Criminal - Across the Atlantic

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

In February of 1910, members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London received a strange letter from their treasurer – a singer who went by the name Belle Elmore. It said that she suddenly had to travel to the United States, and that she was resigning from her position. Several weeks later, at the Music Hall Ladies Guild fundraising ball, Belle's husband arrived with a date. And she was wearing Belle's brooch. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. In July of 1910, Scotland Yard asked the public for help finding two people,

a man and a woman traveling together. The man was described as, quote, an American doctor, age 50, height 5 feet 3 inches, long sandy mustache, false teeth, The woman was described as good-looking, medium build, pleasant appearance, quiet, subdued manner, looks intently when in conversation. People reported seeing the wanted couple all over Europe. Someone said they'd seen the man wearing a straw hat in the south of France.

Men and women were mistakenly arrested in Wales and in Chicago. Five months earlier, a woman had gone missing. She was a singer performing under the name Belle Elmore, and was very active in a group called the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London. She was the group's treasurer. Her friends in the Ladies Guild had received a letter, dated February 2, 1910. It read, Dear friends, please forgive me a hasty letter and any inconvenience I may cause you, but I have just had news of the illness of a near relative,

and at only a few hours' notice, I'm obliged to go to America. Accept this as a formal letter resigning from the Music Hall Ladies Guild, I hope some months later to be with you again, and ask my good friends and pals to accept my sincere and loving wishes for their own personal welfare. Believe me, yours faithfully, Belle Elmore. They find it really peculiar that she would just go off without telling them, but they have no reason at first to disbelieve the story.

But then as the story starts to shift, then they become suspicious. One of the women asked Belle's husband, Holly Harvey Crippen, for an address where they could write to her in America. And he told them that she was somewhere in the hills of California. He said they could give their letters to him, and he would forward them along to her. Several weeks later, at the annual Music Hall Ladies Guild fundraising ball, the women were startled to see Belle's husband show up, with a date, his secretary. Her name was Ethel Leneve. And Ethel is wearing this beautiful dress, and on the dress is a brooch.

And all Belle's friends are there. They're at the same table with Ethel and Crippen, and they immediately recognise that the brooch is Bell's, and they're thinking, you know, what's going on here? What's he doing at the ball with his secretary? And what is she doing wearing Bell's brooch? I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. What does Crippen tell Bell's friends when they start getting concerned about what's happened to Bell?

He starts telling different stories. So almost from the off, he initially says that she's gone away because a close relative is very ill. And then he starts telling people that she's gone to help sort out the estate of his own mother, who has died, but his own mother had died quite a long time ago, so that doesn't really explain the urgency. We're hearing this story from journalist and author David James Smith. And then he starts telling people that Belle has become ill, that he's heard from that she's become ill while she's in the States. And then he says she's got pneumonia, and then he tells people that, in fact, she's died.

When Bell's friends asked how she died, he told them that she'd gotten sick on her way to the United States and died in Los Angeles. When they asked where in the U.S. to send a letter of sympathy, Holly Crippen said that wasn't necessary. Someone asked about ordering a wreath for her grave, and he said there would be no grave, that Belle had been cremated. And then her friends started asking more questions.

They asked for the name of the ship she'd traveled on to get to the United States in the first place. He gave them a name, and they contacted the U.S. Embassy. They studied the passenger list, looking for their friend's name, but didn't find it. Then they got help searching the passenger lists for other ships, and she wasn't on those either. You know, it's like this kind of network of people,

and they're all thinking the same thing, that something isn't right. Belle Elmore and Holly Crippen had been married for nearly 20 years. They met in New York. Now, she came from quite a humble background. Her father was Polish. Her real name was Kunigunde Makomotsky, and

she was going by the name then of Cora Turner, but later we come to know of her as Belle Elmore, which was the stage name she took in London. So it wasn't long after she and Crippen started going about together, as people would say, that then Crippen married her in September 1892. He worked as a homeopathic doctor, as one journalist later described it. He worked in that, quote, large industry that lies on the borderland between genuine healing and the commercial exploitation of the modern human passion for swallowing medicine. He traveled all the time for work.

He was on the East Coast, he was on the West Coast, he was in Philadelphia, he was in New York, he was in Los Angeles, and he seems to have been applying his trade in a whole different set of organisations. But he formed a particular association with a company called Munyon's Homeopathic Remedy Company, and it was that company that sent him to London

to set up a London office. He and Bell moved from the United States to London to set up a London office. He and Belle moved from the United States to London, where Belle made a lot of friends, especially in the music hall scene. She was said to be outgoing, with interesting clothes. Two of the bedrooms in their home were reportedly dedicated dressing rooms, where she stored her dresses, furs, and hats.

She seemed to have a very vivacious and extravagant personality. A woman, a writer, who met her in London, a woman called Adeline Harrison, described her in this fantastic way. She said she was a brilliant, chattering bird of gorgeous plumage. She was a big personality. Holly Crippen was said to be very supportive of her career. He paid for her singing lessons and was listed as her manager on her playbills. We do know that people who knew them thought of them as being very happy and content together. And I think probably if you saw them together, this man's quite a quiet, sort of small character. You might have thought that he was kind of a lucky man, you know, to have found himself such a fascinating wife.

About eight years into their marriage, he traveled to Philadelphia for work. Belle stayed home. One night, she was invited to a dinner party. And there at the table is this chap who comes from Chicago, and his name is Bruce Miller. And he also is a music hall performer. And he's traveled over from Chicago to London on his way to the 1900 Paris exposition where he's going to perform he is a one-man band performer and I don't know if you know listeners will be familiar with what that might look like but it might be that he had a perhaps a drum on his back

and when he you know moved his arms that the drum would clatter and he would have perhaps a mouth organ. Anyway, so it appears that Belle and this chap Bruce Miller started seeing each other while Cripping obviously is away. He wrote her letters signed Love and Kisses to Brown Eyes and later said they kept track of meaningful dates by collecting champagne corks. In 1901, they exchanged photographs of each other. Bell reportedly kept her photo of Bruce on the piano. Then, in 1904, Bruce Miller left London and returned to the United States. And it

was around that time that Holly Crippen reportedly began having an affair of his own with his secretary, Ethel Leneve. They used to go for suppers at this restaurant in London's main shopping street, it's called Oxford Street, and tucked away there is this restaurant, an's main shopping street. It's called Oxford Street. And tucked away there is this restaurant, an Italian restaurant called Frescati's, at the time. And apparently they used to go there for the evening and listen to the live music

and obviously sit in the corner gazing at each other. And they must have been falling in love. I think that's quite clear. They kept seeing each other for years. In January of 1910, Ethel has a party and tells her friends at the party that she's become engaged. Crippen and Bell are married, but she tells people that she's become engaged to Crippen. And more than one person gives evidence to that effect. It's really strange. And she has a ring. She's wearing it. That was at Ethel's birthday party, her 27th.

And about two weeks later, on January 31st, Holly Crippen hosted a dinner with Bell for some friends from the Music Hall Ladies Guild, a couple named Clara and Paul. Crippen and Bell by this time had set up home in North London at a place called Hill Drop Crescent number 39. It's kind of quite a big house. They're renting it,

but it's quite a grand place. It's on four floors and Crippen's invited and they turn up. They have a three course meal. They have some soup. They have a roast beef and then some desserts. they've had a few drinks

and then they play a round or two of whist and then Paul, the guest, he starts to feel ill. So Crippen goes outside to find a taxi. You obviously couldn't call taxis in those days, they're all horse-drawn and it's now about half one in the morning and Crippen and Bell stand on the doorstep waving Paul and Clara goodbye and that is the last time that anyone ever sees Bell alive. We'll be right back. Please, Series Essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives,

ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions.

What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. When Belle Elmore's friends realized she was missing and weren't sure they believed the explanations her husband was offering,

they went to Scotland Yard. Initially, the police didn't investigate. According to David James Smith, Belle's friends had to make a few visits to Scotland Yard and even hire a private investigator before they got the police to help. So Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. Inspector Dew waited eight days before visiting the Crippins' house.

When he did go to the house, at 10 a.m. on July 8th, Ethel Leneve came to the door. Inspector Dew and his sergeant can see that she's, you know, quite discombobulated by their appearance. And Inspector Dew recognises her. He's been told about her by the Ladies Guild and about their suspicions of her, how he knows who she is.

And she explains that Crippen, fact is at work so they all get on the bus I mean this is you know 1910 so uh the police aren't going around in in cars with lights flashing they they they go on the bus with Ethel down to the center of London and uh they go to see Crippen who Inspector Dew finds very calm, very reassuring. And he says, you know, kind of look here, man to man. My wife has left me. I think she's gone off with this one man band performer from Chicago, Bruce Miller,

who I think she was having an affair with. And I was so embarrassed, I didn't want to say that. So I gave this cover story. And of course, to Inspector Inspector Dew that sounds very plausible so he's taking Crippen's statement and he gets to lunchtime and so they all stop and go for lunch and they go back to the office and continue taking the statement and then Crippen and Ethel go up with the police back up to 39 Hill Drop Prison. The police have a very cursory look around, nothing suspicious, nothing to see here,

and they go away. Inspector Dew decided to go back to the house a few days later to ask some more questions. But by then, Ethel and Eve and Holly Crippen were gone. So, clearly that was suspicious, and that then, you know, raised the alarm and that's what made them start searching the house. They poke around a bit at some of the flooring

but they don't find anything. On the second day they go back and they get a poker and they're down in the, there's a kind of coal cellar under there so you have this house with steps leading up to the front door and underneath the steps is part of the house, is this coal cellar under these. So you have this house with steps leading up to the front door and underneath the steps is part of the house, is this coal cellar. So they're poking around in the coal cellar with this poker and some of the tiles are loose.

So they lift them up and this terrible smell comes flooding out from underneath. As Inspector Du put it, after digging down to a depth of about four spadefuls, I came across what appeared to be human remains. And they're kind of mixed in with some fragments of clothing, in fact, pieces of a pyjama top, I think maybe a white vest as well,

and some tufts of hair in Heinz hair curlers. Much of the body was missing, and the remains they found were badly decomposed. One of the assistant commissioners, one of the senior officers at Scotland Yard, comes up with some cigars for the officers to smoke to to smoke to uh to disguise the terrible smell that they're all suffering and then somebody sends one of the constables out to a local shop to buy some bleach so he comes back with this uh kind of bleach and they slosh it around you know any modern police will throw up their arms in horror at this you know conduct things were different then. So now they've

got these remains and they don't know who they are, but obviously they strongly suspect that they're Bell. And so now the question is, where is Crippen and where is Ethel Deneve? This is now a major, major news story. So, you know, the press were absolutely in full flight at this time. So newspapers were very popular. They were very, very widely read. They were making a lot of money. They had lots of reporters. And, you know, they cover this story hugely.

You know, it's the kind of front-page story. Many newspapers published Inspector Dew's descriptions of Ethel Leneve and Holly Crippen. And David James Smith says the more people read about the details of the investigation, the more critical they became of Scotland Yard. People start to realise that the police have kind of messed up, that they had the suspects there, went for lunch with them and somehow let them go. And I think that even in Parliament,

the MPs were complaining about Inspector Dew's conduct. So Dew really, you know, feels the pressure now to compensate, to make up for what he's done. Inspector Dew did everything he could to find them. Police were searching every ship departing from England and France. Because by now the hullabaloo, the hue and cry has gone up. You know, where's Crippen?

Where's Ethel the Neve? And the police are looking everywhere and they're letting all the boats know. So the officers have gone on board and circulated this kind of wanted poster that they'd made. And then, on July 22nd, Inspector Dew received a telegram from the captain of a ship, the SS Montrose, that was in the middle of the ocean on its way to Quebec.

The captain's name was Henry Kendall. So he's aware of this couple, and he sees on this boat this apparent father and son walking across the deck, and he notices the son squeeze the hand of the father, and he thinks, well, that's a bit strange. So he starts paying attention to them. Captain Kendall learned that the father and son were registered under the names

John Philo Robinson and John George Robinson. He does all sorts of things. that the father and son were registered under the names john philo robinson and john george robinson he does all sorts of things he engages them in conversation i think he tries to you know catch them out by saying something clever but i think maybe the chat mentions that he works in medicine which will see you know confirms to kendall that you, he's probably on the right track. He looks at their picture in the newspaper and he sort of draws a moustache to see if it's the same people. And I think they cut her hair and have to stuff some tissue in the hat to make it fit her. And they have to, you know, pin up the trousers

and everything looks a bit hibbity-pibbity. But he just becomes convinced that it is them. Captain Kendall's message to Inspector Dew said, quote, shaved off, growing beard, accomplice, dressed as a boy, voice, manner, and build, undoubtedly a girl. At the time, wireless telegrams were sometimes called Marconigrams,

named after the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. As the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company described it, each ship has a little cabin wherein two young men take turns waiting and watching for any word that may come rushing to them from unseen sources beyond the horizon. It was still a relatively new technology

when Captain Kendall sent his telegram to Inspector Dew. Inspector Dew is convinced that this is reliable information. But they're halfway to, the ship's heading for Quebec, so they're halfway to Canada by now. So what's he going to do? So he looks at the timetable for other departures and he discovers that there's a ship about to leave Liverpool called the Laurentic, and that is going to travel faster,

and it will actually reach Quebec just ahead of the Montrose. So he gets on that ship and sets off, you know, double speed to overtake and apprehend the suspects. Inspector Du boarded the Laurentic on July 23rd. The earlier arrival time would allow him a day to prepare before Holly Crippen and Ethel Leneve arrived, disguised as father and son. He sent a message to Captain Kendall,

asking the captain not to tell anyone about the plan. Captain Kendall replied, What the devil do you think I've been doing? Inspector Dew tried to keep his trip a secret, booking his travel under a fake name. But the press found out, and reporters booked their own trips to chase after him. You know, so they're booking places on the same boat as him, and they're all, you know, making their way to Canada too. Holly Crippen and Ethel Leneve, along with the rest of the passengers of the SS Montrose,

had no idea that newspapers around the world were writing about them, describing Inspector Dew's investigation and his plans to intercept the ship. Inspector Dew did make it to Canada, and as the SS Montrose approached the port, he got in a small boat, disguised as a captain, and boarded the ship. He goes into Captain Kendall's cabin, and then Captain Kendall calls Crippen to his cabin and Crippen comes into the room and Inspector Dew's there and he says, good morning, Dr Crippen.

And so obviously Crippen immediately realised that, you know, the game's up. And so he says, you know, something like, I'm not sorry about this as the anxiety has been too much. We'll be right back. Are you looking to eat healthier but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories? You don't need to wait for the new year to start fresh. New year, new me. How about same year, new me?

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Then he went downstairs to arrest Ethel and Eve. He opened the cabin door to find her wearing her young man's disguise and reading a novel. He later said that when he told her why he was there, she fainted. The police found jewelry sewn into Holly Crippen's clothes, including two of Belle's brooches. On August 1st, the Manchester Evening News reported the, quote, end of the Great Ocean chase. Holly Crippen was charged with willful murder and Ethel and Eve with being an accessory after the fact. While the couple stood side-by-side in court

at their first public hearing in London, a photographer secretly took a picture of them with a camera hidden inside of his hat. Holly Crippen's trial began a month later. It's only Crippen on trial at this stage, so Crippen and Ethel initially do stand trial together. Then the authorities start to worry that there might be sympathy from the jury for Ethel. And if there's sympathy for her, then that might transfer itself to Crippen.

They might not be able to get a conviction. So they're obviously not that confident of their case. So they decide to separate out the trials and Ethel is tried later. And Crippen's trial trial it doesn't last very long by modern standards modern trials can go on for weeks but this one lasts for six days the trial was quite an extraordinary spectacle i mean again you know because of the public interest that it aroused so on the first day of the trial uh the old bailey where it was held is you know it's probably the most famous court in the world perhaps

but then it was quite new it was only opened I think in 1907 this is 1910 and Old Bailey is in fact the street outside the court and the street is absolutely there are photographs and they show that the street is teeming with people people come to attend the first day of this trial in fact so much so great is the public interest that the authorities have issued tickets. So they

have issued red tickets for the morning session and blue tickets for the afternoon session. So it's a huge event in the public consciousness at the time, you know, with great in-depth reporting. Holly Crippen's defense attorney asked the jury not to be influenced by what they read in the newspapers. He told the jury that Crippen's friends and co-workers believed that he couldn't have killed his wife. They described him as kind-hearted, amiable, and good-tempered. The defense also suggested that whatever human remains had been found in the cellar could have been there before the Crippens even moved in.

When Holly Crippen testified, he said that when his wife went missing, he thought that she had just packed up and left him. When the prosecutor asked, where did you think your wife had gone? Crippen said, she was always talking about Bruce Miller, and I suppose she had gone to America.

Bruce Miller, the one-man band from Chicago, was brought from the United States to testify. You know, it must have been quite uncomfortable for him in court because he's questioned about his relationship with Bell, but he denies that anything sexual ever occurred between them, and obviously he's allowed to go home. But the important thing is that his evidence testifies to the fact that Bell isn't still alive and gone off to Chicago to be with him, as Crippin had claimed. Inspector Dew also testified. He told the jury that he'd been asked by Bell's friends to investigate. He described the process of finding the remains in the cellar.

A series of experts testified about examining those remains. One expert testified that he'd found traces of a poison called hyacine. He described it as a powerful narcotic that could cause death in less than 12 hours. A local chemist testified that Crippen had ordered hyacine a few weeks before his wife disappeared. He said that Crippen often bought drugs from him, including cocaine and mercury. Crippen testified that hyacine was not uncommon in homeopathic treatments in the United States. The prosecution spent a lot of time trying to prove that the remains in the cellar were actually the remains of Belle Elmore. Three experts, including a pathologist named Bernard Spilsbury, testified that they had identified a scar consistent with an operation that Bell had had years ago.

An expert for the defence argued that what they were presenting was not a scar at all. The prosecution introduced another piece of evidence, the fragments of pyjamas that had been found with the remains. The pyjamas have a particular label, and it's there from this department store called Jones Brothers on the Holloway Road in North London Not far from Crippen's home and it's a shop that both Crippen and Bell used to shop at And the material that the pyjamas are made from had only become available in the shop in 1908 and there is receipt evidence of bell

having bought pajamas there in 1909 so that pretty much uh you know shores up that bit of the evidence it wasn't it the remains weren't there when they moved into the home or anything like that they were clearly you know put there very recently and finally of course you had the evidence of these heinz curlers which people testify bell used use, and the hair shows signs of bleaching. We know that Belle used to bleach her hair. So all in all, the case is, you know, there isn't a complete body, but the evidence is kind of overwhelming that Crippen is responsible. The jury deliberated for 27 minutes. And on October 22nd, Holly Crippen was found guilty of willful murder.

He was sentenced to death by hanging. Ethel Leneve's trial started a few days after Crippen's ended. In her defense, Ethel Leneve's lawyer said she'd had the supreme misfortune to have come across one of the most dangerous and remarkable men who have lived in this century, a man to whom, in the whole history of the psychology of crime,

a high place must be given as a compelling and masterful personality. And he defended her as if she was some, you know, Dick Pendian, heroine, you know, corrupted and mistreated by this evil doctor. In their case against her, prosecutors introduced Ethel Leneve's former landlady.

The landlady wasn't sure about exact dates, but she testified that in late January, or early February of 1910, around the same time of Belle Elmore's disappearance, Ethel Leneve had come home one night extremely upset. The landlady said, her whole body was trembling. I saw that she was in a terrible state and asked her to tell me what was the matter. She did not speak. The landlady testified that in the morning, Ethel Leneve was crying and talking about Belle Elmore.

She said, When I see them go away together, it makes me realize my position, what she is and what I am. As one paper presented it, the question before the jury was, did Ethel and Eve know when she assisted Crippen's flight that he had murdered his wife? The jury deliberated for 18 minutes and came back with a not guilty verdict. I found that really fascinating because it was quite clear that if they'd chosen to,

the Crown could have put forward a case that would have made her look very guilty. Winston Churchill, who was then the Home Secretary, gave her permission to visit Crippen in prison. She had a miniature locket made to hold a photo of him. He appealed his conviction, and on November 5, 1910, a panel of three judges rejected his appeal. His lawyer sought a royal pardon, circulating a petition for people to sign, based on the argument that there was no way to know the identity of the remains in the cellar. But it didn't work. A farewell message

signed by Crippen was published in a newspaper on November 20, 1910. It read, I desire to make a last appeal to the world, not to think the worst of me. I beg them to remember

that I have been condemned on inconclusive evidence. I still maintain that I was wrongly convicted and my belief that facts will yet be forthcoming to prove my innocence. Three days later, he was hanged. Hello? Hello, this is Phoebe calling.

Phoebe Judge. Phoebe Judge, how are you? I'm fine. This is forensic and clinical toxicologist John Trestrail. Do you remember when you first heard the name Crippen? Oh, boy. Crippen. I've been studying this case for 40 years,

so a long time ago. And the reason that I was interested in it was because this is the second most famous murder case in England after Jack the Ripper. Around 2008, John Trestrail learned that some of the forensic evidence from Holly Crippen's trial was saved on slides in the Royal London Hospital archives. And we contacted them and said, would you be willing to loan us one of the slides from the grave?

And this slide would have been used as evidence in Crippen's trial in 1910. And they did. He wondered if anyone had applied DNA analysis to those slides and started investigating whether it would be possible to test them now and compare them to genetic material from a relative of Bell Elmore. What if we could find a descendant coming down that line that was carrying the mitochondrial DNA? Then we could compare the exemplars, it would be known, with the remains that were discovered

in the coal cellar at Hill Drop Crescent in London from the crime. He partnered with a genealogist and a forensic scientist. They identified three relatives. And it was a shock to me that it was not a match. In their 2010 report, published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, John Trestrail and his colleagues wrote, quote, So in other words, the evidence used to convict Holly Crippen in that trial, which led to his execution by hanging, was invalid. So what does that mean? What it means is

that Crippen is no longer proven guilty. Now, he may be guilty. He may have killed his wife and she's somewhere else, but the evidence, the remains found in that grave were not her. They also did another DNA test on the sample to determine the sex of the person it came from.

And it turned out that the tissue in that slide is male. What about people who say that the samples, you know, have to be contaminated? Or, you know, the police potentially brought bleach to the cellar. You know, why would we think that 100 years later we'd be able to actually get real conclusive data from something like this? Well, I can tell you that they've extracted DNA from mammoths and from Neanderthals. So, yeah, millions of years can go by

and the DNA still exists. The forensic scientist who he worked with told the BBC, quote, if I had any doubts whatsoever, I would never have come out with it. And so far, the British refuse to accept the results. They say either, number one, it's invalid, which we've proved it is not invalid. You are, they also say, well, this case is 100 years old. Who cares? And I said, I'll tell you who cares.

Those people who carry the name Crippen, they've been living with this cloud over their head for 100 years. Justice does not have a time limit. If you can no longer prove that Holly Crippen murdered his wife because those are her remains, you have to deal with that. One genealogist responding to the findings has said that the genealogical work done to find relatives of Belle Elmore and test their DNA is problematic.

Belle didn't have a birth certificate. She went by a lot of names. David James Smith believes that whatever male DNA was found on the slide most likely belonged to the pathologist who studied the sample and testified about it in court in 1910. Because in those days, people didn't bother wearing gloves or, you know, taking any care not to contaminate samples. So you disagree with that finding?

Yeah, I disagree very strongly with it because there's such powerful evidence that that was Bell in the cellars. Remember the evidence of the trial? It's the, you know, the hyacinth that Crippen himself had bought was found in the remains. There was the you know, the higher scene that Crippen himself had bought was found in the remains. There was the Heinz curler, the bleached hair that all, you know, associates with

Belle. And then, you know, most powerfully, the pyjama fragments that you know, very particularly connect to the purchase of the pyjamas of Jones Brothers by Belle herself and give the timing of 1909.

So the idea that those remains really were anyone else but Belle, I just think is fanciful and doesn't bear any proper scrutiny. What happened to Ethel? After Crippen had been hanged, people, she was the subject of, you know, fascination. People wondered where she'd gone. She'd kind of disappeared from view. She went to Canada, but she hadn't been there long. She came back.

She took Crippen's name, Harvey, that was his middle name, Hawley Harvey Crippen, and she called herself Ethel Harvey and she rented a flat in South London in an area called Ballam and then around 1915 she met and married a man called Smith. They had two children and Ethel gave her husband a fob watch to wear and he always wore it and what he didn't know was that it was Crippen's fob watch. Her husband never knew that she was Ethel Laneeb. As far as he knew she was Ethel Harvey, this anonymous person. He didn't realise that she'd been involved in the sensational crime of the century. And neither did her two children.

She never told them. She died in 1967. And only one or two members of her own extended family ever knew who she was. In 1920, the Crippen case was featured as part of a series of books called Notable Trials. Each book summarizes famous English cases, including the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. It begins, Most of the interest and part of the terror of great crime are due not to what is abnormal, but to what is normal in it. What we have in common with the criminal is what makes us view with so lively an interest a fellow being who has wandered into these tragic and fatal fields. The author described Holly Crippen as an unremarkable little man, courteous, hospitable.

Belle Elmore is described in dramatically harsh terms, untalented. Quote, robust an animal, loud, aggressive, seems to exhaust the atmosphere, and is undoubtedly exhausting to live with. You know, her character and personality were completely destroyed, not just by Crippen in court in his evidence, but by the way that she was caricatured. So you have this mild-mannered little man, a downtrodden husband, this overbearing, over-demanding wife, you know, and that almost, it's as if that's somebody's trying to justify why he killed her. And I think that's a caricature of their marriage. And it does

seem like it was a successful marriage. And it must have gone sour in some way. They both seem to sort out, you know, comfort elsewhere. But she had a pretty fulfilled life. You know, she had a role with these friends. She was much loved and admired by her group of friends. And they missed her. There was a funeral held for Belle Elmore in the fall of 1910. There were said to be many flowers. It had all been arranged by her friends at the Music Hall Ladies Guild. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me.

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Libby Foster, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers. Veronica Simonetti mixed this episode. Engineering by Russ Henry. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. This is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. And we're also on YouTube, where you can go back and take a listen to some of our favorite past episodes.

That's at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Jetsch. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation, Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults.

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