Mrs. Dr. Crippen PT 2 01:01:58

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while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

So we are back, Paul. And normally I would ask you how you're doing, but now I don't actually care because I'm so anxious to get back to this case. I want to know...

I want to know as much as you do what happens. You don't care about how I'm doing? I'm hurt. I do. Well, you know, in the grand scheme of life, I very much care how you're doing. But right now, we have to get back into this case because I left you with a cliffhanger. Yes, you did. So I'll do a quick Kate Winkler Dawson shorthand summary, which is...

We have Dr. Harvey Crippen, and he is a seemingly successful doctor. He's in London with his American wife in 1910. They seem to have a very acrimonious marriage, and she wants to be a star. She is larger than life. He certainly is not. He has taken a mistress who is much more his speed. And Cora, his wife, has told friends that she wants to leave Dr. Crippen, and she

He is insanely jealous and has such an ego that he certainly would not take kind to someone who wanted to leave him, particularly because they're both entrenched in, I don't know about high society, but in moderate society in London. So this would not be good for his ego. And after months of pressuring, we have a detective who has

gone to Crippen's house and finds out that they've essentially cleared out. And he and Scott Lanyard go in and they start looking for clues. And in the cellar, which in Texas, we don't have cellars. So I always have to picture in my mind what a cellar is. There's too much rock in Texas to have cellars, in Austin at least. So they're down in the cellar.

And under some bricks, they find a mutilated corpse. And thus begins this really in-depth investigation. And where you really come in, Paul Holes, because there's a lot of forensics to talk about. And I am 99% sure I will not be able to answer all of your questions, but I'm sure as hell going to try. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to this because...

You know, anytime there's a corpse, that's when I start to have my wheels spin and get into the case. So what do you got?

Well, this is pretty gruesome, and I've read a lot of gruesome things, but this is pretty gruesome. So here's what the police said. The body that they found that was beneath the bricks in the home cellar, the body was dismembered with surgical precision and was extremely disfigured. It was missing its head, limbs, the entire skeleton, and couldn't even be identified as male or female. But...

There were allegedly curlers wrapped in long human hair present, as well as feminine pajamas, leading investigators to assume that the remains belonged to a woman. So this was some horrible mutilation. So the entire skeleton, how is that possible? Is that flesh or what does that mean? Well, based on what you just said, they don't have a corpse.

They have tissue. They have basically part of a body. Now, all the bones are missing? It said the entire skeleton, missing its head, its limbs, entire skeleton, couldn't even be identified as a male or a female. So it sounds like it was really the abdomen that was there and that was it. That's the impression I'm getting. So I'm going to assume that the torso is present. You've got the rib cage, you've got the vertebral column, possibly the pelvis. Yep. But...

The dismemberment is the four limbs and the head are missing and not present with the corpse. What do you think about that? That is some anger or efficiency. Which one? Well, that type of dismemberment is typically seen when you are talking about disposal.

And you take a look at what is actually missing, the head, the hands. Back in 1910, how are people typically identified? This is at the very beginning of fingerprints, right? So now that the hands are missing, and we see that today in dismemberment cases. I had a case in which, I mean, five people were killed, three bodies were dismembered.

the heads had been cut off, the jaws had been removed with the teeth, the hands had been removed, but everything was put in duffel bags, right? So all the necessary components to traditionally identify these bodies was present. The offenders knew enough to do something about the identifying parts, but then were stupid enough to put those identifying parts back with the rest of the body. You know, in this case,

the limbs and the head. These are items for identification as well as they're relatively easy items to put in a package of some sort and transport away from the house versus the larger part of the body, the torso.

has to be cut into smaller parts in order to be able to as easily transport the torso parts away from the house without being noticed. You know, it's not a large suitcase or carpet that's rolled around a larger part of the body. So this almost sounds like this is a dismemberment that it was partial for body disposal purposes. If this is, let's say, Dr. Crippen doing this and this is Cora's body,

Why only get rid of part of the body and leave the rest inside the house? They never find the rest. So why hide something so well and then take the risk of keeping the abdomen and leaving weird things like curlers behind and feminine pajamas? It just seems a little counterintuitive for someone who clearly planned this pretty well. Yeah, and this body is found six months

after Dr. Crippen has left the house, right? This is six months after Cora is last being seen. Okay. So if this is Cora, she's been presumably down there for about six months or so. And is there any description in terms of the pathologist who's looking at the remaining body part

as to the state of decomposition, any mummification, anything that could indicate possibly how long this body part had been under down in the cellar. There's no indicator of that because let's think about England and

And let's see, in my case, in 1952, John Reginald Christie, the serial killer, killed women and stored them in his house. And they became almost mummified because he stored them in January, February, March, when it was very dry and very cold. And there was this smell, but not the kind of smell it would have been like in Texas over the summer.

So I'm trying to think of that time period if you're in a cellar and it's cold down in the cellar and this is not their super hot time period. They didn't give notes on mummification. They did say this, which might give you an idea of the decomp.

So there is a marking on the torso, the lower abdomen, just a mark. They weren't more specific than that. This is a critical detail apparently though to the medical examiner or the coroner, whoever's doing this, because Cora had a prominent scar on her abdomen. I don't know what she would have had a scar for, but that is the only connection they can make.

between Cora and this corpse, aside the fact that she's missing and she lived in this house. There's no other clue. So what about the decomp? I mean, to see a marking, it must have been a slow decomp, don't you think? I mean, six months? Yeah, the cellar's going to be cool. And what time of month does Cora go missing? End of January, and she's found July 13th. Now, I don't know what the weather was like back then, but it doesn't really get super warm until July or August.

I don't know, in a cellar, if it would ever get particularly warm. And when I say warm, I mean 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. So the cellar location, the time of year from January, obviously through the winter months, you know, this is a cool time. It's going to slow down decomposition. There's so many factors to take into consideration, you know, like what kind of insect activity was occurring. Right. Right now, if they are able to see that her abdomen does have this mark at

after six months, yeah, that would tend to indicate to me that this decomposition, assuming it's Cora, this is a body that is undergoing a slower decomp than a body, let's say, that's on the surface.

because we can have bodies on the surface that can be completely skeletal in six months with insect activity, carnivore activity, normal decompositional processes. Yeah. Okay, so this is interesting. We have a mark that seems to be in the part of the body where Cora has a scar. Now, do they have any other way to identify and confirm that this torso is actually from Cora?

Nope. They can't even say if this is a male or female. However, I do have a probable cause of death for you, which is surprising. Okay. So in your head, think, what is the one thing that they can test for to determine cause of death just in a torso? What are they able to probably pull from that torso to find out a cause of death?

Well, there's actually multiple things. If you are dealing with a torso and you have a gunshot wound, you have stab wounds, maybe even blunt force trauma, depending on the state, there are multiple things that could be still present either to the soft tissue or

or more likely to the bone, that would indicate, yes, we've had wounding in this area. And then, of course, there's the possibility of toxicology. Some drugs will remain present for long periods of time after death. Ding, ding, ding. You win the prize. It's poison. See how smart you are?

You're super smart. But I had not thought of the other ones. Yes, of course. I mean, you know, gunshot wounds. But the Home Office, which is one of the departments in the UK, sent over their senior doctor, Dr. Wilcox, and he tests the torso and finds very high levels of a drug called hyacine, which is a narcotic, a fatal dose in the body. Had you heard of that? I have heard of hyacine.

Wasn't real familiar with it, but you let me know before this case, hey, look at this drug, right? I give him homework in case you all didn't know that. He gets homework every week from me. Please, I don't know anything about this. Can you find out? And he does it, thankfully. So the interesting thing about hyacinth is, yes, it has narcotic properties, right?

So hyacine was used in order to put somebody into a state of sedation. Around this timeframe, it was coupled with morphine in order to be able to help with childbirth, to ease the pain of childbirth. The interesting thing about hyacine though, even though it's being described as a narcotic,

It acts very differently. This is a drug that, you know, narcotics such as morphine, you know, heroin, fentanyl, et cetera, can be fatal in high doses, relatively speaking, depending on their potency. And they suppress the nervous system that controls breathing. Mm-hmm.

And this is how you die from an opiate overdose. Hyacinth does not suppress that aspect of the body. It suppresses this peripheral nervous system related to smooth muscles, GI tract, your intestines, your cardiovascular system, the arteries. They're lined with smooth muscles and that's where hyacinth comes into play. And even when I'm taking a look at hyacinth in overdose situations,

Death is not listed as a complication from overdose. Now, it can be, but it seems to be a very poor drug if you intend that drug by itself to kill somebody. So that becomes interesting in that this torso has high levels of hyacine in it. But is that truly the cause of death?

Well, and we'll talk about that. There's a lot of speculation, you know, and I have my own ideas about this torso. But this has all become very suspicious because now Scotland Yard has gone and tried to retrace Crippen's steps while he's in the wind with his mistress. So they find...

in London who fulfilled an order of hyacinth for Crippen. He bought a large amount of it in mid-January. They had poison books in the 1900s. I doubt they have them now, but in the 1800s and 1900s where, you know, if you purchase something, you sign it, right? Yeah. And I'm sure there's a much more sophisticated way to track who buys what kinds of narcotics and poisons now, but he simply signed the book in his name, but he bought a large amount, and he said it was for

one of the homeopathic pharmaceutical companies that he worked for. So this is, again, you could argue that this is just part of his job. It is odd that this is the narcotic that is found in this corpse who is in his cellar in his house. Right. Most certainly he has access to this compound just because of his job. But the fact that this torso has it, you know, starts limiting the number of people who...

you would start looking at. And Dr. Crippen, who now has got a mistress, he has access to Cora after that party, and he also has access to Hyacine. Those are kind of clues to indicate, okay, so Dr. Crippen needs to be looked at pretty closely in terms of the death of this person who this torso belongs to. So you're suspicious and you're about to become much more suspicious of Dr. Crippen. So he...

And Ethel leave on July 9th. They make these discoveries of the torso on July 13th, four days later. And Crippen and Ethel have decided that they're going to run. And they go to Canada. And Crippen shaves his head. And Ethel puts on men's clothing. And she's not a big woman. She's a tiny woman. So they are trying to pass themselves off as father and son only.

on this ship bound for Canada. Even I know this is suspicious behavior. Even I know that. I was going to say that's not suspicious at all. No, this is just normal behavior of two people traveling in society wanting to explore the world.

Come on. Obviously, they're on the run. They are. And the crew members saw that they looked awkward and suspicious. And they determined eventually that they were passengers and they were obviously people who the police had been looking for. And at this point, there was a state-of-the-art wireless system called the telegraph.

And the ship's captain used the telegraph to communicate with Scotland Yard, saying, this is a couple who looks suspicious. We have heard about Dr. Crippen being on the run with his mistress. We think that's who this is.

And so there is the New York Times printed, and poor Dr. Crippen, I don't feel badly for killers, but in this case, the descriptions are not very good in the newspaper of him. There was an article printed in the New York Times in 1910 that said, many meek-looking men with glasses have been looked on with suspicion, and the number of people who have been shadowed by amateur detectives is...

are anxious to gain the reward. And the reward was the equivalent of $40,000 now, which is, you know, a nice chunk of change, right? So the captain is telegraphing this information across the sea towards Canada, back to Scotland Yard. And this, of course, is very exciting to the people in Scotland Yard. So now this is turning into a little bit of a chase. This is where...

The suspect, Dr. Crippen, and his accomplice, and who knows if Ethel had any role in the actual homicide of the person that this torso belongs to. Right. But they're overthinking things. They ended up adopting a disguise that so stood out. This captain was like,

oh, this doesn't look right. Imagine if Dr. Crippen, all he did was ditch the glasses, shave his mustache and wear a cap. Yeah. He would have gotten away. Nobody wouldn't have had any suspicion. You know, this may be TMI. I might be burning my, you know, my undercover look. But when I was at CrimeCon that you were at out in Las Vegas, for me to move around,

You just clued everybody off. Yeah.

I was literally walking around with CrimeCon attendees in the middle of groups and they had no idea it was me. It's where you have to be subtle. It's like put the little piece of tape in the middle of your eyeglasses and that's enough to throw people off. But to have her dress up as this young boy, it was just too much of a tip off. It's just too weird.

So I think the combination of their odd looks and Scotland Yard obviously contacting all the ports and the railway stations as much as possible to say, look for these people on the run, and this reward, all of this has triggered a big search. And what's so interesting about this is thanks to the telegraph,

The inspector, so, you know, we know as Inspector Dew, the inspector's receiving this information. And Crippen and Ethel have no idea that, number one, people know they are on board, and that, number two, Inspector Dew, the man on the case, is taking an even faster boat to meet them in Canada.

because he's gotten this information. I know that Telegraph doesn't seem like the most exciting sort of detective there is. In this time period, to receive information on a criminal or a suspected criminal, as you would say, there's nothing that would have stopped him from walking off that boat and disappearing. Even if people were suspicious, they couldn't have stopped him. Only the police could do it. Well, and I'm thinking about Detective Dew. You know, nowadays, of course, we frequently have suspects

that have left the state and have traveled across the United States or outside of countries. You know, and detectives are having to board planes and get to locations. But here, Detective Dew is having to board a ship and do a transatlantic crossing. How long would that take? That must take, what, several days? Well, you would think so. It just said faster steamer. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I didn't know steamers could be fast. I guess it's all relative, isn't it? What a scam Detective Dupul. He's now on this ship. He's lounging on the deck. He's sipping his wine, looking at the ocean, going, okay, I've got five more days before I have to actually do work and arrest this guy. So he's living the high life on this cruise ship.

People are going to be messaging us on approximately how long it would have taken, I'm pretty sure, to go from London to what turned out to be Quebec. So, of course, Inspector Dew gets there after lounging, as you said. He gets there, he goes to Quebec, and he intercepts them. And they both seem very surprised. And they are returned to England to be put on trial. And Dr. Crippen, I'm going to read you this because it becomes a little important in a little bit. Dr. Crippen is charged with, quote,

feloniously and willfully of their malice aforethought, kill and murder one Cora Crippen, otherwise known as Belle Elmore, which is important. That's her stage name, Belle Elmore. The mistress was also charged knowing that the said defendant Crippen had committed the said felony, did receive comfort, and maintained the said Holly Harvey Crippen.

So that doesn't sound like accessory. That just says, that sounds like she didn't turn him in when she should have done the right thing. Yeah. Receive comfort and maintain. So protected him, right? Is that what that would be? Seek comfort and maintain. Yeah, that's odd language. Is that harboring a fugitive kind of?

There may be a component of that. There also may be an accessory component to it because you can be charged with accessory without being somebody who actively participated in the homicide, but you aided the person who committed the homicide and you knowingly aided that person. You had knowledge that that person committed that crime and you somehow aided them and or lied to authorities in order to aid that person. That's an interesting charge.

But fundamentally, now you have Dr. Crippen arrested for the murder of Cora, though right now I'm not convinced they've actually identified this torso as Cora. Well, I don't know what the evidence is. My argument as a defense attorney would be, how do we know that this is not the remnants of some anatomy professor who had a body, a fresh body, and put it down here? How do we know that this is not something that Crippen—

does, that he's bought bodies, which I've done stories on. You know, this, because of the way it was dissected, it just, I don't think they can connect this to Cora just yet. And I'm not sure they could really connect this to murder, even though there's a fatal dose of this poison. The way you're describing it, it sounds like an opiate. Could this have been some sort of weird accidental overdose that

And then the body was sold to an anatomy professor who used it and then discarded it. I know that seems far-fetched, but I'm just thinking of like some defense attorney, what kind of argument there would be. There's a lot of holes in terms of the identification of the torso as being core at this point, at least relative to modern technology. Most certainly, we could identify this torso today. First and foremost, DNA could be utilized.

But back in 1910, all they've got is a mark on her abdomen in the same general area that Cora had a scar. Yep. For me, this does not pass muster that an identification of this body has actually occurred.

And then the state of the body, could it have been somebody that had, maybe it's a homicide victim that was buried underneath the house by the previous occupant? We don't know because they can't tell what the time of death. We don't know when this person died, I think because it was well-preserved in that cellar. So they were not able to definitively say, yes, this happened February 1st or January 31st, even within months because of the way it was preserved.

But the way we're talking right now is to prove a case in court. But most certainly, investigatively, Detective Dew is going, I've got a missing wife. I've got a doctor with a mistress on the run. I find a human body or part of human body in that person's cellar. I'm on the right track. I'm not doubting this as Cora as an investigator at this point, but

But I have to be able to prove a crime has been committed, that Cora has actually been a victim of homicide, that that corpse is actually Cora, and that Dr. Crippen is responsible for killing Cora. You know, so there's still a lot of work at this point that needs to be done by Detective Dew. So on the ship back.

Back from Quebec to London, Dr. Du, while he's sipping his wine on the deck, is now having to think about what are the next steps to make this case work.

All the things that you just rattled off are exactly what attracted the media to this case, which was called the 1910 O.J. Simpson murder trial case. I mean, there's no white Bronco. Yeah, but it was the trial of the century in 1910. And then 1995, O.J. Simpson usurped it by being the trial of the century. Okay. Yeah.

It's a half century. They made a mistake. It was a half century, I think. Okay. So, Crippen, during this trial, he's asked a series of questions, of course. Why had he not reported his wife missing? Well, I thought she went to Chicago with her lover. She had said she was going to leave me. I was embarrassed to admit it to anybody. Well, then why had Cora not gotten in touch with the sisters who she was very close with? And Crippen said, well, I think she was ashamed of having the affair and of leaving Cora.

because Cora really cared about appearances. So answer number three, when he is asked about the poison, about the hyacinth, he says that he gives it to patients for anxiety, which seems to tally with what you're saying it could be, right? Absolutely. The problem is he can't point to Paul Holes being his patient, receiving it for anxiety. There's no one he can call to the stand and request help.

will give testimony saying, yes, Dr. Crippen gave me that for anxiety. So really, there's no reason for him to have that. He can't prove that he gave it to one particular person or even to this pharmaceutical company he was talking about. You know, once this torso is found to have high levels of hyacinth in it,

Now it's, well, what is the source of the hyacinth? Now this is getting back into that house and seeing if the source of the hyacinth is still present. That's just part of the CSI 101 aspect is, oh, we've got new information. We may have overlooked the hyacinth as having any relevance, but now it has relevance. I want to

get back into that house and make sure I document and collect that because it is showing that within the house where the body is found, there was a source of this drug inside of it. - I also thought, I wondered if he's an addict and that's why he bought a large amount and didn't acknowledge because I know this sounds odd, but admitting to addiction in that time period is almost worse than being a murder suspect. For a doctor, that would have been very difficult.

Sure. God, hyacinth. Wouldn't be your first choice, I guess, would it, for addiction? No, it wouldn't be, though. You know, I'm looking at the possible effects.

And euphoria is something. So I'm not seeing anything related to that it's commonly abused for recreational purposes. But most certainly, it appears that it could have an effect on somebody who could enjoy the feeling that they have. And the fact that it really has a low potential for overdose

It would be a drug that potentially a doctor would abuse and potentially abuse in high amounts for the euphoric aspect. Yeah. But it'd be a poor drug to use to kill somebody based on what I'm seeing.

I almost, I'm thinking out loud right now, but let's say Dr. Crippen got this large amount of hyacinth. He gave it to Cora after that party. It has the sedative effects to where now she is, she's sedated and maybe sedated to the point where she's unresponsive. And she's probably been drinking to begin with.

Sure. Now, a simple smothering, strangulation, or even dismemberment while she's still alive is a possibility. I knew you were going to say that. Oh, you did. Well, we know everything. He could have shot her in the head. I mean, we don't know because everything's gone except for that torso. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.

There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

One thing that I think was really interesting, there are a couple of things. One, when obviously the prosecutor said, well, who is that body if it's not Cora? He said, I have no idea. We were gone all the time. Anybody could have come in, some degenerate, and could have just broken in, gotten into the cellar. I'm assuming there are probably windows. A lot of cellars, they have little windows kind of for air.

gotten in and we would have never known about it. So he was very dismissive and didn't seem alarmed at all that there was a random torso in his cellar. He is smart enough to be able to answer away a lot of these questions. One of the things that I think was interesting was that also when they said that this dismemberment happened with surgical precision, he said, I'm not a surgeon. I had some experience, but not

I didn't have enough. I was not, you know, some incredible surgeon. I took anatomy like everybody else did. So go talk to the other doctors that are in this city. That is a pet peeve of mine is anytime there's dismemberment, Right.

Now you have, oh, it must have been a medical doctor because it was surgically precise. And your general physician, just like what Dr. Crippen is saying, well, no, they're not surgeons. They've had anatomy. They've done dissection of cadavers in modern medical school. I'm not sure exactly what Dr. Crippen would have been exposed to. But surgeons and doctors, their role is not to dismember a body. They have the anatomic knowledge of

to do it more effectively than the general layperson. But take a look in our society or even the societies in England back in 1910, who's more experienced at the dismemberment of bodies than medical doctors? Right. You are dealing with butchers, you're dealing with hunters. Yep.

And they can be very effective at dressing down a body and doing it very precisely. So just because a body has been dismembered, the one case that I brought up before in which I had three bodies dismembered, well, they just used power tools and just sawed through long bones and everything else. It's obviously nobody, there's no skill that's being demonstrated in that situation. But when you have...

a body that's been dismembered and disarticulated through joints or other parts of the body that a knife or some sort of tool could cut through easily and effectively and limit the amount of bloodshed. Or you have a dissection of the body where now you're having maybe internal organs being removed like what you do when you are dressing down a deer.

There's many, many people who possess those skill sets that have no medical training whatsoever. I've studied and I've had an anatomy class. I've been to many autopsies. I could probably dismember a body better than the average person, but I've never done it before. I've never been to medical school.

So this is where when people jump to, oh my God, in this case, it's got to be a doctor that did this. I don't know, hold on here. You know, no, I disagree with that unless there is something that is so particular that only specialized training would demonstrate that it has to be somebody within this particular skill set. It's like, no, it's not that narrow of a suspect pool.

I agree. And this is another thing about that torso. There were dueling experts, which we talk about a lot on this show, experts saying completely different things. And then the jury or the judge is completely confused because they don't know who to believe because you've got two people who supposedly have really great credentials on the stand.

dueling experts about this marking on the torso. So the prosecutor brought experts in, including Bernard Spilsbury, who is a legend. Oh, I know that name. So they have these experts, including Spilsbury, come in and say this was a scar on the abdomen. Okay. Then you've got defense experts come in and say, no, it's not. It's not a scar. So clearly you couldn't definitively say it was a scar. Here's my question, looking at this from a global perspective.

If you are Dr. Crippen and you know that at a minimum, Cora's doctor is going to be able to look at the abdomen and say, this matches her marking. When you have done all this other work, getting rid of the head, cutting off the legs, cutting off the hands, getting rid of fingerprints, why would you leave an identifying marker at all on this torso if this is your wife and you're trying to cover it up?

It doesn't make sense to me. It is an oversight for sure. There's plenty of examples of bodies in which not only have you seen like heads, hands removed to prevent identification, you see tattoos cut out. Yeah. And so any prominent scar that would be identifiable by a loved one would also be something that an intelligent offender would likely cut out.

Now, was this torso still clothed? I doubt it with the amount of dismemberment. There was some hair. They couldn't tell if it was male or female. But then again, it feels planted. Women's curlers, women's pajamas. It's just a random, I don't know. It just seems odd. Like they're really trying to throw someone off if this does happen to be found. Okay. Nothing else.

Nothing else that can... I know. Nothing else that can tie you to Cora. Do you know, was this ever conclusively proved to be Cora? No. The sort of, I shorthand all the rest of this. There's no way to prove that this is Cora. And this is the corpus delecti, no body, no crime argument from the defense attorney because...

They can't say that this is a murder victim definitively. They don't know who this person is, and they can't prove that Crippen was the one responsible for it to begin with. Okay. If you're the judge in this, aren't you thinking that? Aren't you saying, well, this doesn't really, there's not enough evidence to hang this guy? Well, not necessarily. You know, so corpus delicti, there's this myth out there that if you never recover a homicide victim's body, you can't charge somebody with murder. Right. That's patently false.

Most certainly, prosecutors, if there's sufficient other evidence that a homicide has occurred and that the defendant or the suspect before being charged is responsible, they can most certainly move forward with charging that person with murder of some sort, first, second, depending on the circumstances. So really, the corpus delecti standard is...

more along the lines of, is there proof? And I know attorneys out there are going to just rip me apart, but is there the body of evidence to prove that a crime has actually occurred and that the person being charged is responsible with the crime? It really doesn't have anything to do, well, is there a body present? It's more the body of the crime, the information about the crime. In this case,

I would say that there's sufficient evidence to say, yes, a crime has occurred. We have a dismembered torso in the basement. Yep. We have a missing wife. We have a doctor and his mistress that went on the run and went through this bizarre disguise process.

He's making all sorts of excuses. He bought the poison, right? Yeah, high levels of hyacinth in the torso is something that they were able to prove that he did. They probably have sufficient corpus delicti in order to proceed with

with charging him and prosecuting him for murder, at least here in the United States. Obviously, England's different, but that's where I'm going, okay, this is a situation to where, yes, you possibly could charge murder, even though Cora's full body has never been found. In this day and age, first, I want to make sure that this is Cora, not somebody else in the basement. But if it's Cora, then...

then all of a sudden, exponentially, the case against Dr. Crippen, I think, becomes stronger. I think you're probably right. And I would say that the jury agreed. So they were out for about 27 minutes. Oh, geez. Okay. He was found guilty.

The Crown Prosecutor alleged that Crippen poisoned Cora, dismembered her in the bath, and then the bones and the limbs were burned in the kitchen fire, fireplace fire. He took the head with him on his transatlantic trip and dropped the head overboard before they got to Canada. None of this was proven.

There's no remnants, anything anywhere they have a torso and that is it. That is it. That is it. But he's found guilty. No witness statements. Crippen never admitted. Ethel never admitted to these, you know, the burning of the bones. Nothing. The kitchen, the head being dropped in the ocean. He said, I'm innocent and so did she. He was hanged a month afterward.

And Ethel got off. She was no longer an accessory. They just acquitted her as an accessory. I just think there wasn't enough evidence. I don't even know what the evidence was against Ethel except...

she was dating this guy who was on the run and she was willing to dress up like a little boy because she wanted to be with him. So I think they just let it go. You know, a case that comes to mind is Lacey Peterson, Scott Peterson. Yeah. The mistress, Amber Fry, had nothing to do with Lacey's case, should never be under suspicion, should never be charged with a crime. I don't even think she knew that he was married to Lacey at the time.

And then he does the goofy, dyes his hair, has large amounts of cash, is down, you know, by the Mexican border. You know, he's doing kind of similar things that Dr. Crippen was doing, going, well, in case I become under, you know, under suspicion, I'm getting out of the country. And I think that this case became very notorious for decades and decades and decades. And then it became a little controversial for a couple of reasons.

Over the years, different forensic experts have taken a shine to Crippen's case and wanted to take a look at it, including this guy who's a toxicologist named John Treztrail. And John Treztrail thought that something was odd about this case. He said that he has a database of 1,100 poisoning cases, and this is the only one he's heard of that involved dismemberment.

So this alerted him and he wanted to start working on it. So what do you think about that theory where he just said, this is not the right thing here. This is not a guy who would have done this and poisoners don't dismember. Dismemberment in this situation is to hide the crime. It's about self-preservation. This is not a behavior that is linked with the violence in the case.

My wheelhouse, of course, is your sexually motivated, fantasy motivated crimes, where you have behaviors that follow the fantasy. And those behaviors and that fantasy don't necessarily mesh with what the offender has to do in order to control and kill the victim. There's other aspects that that offender is doing. In this case, this is an elimination homicide. This is to get rid of this person, Cora.

in order to change your life and move forward. And now the motivation of the offender in committing this type of crime is to do it in a way in which they're not going to get caught. And that's what it appears that Dr. Crippen did. And the dismemberment component is,

was to, in essence, get rid of the body to where it would never be found. I think he's interrupted. If Crippent was left with more time, I think the rest of that body would have been gone. It's puzzling to me. Why is he leaving the torso behind and just getting rid of the other parts? This would be digging into the circumstances. Is he having so much public notoriety, so much media attention that he doesn't even dare to

load up the horse carriage or the Model T or whatever was, you know, he had access to in 1910. A Model T. Yeah. Which is, I know over here, it's over here in the United States, but I just don't have the ability to avoid public scrutiny if I do something suspicious and I've got body parts with me. Yeah. That is a

real life scenario that he may have been dealing with because of the notoriety that's occurring in this case. But to draw a conclusion that poisoners never dismembered, no, this is not something that you can conclude from that. Each offender is going to do what they think is in their best interest for self-preservation. When you are dealing with an

organized, intelligent, and sophisticated offender. And that's what Dr. Crippen is. He made mistakes, but he still is thinking about what he needs to do in order to be able to move on with his life with his true love, Ethel. He is thinking about how can I get away with this?

and move on with my life. And the dismemberment aspect, I think, is part of what he was doing for self-preservation. Well, and I agree with you. I think it's handy to say, well, this never happens. As soon as you say this never happens is when it happens. And I understand that toxicologist, he's looking for patterns and all of this. Regardless of whether we agree with him or not,

He took this a step further. Listen to this. This is going to make you very excited. He teamed up with a DNA analyst. Yay! That was a big smile. I like it when you smile and you've had a big smile now. Now I'm talking your language. So this took a painstaking two years. They analyzed and isolated the mitochondrial DNA from the human remains that were preserved. Okay. So first, before I get to the punchline, tell me about mitochondrial DNA and how we use it for criminal cases. Okay.

Yeah, so there's two sources of DNA within a human cell. There's the DNA that is found within the nucleus of a cell. This is what encodes for us. Half of that nuclear DNA comes from your mom, half of it from your dad. That's across the 23 chromosomes. Mitochondrial DNA, there's these power-generating, what are called organelles, within the cell itself.

And it turns out, well, they actually have their own source of DNA, this mitochondrial DNA. And it doesn't come from the dad. It only comes from the mom. So it's maternally inherited. So mitochondrial DNA is something that genealogists have used and researchers into ancestral origins of the human population. The advantage of mitochondrial DNA within a criminal situation is

is that there's thousands of times more mitochondrial DNA per cell than nuclear DNA. So if I have a sample, let's say like this torso or hairs that are present from this 1910 case,

there's a chance that the nuclear DNA has just absolutely degraded. But because there's so much more mitochondrial DNA present at the beginning, there's a greater chance that there's still mitochondrial DNA that exists today. So I can go after mitochondrial DNA typing and go, oh, I've got a result. Now that result, because it's maternally inherited, many people have that same

DNA type that are within that maternal side of the family and other families that can be linked along the genealogical lineage. But it helps at least give some information. Let's say the mitochondrial DNA testing off of this came back to be within Cora's

maternal lineage, then that helps support that this torso is likely from Cora. So what happens is, I don't know if you remember me mentioning this, but Cora had some sisters and her sisters had children and they had children. Sure. So the toxicologist and the DNA expert compared the DNA to Cora Crippen's grandnieces, the mitochondrial. And the

They were not the same as what was on the torso. So now it's either these remains are not Cora or Cora is not biologically related to those supposed sisters. And we run into this all the time.

the time. Yep. Now, this is what's interesting. There are naysayers from this research who say birth certificates are not accurate. We couldn't find a birth certificate for Cora Crippen. We don't know. 100% for sure. So all we know is that these particular young people were not related, connected to the torso. However, they did also use the nuclear DNA.

And that found that that torso was of a man, not of a woman. Oh, geez. Hold on here. See, that's the wow moment. Okay, so...

When modern DNA testing is done, today it's short tandem repeats. There's also this amilagenin marker that is being tested within this testing process of modern DNA. And it does look for the X and Y chromosomes. So if they're finding a Y chromosome, this indicates, okay, biological male.

Obviously, it would not be Cora if she was truly a biological female. Right. You know, which I'm not doubting at this point. Now, of course, I want to know, well, what is the sample that was preserved over time? Right. How was it preserved? It couldn't have been, well, what, in Tupperware? What would they have done in 1910? The how is not as important because how it's preserved is not going to change anything.

a female DNA profile to a male DNA profile. It's more of the veracity of the sample. Can this sample be truly tracked back to the torso found in the cellar, in Crippen's cellar? There's room for doubt, though. Isn't that the punchline here is, whoa, that would have been reasonable doubt if we had had that information in 1910 at his trial, don't you think? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, but then that's a new investigation that gets opened up. Yeah. Let's say this is a male torso. Then I'm questioning, well, who did Dr. Crippen kill that was a man? You're still on him being a killer. What if it's just some? See, this is why we're a good team. It's a body in his cellar.

I know. You know, I have to eliminate him first. People didn't lock their doors traditionally in 1910. And anybody could have gotten in there. Who knows? It could have been... Please. This would have been, I think, a little too early in London for the mobsters to come in. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, yes, I think probably he was responsible for something. But...

He was on trial for killing his wife, and there is now enough reasonable doubt to say that was not Cora. And I have a tiny bit more information. Oh, here we go. Because I know you like it when I spring things on you at the very end. So just for my due diligence, and our fantastic Marin, who is our fantastic researcher, found this, that one of the points here is this research that had been done with the DNA analyst and with the toxicologist,

has never been peer-reviewed, and it never appeared in a scientific journal, which means something, right? I don't know what. I just want to put that out there that this was not something that was in AMA or some massive journal. This was just a study done. If validated scientific DNA testing methods were used...

and a credentialed DNA analyst did the work, issued a report. I think there's some credence to put on it. It does not need to be published within a peer-reviewed scientific journal as if it's some sort of research study for me to start putting some weight on it. Of course, I would like to see, because of the age of the case, I would like to see redundancy to be able to see, can another independent person replicate the results?

Yep. Let me throw something out at you. Uh-oh. This is late in the game to throw something out at me, don't you think? Assuming this torso is truly male, Korra is missing. Korra is likely dead. Crippen is doing his little fugitive thing with Ethel.

But he's a jealous, jealous person. Oh, okay. I see where you're going. Torso is Cora's lover. Yeah. That Crippen decided after he took care of Cora and actually properly disposed of her body, he's now getting rid of the man.

That was the origin of the jealousy. In this day and age, if there's still sample remaining, we can do SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphism testing. That's the genealogy type of DNA profile. We could today identify this torso, even if it's a female. Let's say it's Cora, but she's adopted or whatever else, and it's not biologically related to these great nieces that were used to compare and say, oh, nope, nope, that's not the same.

But with the Y chromosome present right now, assuming no contamination or anything else, that this is a bona fide sample from that torso found in Crippen's basement, we could identify that male. And if we could show historically that this is a male that knew Cora and possibly have information that this is a male that Cora was having a relationship with,

Then I think now Dr. Crippen is on the hook, not only for Cora's homicide, but also for her lover's homicide. I like that theory. I think that's an interesting theory. So the very last bit of this is the very persistent rumors that

after Crippen was hanged, of what happened with Cora. And the prevailing rumors were that there was someone who used the name Belle Rose. Remember, she was Belle Elmore. Belle Rose, who was reportedly living with Cora's sister in New York. So a woman named Belle Rose is living with Cora's sister, biological sister, as far as we know, in New York. And

that there was someone using that same name that came across to the U.S. via Bermuda to Ellis Island in 1910. So is it possible that Bell Rose is Cora? Yes, I think that's what we're saying. That she did do it. She left, that she finally left him. And she came and lived with her sister. Who's the torso? That's the big mystery. Now you go, okay, so did Cora kill a lover, put her in Crippen's basement, and then get the hell out of Dallas?

And Crippen is this innocent patsy in this whole thing who's hanged for Cora's homicide. And he literally was just deciding, oh, she left me and now I've got this Ethel that I'm really in love with and I'm going to live...

live the rest of my life. And next thing you know, the state basically pulls this guy's head off in the hanging. I don't know is the answer. I have no idea. Well, but the answers are out there with modern technology. Okay. You call Scotland Yard and I'll take the notes and then we'll... Okay.

We will put an end to this mystery. I think it's a fascinating case. I really do. And I like cases where you just don't know. I told you at the beginning of this, people up and leave. They've done it forever. And there's no way to trace them. Sure. Very frequently in 1910, it would have been difficult to trace her. And so there was that. But then you're right. The one fact we do know, the one definitive thing we do know is there is a torso in Dr. Crippen's cellar.

And it had a fatal dose. We don't know if that's what killed it, but it had a fatal dose of a poison that he had in his possession at one point. I would say it had a high dose of hyacinth, which would sedate and allow an offender to control that sedated person in order to kill and or dismember. You know, getting back to, in some ways, it's victimology here.

So let's say Cora is the killer of a lover. She is utilizing this sedative hyacinth in order to get that man under control so she could kill and start the dismemberment process.

But also, Dr. Crippen is this meek, not very physically robust man. And let's say he does go after one of Cora's male lovers, and he recognizes he physically can't subdue that person. And so he uses the hyacinth in order to be able to do it. Randy Kraft, Orange County, the angel of death out of Orange County, he is a meek little man, yet he's killing people.

that are much younger, much bigger, much stronger than he is. And how is he doing it? He is intoxicating them with alcohol and drugs to the point of sedation. So right now, with this torso potentially being male, I'm now thinking, I've got two suspects. I've got Cora and I've got Dr. Crippen. And it all depends on the identity of who this male was

And then how long that torso had been dead. Well, I'm going to give a huge buried bone shout out to our researcher for this who came up with some really great details I had not heard before, Maren, who was incredible. And I want to just go ahead and give a big shout out to our producer. We haven't introduced you all yet, Alexis Amorosi. We also have an incredible mixer, Ryo Baum and Patrice.

we have just a team that puts together, I think, just this product, this, you know, the information that we're able to give to you is thanks to this team here. And I'm so happy to have everyone. And this was the case that I was most excited about to talk to you about, Paul. And you did not fail because you came up with some ideas I had not thought of, honestly. So I would love

to solve this. I would love to finally put a rest to all of it, but I also like a good mystery, an enduring mystery. I don't want to know who Jack the Ripper is. There are things that I want to remain a mystery and this might be a mystery. I always want the answer and

Unfortunately, with some of these older cases, we will never have an answer. And I think that, you know, like you brought up Jack the Ripper. I think right now with what I know about the case and the absolute lack of verifiable evidence in the case, I think that will forever be a mystery.

Well, what a fantastic Halloween episode for us to end on with Dr. Crippen. And now we'll be less spooky, unfortunately. No, just kidding. We're always going to be spooky moving forward. Even if it's not October, we're always going to be spooky. I hope to always surprise you. That's my goal. So I'm looking forward to hearing you gasp like you always do next week. That damn Y chromosome. What the hell's going on there? That's right.

I never expected that. So now I'm like, okay, yeah, I will reach out to Scott with the art and say, hey, let's see what we can do. Let's get this answer. Kate doesn't want to know. She wants a mystery. I want to know. You can let me know next week. Sounds good.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.