Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (17 page)

Richard Muir was relentlessly blunt in his questioning of Crippen, who was becoming less convincing in his answers, despite maintaining his composure. Dew was spellbound by Muir’s cross-examination and said, ‘Crippen was clever, but not clever enough. There were gaps in his armour which Mr Muir’s skill was able to pierce.’
¹⁶

Muir: When did you make up your mind to go away from London?
Crippen: The morning after Inspector Dew was there – the 8th or 9th.
Muir: Had you the day before been contemplating the possibility of your going away?
Crippen: I would not like to say that I had made up my mind. When Inspector Dew came to me and laid out all the facts that he told me, I might have thought, well, if there is all this suspicion, and I am likely to have to stay in jail for months and months and months, perhaps until this woman is found, I had better be out of it.
Judge: Mr Crippen; do you really mean that you thought that you would have to lie in gaol for months and months; do you say that?
Crippen: Quite so, yes.
Muir: Upon what charge?
Crippen: Suspicion.
Muir: Suspicion of what?
Crippen: Suspicion of – Inspector Dew said, ‘This woman has disappeared, she must be found.’
Muir: Suspicion of what?
Crippen: Suspicion of being concerned in her disappearance.
Muir: What crime did you understand you might be kept in gaol upon suspicion of?
Crippen: I do not understand the law enough to say. From what I have read it seems to me I have heard of people being arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the disappearance of other people.
Muir: And that is why you contemplated on the afternoon of 8th July flying from the country?
Crippen: Quite so – that, and the idea that I had said that Miss Le Neve was living with me, and she had told her people she was married to me, and it would put her in a terrible position; the only thing I could think of was to take her away out of the country where she would not have this scandal thrown upon her.

In the light of Crippen’s devotion to Le Neve, this was a considerably more plausible response than his previous answers.

Another point raised by Muir was that Crippen had written letters to Cora’s friends and relatives telling them that she was dead. How did he know that she would not write to them herself, if indeed she had simply left him to live with Bruce Miller?

Crippen may have held his nerve during Muir’s questioning, but his answers could not have been creating a favourable impression on the jury:

Muir: You thought you were in danger of arrest?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: And so you fled the country?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Under a false name?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Shaved off your moustache?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Left off wearing your glasses in public?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Took Le Neve with you?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Under a false name?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Posing as your son?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Went to Antwerp?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Stayed in a hotel there?
Crippen: Yes.
Muir: Stayed indoors all day?
Crippen: Oh, no.
Muir: Practically all day?
Crippen: We did not; we went to the Zoological Gardens, and walked all over the place.
Muir: Enjoying yourselves?

Dew’s final assessment of the cross-examination was that it had ended in the Crown’s favour but he had gained a strange kind of admiration for Crippen, whose composure had not cracked throughout his questioning, which had lasted three hours and forty-eight minutes:

And so, hour after hour, the cross-examination went on. On the whole, Crippen came out of the ordeal well, but there were times when the penetrative questioning of Mr Muir laid bare the weaknesses of his case.
    No person, with experience of criminal court procedure, could have escaped the impression that the little doctor was seeking cleverly, if unconvincingly, to give innocent interpretations to facts all pointing strongly to his guilt.
    A lesser man – that is lesser in education and self-control – would have collapsed completely under the searching cross-examination for the Crown.
¹⁷

Another observer, court official William Bixley, recalled

I never saw a trace of perspiration, not even during the four hours of his cross-examination, despite the strain shown in his immobile hands ... the only emotion he ever showed was a quick sense of humour so that he never failed to smile when some witty remark or amusing comment was made by one of the witnesses.
¹⁸

Cecil Mercer saw something else when Crippen was amused:

Crippen wasn’t human. I once saw him laugh in court – throw back his head and laugh, at something his solicitor said. He opened his mouth wide and bared his teeth. He looked like a cat, or a tiger – you know how a cat, when it cries, will open wide its mouth and bare its teeth. I was quite close to him, and the startling similarity hit me between the eyes. Crippen was an animal.
¹⁹

Every episode in the revolting story pointed directly towards Crippen as the murderer, which the jury pronounced him to be.

The Lancet

In Alfred Tobin’s closing speech for the defence, he laid out the case in favour of Crippen’s innocence. He explained to the jury that ‘the burden of proof rested on the prosecution, and if on a single material point there could be reasonable doubt it was not for him to appeal for mercy; he had only to claim what was the right of the prisoner’.

According to Tobin, Crippen’s failure to look for his missing wife was simply explained by the fact that he was glad to be rid of her and able to live with Le Neve. ‘It was idle to suppose,’ he pointed out, ‘that he would be other than relieved at her departure from Hilldrop Crescent. One would have supposed that he did not care, or that he would prefer her to be away.’

Tobin claimed, as had Crippen, that Le Neve had spent the night of 2 February at Hilldrop Crescent, although the prosecution refuted this, as there was only Crippen’s dubious word for it. Although Ethel had spent nights at Hilldrop Crescent in February, she moved from her landlady’s, Mrs Jackson’s, on 12 March. It was inconceivable, Tobin said, that Crippen could have murdered Cora on 1 February before spending the whole day at work and then dismembering her corpse before tidying up and regaining his composure to such an extent that Le Neve noticed nothing the next day.

The prosecution had made a great deal of the fact that Dr Crippen was a liar, as shown by his letters to Cora’s friends and relations informing them of her death. Remarkably Tobin said that these letters were almost an act of kindness on Crippen’s part for, ‘those friends would have been glad indeed to find that Dr Crippen’s story of her illness and her death was quite untrue, and further, they would have thought none the worse of Dr Crippen for having told those lies in order to try and cover up his wife’s disappearance and his wife’s shame’.

The flight of Crippen and Le Neve, in disguise and under false names was thus explained by Tobin, who was stoically trying to make the best of a bad job:

They had to consider what was the reason for his flight, or his folly, if they liked. They had to realise the time of his flight, and what had just been said by Inspector Dew. They had to remember the lies Dr Crippen had told, and that he had admitted that they were lies. They must not forget what Inspector Dew had said to him, ‘I am not satisfied about your wife,’ and, ‘There will be serious trouble in store for you unless you find your wife’ [which Dew had never said]. A man who had lost sight of his wife for all those months, who had no notion where she was, and who remembered that he had told lie after lie as to the reason for her disappearance, might be thoroughly alarmed when an officer of the law appeared and said there would be serious trouble in store for him about this disappearance. Dr Crippen realised the mass of prejudice he had raised against himself by the lies he had told, and was flight, although an act of folly, a clear proof of guilt?

Alfred Tobin told the jury that they must be entirely satisfied that the remains were female, before they could even address the question of whether they were those of Cora Crippen. ‘Suspicion was not enough.’ He also raised the question of Crippen’s anatomical skill:

There was another thing which was admittedly needed, and that was a dextrous hand, well versed in anatomical operations. So far from being dextrous in anatomy, he was, compared with the skill required by an anatomical surgeon, a very commonplace manager for Munyon’s remedies. Something else was needed. There was needed the fiend incarnate to do a deed like that; but the prisoner’s reputation was that of a kind-hearted, good-hearted, amiable man.

Tobin did not offer any explanation for how human remains ended up in Crippen’s cellar. He asked the jury if they could believe that a man who had committed such a terrible crime could go about his day-to-day business with no one noticing any change in his demeanour. ‘Were they to be told that during the doctor’s close intimacy with his friends in London, and with his business people in London, they would never have detected any trait such as cruelty or something of that kind in his nature? The characteristics of the man who would do a deed like this were absolutely absent.’ Edward Marshall Hall had visited the court during the trial. He later told a journalist, ‘When I took the opportunity of snatching that hour at the Old Bailey, and hearing the line which the defence had taken to try to save Crippen, I walked out appalled.’
¹

The fifth and final day of the trial heard the closing speech for the Crown, presented by Richard Muir. Muir had been staggered by Tobin’s assessment of Crippen as a kind man:

Let them examine the foundation for that theory. The prisoner had admitted that over a long series of months he had led a life of studied hypocrisy, utterly regardless of the pain which the lies which he was telling and was acting would inflict upon friend or sister of his wife. Letters full of grief of a bereaved husband were written to Mrs Martinetti, to Dr Burroughs to be seen by Dr Burrough’s wife, to Mrs Mills, the half sister of Cora Crippen. There was that letter of his carrying the sobs of the bereaved husband across the ocean to harrow the feelings of his wife’s relations. He put on mourning, wrote on black-edged paper, mocked the grief of his wife’s dearest friends, who thought they were sympathising with him, when they wished to lay a last tribute of love upon the far-off grave of their dead friend. He said, ‘A wreath is no use; she is not being buried, she is being cremated; her ashes will soon be here’ – and then with his tongue in his cheek – ‘you may have your little ceremony then.’ Ashes to be fetched across the sea! They were asked to say then that he was too kind-hearted to have done this deed.

In addition to Crippen’s lies, there was his hypocrisy. He had hinted that Cora had been unfaithful with Bruce Miller despite the fact that they ‘had never cast eyes on each other for six years’. Besides this, ‘the man who brought those accusations against his wife was the man who was himself carrying on an intrigue with Ethel Le Neve, extending over three years, and who said in the witness-box that he believed his wife knew nothing about it’.

Muir pointed out that there was no evidence to show that the remains were not those of Cora Crippen. However, the evidence had overwhelmingly pointed to the fact that Cora Crippen was dead. The hair found among the remains was naturally dark brown which had been bleached to a lighter colour and ‘Belle Elmore had dark brown hair bleached to a lighter shade. It was true that other women had dark brown hair bleached to lighter colour, but there was no suggestion that any woman with hair of that sort was missing in London within the limits of the time which were involved in that case.’ Muir reiterated the prosecution’s claim that the mark on the piece of skin was an abdominal scar and ‘Belle Elmore had been operated upon in that region in the year 1892 or 1893’.

Most damagingly, the remains had been riddled with hyoscine, and Crippen had purchased large quantities of the drug. Summing up, Muir said, ‘Ask yourselves in this most important case these questions. Where is Belle Elmore? Is your answer to be that she is dead? Then, whose remains were those in the cellar? Is your answer to be Belle Elmore’s? If not Belle Elmore’s, what conceivable explanation is there? None in the world. Who mutilated her body and put the remains there? Who but the prisoner had the opportunity, the skill, the access to the pieces of pyjama jacket which were found in the grave? How did she die? Is your answer to be of hyoscine poisoning? If not, how did that person die? No sign upon the internal organs which were left, no sign on post-mortem examination, of any cause of death at all except hyoscine poisoning. If your answer is to be that she died of hyoscine poisoning, where did she get it and who administered it? Crippen bought it – it was not much known – on 19th January, and Belle Elmore disappeared from this world on 1st February.’

Lord Alverstone lucidly summed up the case to the jury. Put simply, ‘That is the crime of murder charged here against Dr Crippen, that he wilfully and intentionally killed his wife, poisoned his wife, and that he mutilated the body, and buried the remains in the cellar at 39 Hilldrop Crescent in order to conceal his crime.’ The jury had to consider two questions. The first: ‘Were the remains found at 39 Hilldrop Crescent the remains of Cora Crippen? If they were not, there is an end of this case. If you find that they were the remains of Cora Crippen, then you have got to ask yourselves, was her death occasioned by the wilful act of the defendant Crippen? If not, again the defendant is entitled to be acquitted. Those are the two issues that you have got to consider, and those are the issues upon which I shall ask you in a short time to concentrate your attention.’

Alverstone had been intrigued by the enigmatic Dr Crippen: ‘Whatever the truth in this case, the defendant is an extraordinary man. He has committed a ghastly crime; he has covered up that ghastly crime, or endeavoured to, in a ghastly way, and he has behaved with the most brutal and callous indifference after the crime has been committed. If he is an innocent man, it is almost impossible, as you may probably think, to fathom his mind or his character, again absolutely indifferent to the charge made against him of murder; having, according to him, I will not say a ready means, but at any rate the means of doing his utmost to establish his innocence, no step taken of any sort or kind by him.’