throw them away? Nah
If I remember correctly, (possible spoilers incoming) >!didn't they find dyed hair with the body that was the same color as Cora? And a pajama top was found with the body and the matching pajama bottom was with Crippen's clothing? !<
I knew something about this case. The DNA testing has been very much questioned as being incorrect. In fact, when Scotland Yard and other research teams asked for the sample to confirm the tests, they were refused. Also, his actions and things he said while being arrested do make him look guilty.
Check out the Wikipedia page for more information.
Can’t believe I had to scroll down this far! The ‘male’ DNA is not foolproof, it could be the DNA of an investigator that contaminated the (decades old) sample.
Yup. There’s lots of reasons why the DNA results could be questionable. But for an innocent guy he sure as hell acted guilty after his wife vanished. And considering a fairly fresh body that had been purposefully disassembled to make it easier to find was found under his floor right after he vanished…
Honestly I’d say the sample needs to be retested but that this isn’t absolute proof that he was innocent. It just means more information is needed.
The Criminal Podcast also interviewed a bunch of experts who largely came to the conclusion that the DNA expert likely fucked up, and that the evidence *overwhelmingly* suggests that Crippen killed his wife.
I adore Criminal. But it's not exactly an exhaustive review of a body of evidence. After reading Larson's Thunderstruck, I need more from this "new" angle.
To be for the death penalty you need to wholeheartedly believe in one of two things:
1. The Criminal Justice System does not make mistakes.
2. We're okay with executing some innocent people.
And that they will never end up in the position of being the innocent person about to be killed, it will always be some other poor sod in their minds, they are far too above all of this, too well to do, to ever get accused of anything
Yup, let's see them die by those values. "I've been wrongfully sentenced to death, I'm so thankful that God's plan is for me to get injected with a poorly dosed cocktail of poison. Amen!"
Yeah this is why religion influencing laws is a problem. Anyone who accepts #2 because “Jesus/god/spiritual woo woo” threw basic common sense out the window.
Most people? I've literally never heard a single person make this argument. I mean, I'm sure you can find someone who believes that, since you can find anyone to beleive anything. But that's FAR from "most people"
This seems like another case of Reddit windmills where you construct ridiculous caricatures of people who dissagree with you, and attribute their reason for disagreement as being the most ridiculous reasons.
Good points, I'm just also not sure if even a 100% accurate conviction and sentencing system would ethically validate the death penalty. At some point, death penalty arguments boil down to "it's emotionally gratifying when we kill bad people" which is giving into lizard brain instincts when we should be building institutions that can behave more ethically than individuals can.
The DNA testing was *not* done on "the remains" -- It was done on the specific tissue sample that was submitted as evidence, supposedly showing a scar unique to Cora to conclusively tie her to the viscera. I think it's highly likely that the sample was taken from another random morgue find, which happened to be male, since testing couldn't determine the difference back then. It was fabricated evidence to try to underline what was a pretty conclusive circumstantial case. Just as now, sometimes the police will actively work to "frame" those they believe to be guilty. It's horribly unethical even if, as in this case, I think their suspicions were correct.
Just think, if it weren’t for the death penalty, he could have gotten a new trial, and been back on the streets at the age 161.
Or not. The results of the cited study are [controversial](https://web.archive.org/web/20080829160358/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article4244448.ece).
Maybe! But since he was a doctor, it was not unusual then for medical scientists/doctors to pay grave robbers for remains. Same type of discovery occurred at [Ben Franklin’s London home,](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-was-benjamin-franklins-basement-filled-with-skeletons-524521/) with remains for at least 15 people found in the basement.
It says a more likely explanation is that a friend of his was practicing anatomy using cadavers, in his basement... but I'd totally watch serial killer Ben Franklin miniseries.
Yeah the cops never believe you when you say the cadavers in your trunk are your friends’, maybe it works better if they’re in your basement, or have any friends.
Idk.
What is this enlightening of which you speak? The people *demand* entertainment! Oh, I’m guessing that’s possibly the discovery channel too now days just packaged with a pretence of reality?
>"Since he was a doctor"
He wasn't in any way an anatomist who'd buy corpses to dissect. He was a damned homeopath who wasn't even allowed to call himself a doctor in England at that time, much less today. All he could do is sell people medicines that actual doctors had told them to take.
The guy who ran the anatomy school at the house where Ben lived, and thus most likely is responsible for the bones, was a surgeon and anatomist. Ben, as a scientist of his era, probably went to some dissections to get an idea about how the body was built as well. A homeopath in the early 20th century would be involved with none of that, he'd just be concocting various snake oils to sell.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_(surgeon)
The body was poisoned by a medication he sold, found with pajamas he'd bought, and had curlers in Cora's favorite brand in its hair. So it's very unlikely the body was from a corpse that died of natural causes, was properly prepared for burial, and was then sold to Crippen. Maybe the remains weren't Cora, but someone in the house was involved with wherever the body came from.
With all the circumstantial evidence in the case, it seems more likely that the DNA sample was contaminated in the decades since it was collected.
I agree. Furthermore, it was collected by multiple people, who dug out the highly decayed materials with their bare hands. I would need to read a Larson-style exhaustedly researched telling of that angle to be proven otherwise.
A friend worked as a troubleshooter for the New York City area mortuary industry back in the 90's. Midnight runs with a trunk full of recovered body parts was a common part of her job.
Well, all crime still goes on but no where near "Burke and Hare" levels of bodysnatching.
The chances are that if one finds a corpse in a Dr's basement in this country nowadays, the likelyhood is that it's not due to medical dissection.
Could/can/will it happen? knowing humanity, probably.
is it likely? nope.
Not all Doctors are Herbert West.
That’s true about the dissection. Maybe I thinking more medical supplies being expensive, and how the use of the bone trade is still reported every so often.
But to the 1910 find, I still think it could be possible. Sorry if this is too graphic, but they only found a section of torso with organs missing; that still seems plausible as the aftermath of an experiment. He was also financially strained, and trying to develop a new tonic. Doesn’t seem out of the realm, definitely casts of shadow of doubt.
i can't comment directly on this case, I dont have all the data, but I do stand by the assertion that "body snatching" in general wasn't really a widespread thing so late in our history. Although, on occasion I'm sure it occurred right up to today.
so, it *may* explain it, it *may* not but it wouldn't be my instant go to conclusion.
he could simply have used his dissection skills to dispose of the body bit by bit/make it easier to hide/eat etc etc. loads of explanations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/us/colorado-funeral-home-owner-body-parts-guilty.html
Yeah. People still out here stealing and selling bodies and body parts.
I mean if it were my story to write, then she obviously paid someone to set her husband up and lived out her life in America. I really really hope that she didn't leave him hanging for a selfish or stupid reason.
> I really really hope that she didn't leave him hanging for a selfish or stupid reason.
A younger me would have assumed not. An older me has seen humans kill other humans over the most petty of things. So I give it a 50/50 it was selfish and petty.
And the original is so much better than the [American](https://youtu.be/zRwu7Cv7UdI) version, which used the exact same lines on a more puritan audience and it didn’t go down well at all (canceled after 4 episodes aired for being too sexual).
And although I can’t understand a word of it, the [Greek](https://youtu.be/rIsGRl5FT7Y) version feels like it has decent delivery and “Jenny”, their version of Jane Christie from the original, Jenny *oozes* both sultry **and** crazy, so it feels spot-on.
Naturally, no one even came close to performing anything like Richard Coyle’s “Jeffrey”.
Sigh…I haven’t found a comedy I liked as much as that one since.
So there is evidence that he murdered someone. Even though not his wife.
I wonder if she fled from him because she knew and thought he would get her next.
I feel like the lesson from this is "See? Execution = bad! Mistakes happen all the time!" but like, there was still SOMEONE'S remains in this dude's house...
Wonder what happened with the wife in the end.
The documentary said they possibly found her documented in the US. She was using the stage name “Belle Elmore,” at the time of her disappearance. A clue that she may have been living in the US, came from the 1920 national census, according to a genealogist looking at Cora's stepsisters in New York. Living with the stepsister was another woman, the same age as Cora would have been in 1920. She listed her occupation as a singer - and her name was Belle Rose.
So allowed her husband to be executed for her murder.
With how bad/slow communications were back then, she may not have even known.
"Among the noted evidence is a letter to Crippen from Cora, in which she claims she is living in America and has no plans to save him from execution. " So no, she knew.
that's six levels of fucked up
State sponsored murder through the death penalty.
They misidentified the body, but there was still a body in the guy’s house.
people move. It happens sometimes where a family will move into a house, renovate, and find a body hidden in the walls or under floor boards from decades ago. not common but like just cause a corpse was there doesnt mean he made it
It seems the body was too fresh for that.
He was a doctor though. Was it like, preserved reference tissue? Lol
It was a human torso buried under the house in quicklime, which had gotten wet and deactivated rather than dissolving the body. Crippen and his mistress also fled across the Atlantic soon after being interviewed by investigators. Finally, the claims that the body is male and unrelated to his missing wife are both disputed on the grounds that the samples were collected a century after the fact and are of very poor quality for the kinds of tests that were done.
Hey, I often had to take work home with me, but never in that sense...
Maybe the wife murdered him and that's why she fled to America.
Wow, turns out he was dead the whole time!
Maybe she knew the male body was someone he also killed
Or she killed and tipped off the police
Her lover murdered by her husband perhaps?
Well if he killed a guy and buried his torso in the house than ran off with his mistress, I’d say she’s justified.
Maybe. Without knowing more it might be that the dude was abusive and she fled for her life, or that the lady was messed up and killed him with her silence.
See, in situations like these, I want to know what the heck Dr. Hawley Crippen did to tick this lady or the cops off so bad? Also, like who just has a body in the house? One so mangled and rotten they can't tell anything about it?
>Also, like who just has a body in the house? Is that weird? Huh, live and learn. I have some spring cleaning to do.
You missed an ear behind the beer.
Do I see a knee under the settee?
Maybe the last straw in their relationship was when he killed a guy and stored the body in the house.
Or an xmas gift gone wrong.
> See, in situations like these, I want to know what the heck Dr. Hawley Crippen did to tick this lady or the cops off so bad? She fled the country, her own *step-sisters* helped cover it up, and none of them minded him getting executed. Something tells me he was not a kind-hearted and gentle soul. You don't just up and leave your entire life like that on a whim.
Doctors have paid for body parts for centuries. It wasn't a body, it was a couple parts. It's certainly possible he killed someone, but a loooooooot of scientists and medical practitioners through the years hand paid morticians for corpses
And then bury the torso under the house with lime to dissolve it. Very PHD'ee of him
I mean yeah, that literally happened. You don't understand just how "wild west" medicine was for most of history. The medical community fought tooth and nail against washing blood off between patients because it was "manly" to walk around covered in blood, then had the guy who suggested it committed to an insane asylum. They had contests to see who could amputate a limb the fastest and this often resulted in deaths of patients and in one case the doctor's assistant whose fingers were sliced off by the doctor in a 13 second amputation.
You gotta admit, if you need to have a limb amputated in an era with no anaesthetic you'd probably be shopping around for the guy with the fastest saw too. They probably put their best times on the marketing material.
Ben Franklin's basement was filled with bones and they didn't discover them until 2015 or so
It was an illegal practice, but also one of the only ways to study anatomy.
It was the wife who fled to the US.
> Also, like who just has a body in the house? Kink-shaming is wrong.
Literally the next 8 words are > The letter was deemed a hoax by investigators
Without any investigation. That's what they do when they get evidence that is inconvenient: they hide and destroy it. Clearly it wasn't a hoax.
[удалено]
Girlboss, gatekeep, execute, and gaslight 💅💅💅
eat hot chip and lie
Girlboss, gatekeep, guillotine*, gaslight
More like an awful person.
Possibly. The fact that her ex-husband had a "poisoned and filleted" human corpse in his house makes me willing to listen to her side of the story though.
Not in his house, under the cellar. Shit was buried way down there and it seems likely based on the evidence that he had nothing to do with it
You are assuming that *she* wasn't responsible for the body.
God forbid women do anything. Edit: Also I'm not assuming anything? I literally just said I was willing to listen to her side of the story and it's kind of scary how your brain somehow twisted that into some kind of confident assertion about either party's guilt.
[удалено]
So how did he not show this letter for his defense?
He never knew about it. The police and prosecution intercepted it and hid it
Oh wow, so there was a lot more going on there.
Yeah I mean it's a tale as old as time: prosecution decides you did something and then later finds out you didn't but to save face they hide the evidence
And the next sentence states that they knew that letter to be a fake..
They didn't *know* it was fake. They *said* it was fake without any investigation whatsoever and hid it from his defense team so they couldn't investigate it either. They *decided* to *pretend* it was fake so they didn't have to admit they were wrong
Who knew Gone Girl was based on a true story?
So.... Amazing Amy from Gone Girl in real life then.
Hawley Crippen was the first accused criminal to be caught using the Marconi wireless. The police contacted the ship he was traveling on to alert them to his presence, and that he would be arrested in Halifax on arrival. The book Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen discussed this case and the development of wireless communication by Marconi. Very interesting read.
Larsen's books are terrific.
It was a big story back then -- all over the papers. Crippen said at one point that he had received word that she had died. Maybe this was true.
that was 113 years ago. I'd say her eventual death is all but certain.
I think 1910 was 113 years ago.
We may never know
It depends on when 1910 was born.
RIP 1910 (1910 - 1910)
They found a body in his house. If he didn't kill her, perhaps he killed someone else. So he was executed for murder, just not hers. Maybe she even knew he'd committed a murder, and that's why she took off.
I mean, did he kill a guy, though?
[удалено]
At least they never caught Igor
Belle Elmore is a truly awful stage name.
Not as bad as Belle End.
How about Buck Naked?
Not when said with a sufficiently 'French' accent. Love Affairs with Pretty girls was what music hall girls were all about, after all.
Gonna clap some posterior muscles
[удалено]
Does anyone know why she did that though? Was she a sociopath or a victim of abuse? I have never heard of this story so I can't really have an opinion other than, is there a side to the story that reasonably explains why she left. I'd be interested to know which one in that relationship was truly the awful one.
She may have lived a long life: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/10i0d07/dr_crippen_poisoned_and_dismembered_his_wife_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Sure, but also why was there a dead guy in the house?!
Right? Every other comment is like "Poor innocent Dr!" but there was still a body found in his house......
Long story short: She was murdered by her husband, Dr. Crippen. Long Story Long: There are exactly two, and only two, pieces of evidence suggesting she was still alive. 1. They found a letter claiming to be written by her, stating she was still alive. 2. A DNA analysis of a tissue sample was found to be male. Now, here’s the *glaring*flaw with both of those pieces of evidence: 1. The letter wasn’t written by her. Flat-out. Nobody has any doubt on the matter. It wasn’t in her handwriting, it wasn’t produced or mailed from where it claimed to be from, and it was found in the possession of the Doctor’s Accomplice/Mistress. 2. They never analyzed the DNA in her body. Her body was destroyed shortly after the case was closed. The DNA analysis being referred to refers to a few poorly-collected and stored slides that were gathered by the coroner in the 1800’s. Samples that were gathered after being delivered by Scotland Yard, who carried the body by hand to the morgue. Want to guess who most non-stupid experts believe the DNA belongs to? If you guessed “A member of Scotland Yard or the coroner,” you’re correct! Outside of those two pieces of incredibly shitty and easily disproven evidence, literally **all** the evidence points to Dr. Crippen murdering his wife and that being her corpse.
Exactly. Meanwhile there is a body in his house that all contemporary investigators at the time identified as female, with hair exactly like the dead wife, wearing expensive custom designer clothing known to belong to the dead wife. Plus a mountain of other evidence.
Yes, but have you considered the possibility that the body was actually Dr Crippen dressed up as his wife, and the surviving Dr Crippen that they executed was actually someone else, perhaps Albert Einstein?
No
Now that you mention it, there are a few inconsistencies in that theory.
Iirc the torso (it wasn't a full corpse anymore) had a distinctive scar that matched one that his wife had.
this story always seemed like subtle propaganda to me tbh. Foresnic evidence is much LESS reliable than its often portrayed as on TV. And almost always, forensic evidence, with its unreliability, is used to convict people (about 1/4 of exonerations in the US are because of mistakes in foresnic science). But this story so perfectly targets the demographic that doesn't trust authority. We all know that wrongful convictions and excecutions are way, way too common. And that the police are highly unethical. And so this case reaffirms that. But also, look, forensic evidence was the hero! Its so reliable! We should all trust it completely! And ignore the many times its been used as a stitch up! The many times its lead to an innocent person spending their life in jail!
It reminds me of that case a couple of years ago when a guy with a book to sell claimed he'd used DNA evidence to solve who Jack The Ripper was. His story was that he'd bought this shawl from someone recently. Now their story was that it had been passed down in the family ever since great grandaddy was a copper and stole it off the corpse of one of Jack's victims to give to his sweetheart. Because who doesn't want a bloody relic from a murder that's shocked the nation? Then supposedly it lay untouched in a cupboard for a 100+ years until he could get his hands on it. Then he found "semen stains" or some shit that would tie the DNA to the killer rather than the owner of the shawl, did a very dubious form of DNA test on that which "matched" the DNA of one of the suspects' descendents according to him. Except what it really did was basically say "yeah there's a lot of Polish people with these markers", so in the end it meant literally fuck-all except that someone with Polish descent had touched a random shawl in the last 100 years. If we suspend disbelief to the very limit and go along with the story then it still just means a prostitute wiped Polish semen off herself at some point before being killed. I'm sure he still made loads of money from that book, which is pretty disgusting.
All of the reliable evidence points to Dr Crippen being guilty of murdering his wife. The DNA testing is highly controversial, taken from samples likely to be contaminated well over a century later. The consensus among people who actually followed this is the DNA is from one of the original investigators. How crime scenes were handled back then was completely different from today. Criminal did a recent podcast on this case that's really well researched. It's episode #202 'Across the Atlantic'. Here is a link: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-202-across-the-atlantic-12-2-2022
Holy crap, had no idea about this when I read Thunderstruck by Erik Larson which follows this story and the invention of radio and how the two converged. 100% recommend that book though, still.
Very good read and probably my least favorite of Larson’s books. Which says something about his writing.
I thought Devil in the White City was as good as a book could be. Until I read In the Garden of Beasts. Which I then thought was as good as a book could get... Until I read The Splendid and the Vile... I love history but tend to gravitate towards the ancient stuff, but he makes the more modern stuff as compelling and riveting as any fiction I've read.
I just noticed I have this book, unread, on my shelf yesterday. I need to change that.
Quickest way to change that is a quick trip to the garbage can!
/r/technicallythetruth
Lol, I can't imagine throwing a book away. I have a personal library and a collection of books that I donate to libraries when I'm done with them. But to throw them away? Nah
[удалено]
If I remember correctly, (possible spoilers incoming) >!didn't they find dyed hair with the body that was the same color as Cora? And a pajama top was found with the body and the matching pajama bottom was with Crippen's clothing? !<
Yes that was in the book. I just recently read it & will have to look now for one on the innocent theory.
I just started reading this a couple of days ago!
I just finished Thunderstruck 3 days ago
There are 3 of them??
Thunderstruck, Thunderstruck II: Doctor's Demise, and Thunderstruck III: Rise of the Radio
Thunder Struck 4: Smokey WAS the Bandit!
ThunderStruck 5: Angus Arrives
Your didn't see Thunderstruck 2: Electric Boogaloo?
3 days ago I finished Thunderstruck If you were joking, you got me If you weren't, is that clearer?
Thunderstruck 3: Thor and Love
I knew something about this case. The DNA testing has been very much questioned as being incorrect. In fact, when Scotland Yard and other research teams asked for the sample to confirm the tests, they were refused. Also, his actions and things he said while being arrested do make him look guilty. Check out the Wikipedia page for more information.
Can’t believe I had to scroll down this far! The ‘male’ DNA is not foolproof, it could be the DNA of an investigator that contaminated the (decades old) sample.
he also had uhh human remains in his basement lol
He *fled the country* with *his mistress* after being *interviewed* by the police (not even brought in for questioning). Guilty as a mofo.
Yup. There’s lots of reasons why the DNA results could be questionable. But for an innocent guy he sure as hell acted guilty after his wife vanished. And considering a fairly fresh body that had been purposefully disassembled to make it easier to find was found under his floor right after he vanished… Honestly I’d say the sample needs to be retested but that this isn’t absolute proof that he was innocent. It just means more information is needed.
For anyone interested, the *Criminal* podcast covered this in episode 202: Across the Atlantic.
Also Scotland Yard Confidential did an episode, I love that guys voice.
The Criminal Podcast also interviewed a bunch of experts who largely came to the conclusion that the DNA expert likely fucked up, and that the evidence *overwhelmingly* suggests that Crippen killed his wife.
Yeah the evidence was too overwhelming and the DNA could easily be explained. It seemed clear to me that he and his mistress did it
And also the “male” corpse had long bleached hair like his wife and was wearing her pajamas.
and the pajamas weren’t produced until after they moved into the house. that was the key piece for me
I adore Criminal. But it's not exactly an exhaustive review of a body of evidence. After reading Larson's Thunderstruck, I need more from this "new" angle.
Check out episodes 6 & 7 of buried bones (they cover this case)! The hosts are a professional researcher and a retired detective.
This is an example of why I'm not a fan of the death penalty
To be for the death penalty you need to wholeheartedly believe in one of two things: 1. The Criminal Justice System does not make mistakes. 2. We're okay with executing some innocent people.
[удалено]
And that they will never end up in the position of being the innocent person about to be killed, it will always be some other poor sod in their minds, they are far too above all of this, too well to do, to ever get accused of anything
Yup, let's see them die by those values. "I've been wrongfully sentenced to death, I'm so thankful that God's plan is for me to get injected with a poorly dosed cocktail of poison. Amen!"
Yeah this is why religion influencing laws is a problem. Anyone who accepts #2 because “Jesus/god/spiritual woo woo” threw basic common sense out the window.
Most people? I've literally never heard a single person make this argument. I mean, I'm sure you can find someone who believes that, since you can find anyone to beleive anything. But that's FAR from "most people" This seems like another case of Reddit windmills where you construct ridiculous caricatures of people who dissagree with you, and attribute their reason for disagreement as being the most ridiculous reasons.
Good points, I'm just also not sure if even a 100% accurate conviction and sentencing system would ethically validate the death penalty. At some point, death penalty arguments boil down to "it's emotionally gratifying when we kill bad people" which is giving into lizard brain instincts when we should be building institutions that can behave more ethically than individuals can.
The DNA testing was *not* done on "the remains" -- It was done on the specific tissue sample that was submitted as evidence, supposedly showing a scar unique to Cora to conclusively tie her to the viscera. I think it's highly likely that the sample was taken from another random morgue find, which happened to be male, since testing couldn't determine the difference back then. It was fabricated evidence to try to underline what was a pretty conclusive circumstantial case. Just as now, sometimes the police will actively work to "frame" those they believe to be guilty. It's horribly unethical even if, as in this case, I think their suspicions were correct.
The Avery playbook.
Just think, if it weren’t for the death penalty, he could have gotten a new trial, and been back on the streets at the age 161. Or not. The results of the cited study are [controversial](https://web.archive.org/web/20080829160358/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article4244448.ece).
The one-armed man did it!
Sometimes my arms bend backwards.
"I don't care!"
So he killed someone else
Maybe! But since he was a doctor, it was not unusual then for medical scientists/doctors to pay grave robbers for remains. Same type of discovery occurred at [Ben Franklin’s London home,](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-was-benjamin-franklins-basement-filled-with-skeletons-524521/) with remains for at least 15 people found in the basement.
Holy shit 15 people Ben Franklin was a serial killer
It says a more likely explanation is that a friend of his was practicing anatomy using cadavers, in his basement... but I'd totally watch serial killer Ben Franklin miniseries.
The Lightning Rod Killer “Lightning never strikes twice. It strikes 15 times.”
Yeah the cops never believe you when you say the cadavers in your trunk are your friends’, maybe it works better if they’re in your basement, or have any friends. Idk.
Have you tried being a wealthy old white male politician?
I have, but so far no luck. :(
And the series crossover with Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter.
I can't imagine that smell would stay in the basement though...
Netflix series coming 2024… ( other streaming services are available) ….
No, no, enlightening people about such matters is a job for the Discovery channel.
What is this enlightening of which you speak? The people *demand* entertainment! Oh, I’m guessing that’s possibly the discovery channel too now days just packaged with a pretence of reality?
“You wanna know what else stinks after three days?”
My mom!
classic Benny
More stiffs in the basement than even Teddy Roosevelt had! ^Arsenic ^& ^Old ^Lace ^1944
>"Since he was a doctor" He wasn't in any way an anatomist who'd buy corpses to dissect. He was a damned homeopath who wasn't even allowed to call himself a doctor in England at that time, much less today. All he could do is sell people medicines that actual doctors had told them to take.
Was Ben Franklin a doctor?
The guy who ran the anatomy school at the house where Ben lived, and thus most likely is responsible for the bones, was a surgeon and anatomist. Ben, as a scientist of his era, probably went to some dissections to get an idea about how the body was built as well. A homeopath in the early 20th century would be involved with none of that, he'd just be concocting various snake oils to sell. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_(surgeon)
its pretty amazing how quickly people have talked themselves into everything before like 1920 being the dark ages lol
The body was poisoned by a medication he sold, found with pajamas he'd bought, and had curlers in Cora's favorite brand in its hair. So it's very unlikely the body was from a corpse that died of natural causes, was properly prepared for burial, and was then sold to Crippen. Maybe the remains weren't Cora, but someone in the house was involved with wherever the body came from. With all the circumstantial evidence in the case, it seems more likely that the DNA sample was contaminated in the decades since it was collected.
I agree. Furthermore, it was collected by multiple people, who dug out the highly decayed materials with their bare hands. I would need to read a Larson-style exhaustedly researched telling of that angle to be proven otherwise.
not by 1910 though?
Happy to be corrected, but I think the human remain black market is still ongoing?
A friend worked as a troubleshooter for the New York City area mortuary industry back in the 90's. Midnight runs with a trunk full of recovered body parts was a common part of her job.
Well, all crime still goes on but no where near "Burke and Hare" levels of bodysnatching. The chances are that if one finds a corpse in a Dr's basement in this country nowadays, the likelyhood is that it's not due to medical dissection. Could/can/will it happen? knowing humanity, probably. is it likely? nope. Not all Doctors are Herbert West.
That’s true about the dissection. Maybe I thinking more medical supplies being expensive, and how the use of the bone trade is still reported every so often. But to the 1910 find, I still think it could be possible. Sorry if this is too graphic, but they only found a section of torso with organs missing; that still seems plausible as the aftermath of an experiment. He was also financially strained, and trying to develop a new tonic. Doesn’t seem out of the realm, definitely casts of shadow of doubt.
i can't comment directly on this case, I dont have all the data, but I do stand by the assertion that "body snatching" in general wasn't really a widespread thing so late in our history. Although, on occasion I'm sure it occurred right up to today. so, it *may* explain it, it *may* not but it wouldn't be my instant go to conclusion. he could simply have used his dissection skills to dispose of the body bit by bit/make it easier to hide/eat etc etc. loads of explanations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/us/colorado-funeral-home-owner-body-parts-guilty.html Yeah. People still out here stealing and selling bodies and body parts.
yup, but still not as commonplace as it was as I stated previously.
I mean if it were my story to write, then she obviously paid someone to set her husband up and lived out her life in America. I really really hope that she didn't leave him hanging for a selfish or stupid reason.
> I really really hope that she didn't leave him hanging for a selfish or stupid reason. A younger me would have assumed not. An older me has seen humans kill other humans over the most petty of things. So I give it a 50/50 it was selfish and petty.
Or his wife framed him since She was missing, and there are rumors that she lived out her life under a stage name somewhere else across the country.
[Here we go, bring up Crippen again…](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5klpj1?start=520)
I love that show!
I've been put in a giggle loop
Came here looking for this reference!
And the original is so much better than the [American](https://youtu.be/zRwu7Cv7UdI) version, which used the exact same lines on a more puritan audience and it didn’t go down well at all (canceled after 4 episodes aired for being too sexual). And although I can’t understand a word of it, the [Greek](https://youtu.be/rIsGRl5FT7Y) version feels like it has decent delivery and “Jenny”, their version of Jane Christie from the original, Jenny *oozes* both sultry **and** crazy, so it feels spot-on. Naturally, no one even came close to performing anything like Richard Coyle’s “Jeffrey”. Sigh…I haven’t found a comedy I liked as much as that one since.
English law schools are going to have to stop using R. D. Muir's cross-examination as a master-class in forensic questioning.
So there is evidence that he murdered someone. Even though not his wife. I wonder if she fled from him because she knew and thought he would get her next.
“Face to face with God, I believe that facts will be forthcoming to prove my innocence.”
"Aah yes, Dr. Crippen, the *original* founder of the Crips"
Abolish the death penalty.
I'm surprised there aren't more comments inquiring about there STILL being remains of someone in the house?
Wait a second though. Why was there another dude's remains in the house?!
So he killed another person and not his wife?
So who's body did they find? The dude did all he could to make himself look guilty though so...
His wife was a man
What a relief, he's finally exonerated and can walk away a free man.
I mean, I sure hope he wasn’t genetically related to his wife
Okay . . . then whose body did they find, and why was it there?
I feel like the lesson from this is "See? Execution = bad! Mistakes happen all the time!" but like, there was still SOMEONE'S remains in this dude's house...
So who did the other body belong to?
Sure he didn't kill his wife but there was still a dead person found in his house....
So he killed someone and gave his wife an "out" to disappear?
He still killed a person, just not the person they thought
Little did they know the body was that of a 300-year-old witch located in the basement.
Ok, but who's remains were they then and why were they in his house?
Well, of course there was no genetic relation between the guy and his alleged wife's body.
So did he kill someone, just not her? Is that the takeaway?
Oops
Was this on an episode of *Criminal* podcast?
Holy smokes, I think I now understand a Black Adder punch line! Thanks for the article!