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Crímenes y atracos
31 de enero de 1910 · Hilldrop Crescent, Londres
Asesinato y violenciaEstado: Resuelto
El expediente detallado solo está disponible en inglés.
Imagen: Threedots dead at en.wikipedia · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
1stsuspect arrested with the help of wireless telegraphy
Hawley Harvey Crippen, born in Michigan in 1862, was a homeopathic doctor and a seller of patent medicines. In 1897 he moved with his second wife Cora, who performed as a singer under the name Belle Elmore, to London, where his American qualifications were not sufficient to practise as a doctor. From 1905 the couple lived in Hilldrop Crescent in Holloway. The marriage was unhappy; Crippen was having an affair with his typist Ethel Le Neve.
After a dinner party on 31 January 1910 Cora was not seen again. Crippen told her friends from the music hall that she had travelled to America and died there of an illness; Le Neve moved in with him and wore Cora's jewellery. The friends were suspicious and went to Scotland Yard. After a first interview on 8 July the pair fled to Antwerp, where they boarded the Montrose for Canada as 'Mr Robinson and son', Le Neve disguised as a boy.
During the fourth search, on 13 July, Inspector Walter Dew found under the brick floor of the cellar a torso without head, limbs or bones. The poison hyoscine was detected in it, and the young pathologist Bernard Spilsbury identified a piece of skin as the scar of an operation Cora had undergone. Meanwhile Captain Henry Kendall of the Montrose signalled on 22 July that he believed he had the wanted passengers on board. Dew crossed in the faster Laurentic and boarded on 31 July in the St Lawrence, disguised as a pilot.
The trial at the Old Bailey in October 1910 lasted five days; the jury needed 27 minutes to find Crippen guilty. He was hanged in Pentonville prison on 23 November. Le Neve was acquitted of being an accessory. The case, followed step by step by the newspapers while the suspects knew nothing, showed what radio could mean for detection. In 2007 American researchers reported on the basis of DNA that the remains were not Cora's; that conclusion is disputed.