Mrs. Dr. Crippen PT 1 54:46

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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. ♪♪

Back again, Paul. Here we are. Here we are. I'm so excited to see you again to talk about another great case.

And, you know, what's wonderful about, I think, this show is that you and I get to know each other better. At the beginning, we get to chit-chat about lighter stuff, which I always appreciate. I never chit-chat about light stuff on my other two shows, like ever. There's very little light things happening in Wicked Words or Tenfold Wicked, so I'm happy to be able to do this on Buried Bones. Well, that's what I'm all about, is to bring a little bit of levity into the podcast. I'm probably the opposite of that, right? Yeah.

I think you have a lot more levity than people think. And, you know, I wondered, because this is Halloween season, I wondered what your stance was on the paranormal. Have you ever had an encounter where you weren't, you just weren't sure, or did you have like a feeling? You've been in so many houses and so many crime scenes. Did you ever just have that feeling?

that feeling like something else was happening there that you couldn't explain? You know, I can't say that I've had any, like, paranormal experience. You know, I will say, like, when I visit, like, for cold cases, when I visit a crime scene, there's an energy present that I feel. And I don't know, I mean, that just could just be me. You know, that's just because I'm like, okay, you know, now I'm really engaged in the moment.

But I'm also looking at the environment where the victim was killed, envisioning where that victim was. And then, you know, I can even think, I mean, many examples, but one notable example is the Zodiac case with Blue Rock Springs, which was the second case in the Zodiac case. You know, I've been there many times. Now there's a parking lot where the victims were killed, but there are these huge trees everywhere.

And those trees most certainly were present at the time of the homicide. And that's just something I go, those trees experienced this case if they could only talk, right? And that's part of just when I get into these environments, that energy and everything else, I can't attribute it to paranormal. There's a part of me that wants to believe in the paranormal and then there's a part of me, the analytical scientific side, that's very, very skeptical. Yeah.

Well, I'm exactly where you are. There's the journalist side of me that is so factually based. I'm a nonfiction author. Nothing that I do or say is made up. Everything is factual. But there's this other side of me who I think because of my family and my family history where I came from, my dad was a law professor at the University of Texas University.

And my mother was a clinical psychologist who was a true crime fan. And so we often did talk just about death and where energy goes and what is there. And so much of my interest in true crime is rooted in, this is not a ghost story, but it is a little something that has just been part of my background. When my parents divorced and my dad got remarried,

we moved out to my stepmother's property, which is about an hour outside of Austin. And we moved into this house. And on the property, it was about 500 acres. And on the property, there were other houses there. This was an old house built in 1895, and we called it the big house.

And it was, you know, white columns and sprawling, several different levels, and just like a really incredible house with original wood plank floors. But this house from 1895 belonged to

the county's very first coroner. Oh. Who did what coroners do in what would become our dining room to bodies, hundreds and hundreds of bodies over the years in this one house where I would sit and have Thanksgiving dinner every year.

And so from the beginning, you have to think something's happening in this house. I mean, you can't have that many bodies in one place, in one house, without there being spirit around. So this dining room was the former morgue. That's what you're telling me. Yep. Wow. Okay. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Did you see any spirits walking down the hallway? No, I didn't. Okay.

Now, listen, I heard a lot of things. And my dad was very much like you. He was very, you know, pragmatist and he was an attorney and he was like, this is all BS. Don't, my stepmother was always trying to scare me. And we had one of those paintings, one of those 18th century paintings where they're looking right at you. And so because they're looking right at you, the eyes follow you everywhere. That was in the dining room, which was right next to my bedroom. Right.

And of course, you know, my dad just sort of blew off all of it. The floors creak. Well, we do have eight cats, which is true. The windows crackle. Well, they're really old windows.

But I think it's like what you say, there's just that spirit there. And I just refuse to believe, even though I feel like I am really, really almost scientifically geared towards thinking that if something's not there and I can't see it, then it is not there. And boy, I don't really feel like that, not in this house. And it's the only time I've ever felt like that. No matter where I've traveled, what kind of buildings I've been in, this house is

that my dad lived in until he died. I felt like there is just something

stuff all over the place. None of it bad, but just there. Just there. Well, I guarantee there's stuff all over that dining room. I've been in modern morgues, and I know it ends up on the floor in modern morgues. Could you imagine the practices in the late 1800s in terms of autopsies? I know. All the body fluids and tissue and everything that ended up on that floor? Yeah. That just... And

And we did have all those cats. Yes. You just ruined my ghost story, Paul, by bringing in facts. So all those eight cats were congregating in the dining room and licking the floorboards. That's disgusting. Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy Halloween.

Okay, now into more serious things, more serious topics. I have been waiting to bring you in on a case that people think they know, but maybe we don't fully know all of the information. And even if you do know everything about this case, you haven't heard Paul Holes talk about it. And that's what we're here for. So just a disclaimer, this is going to be a two-part episode. There's way too many details for us to go over, and I just want to examine all of it. So,

So let's get started and let's go ahead and set the scene. So this is a great time period for me. This is 1910 and it takes place in London, but it's involving at least one American. And this is the story of Holly Harvey Crippen, who was a doctor. And I had known this story, just bits and pieces of it, which is probably poor wording on my part, but just bits and pieces. I've known this story.

Over the years, but I never really dug into it. I never read a whole lot about it. And when I mention Crippen to you, I think your ears perk up a little bit because you've read a little tiny bit about him also. Is that right? Yeah, you know, when I first started my assignment as a deputy sheriff criminalist, the crime lab that I was at had this amazing library that had been built up by...

the original founders of the lab, and they had some amazing old texts. And one of the books did discuss this Crippen case. Now, I read this back in 1992-ish. The name Crippen and the circumstances rang a bell when you told me that's what we're going to be talking about, but I do not remember the details.

Yeah. So I'm very interested to see what memories I can pull up based on what I read about this case. Well, there's a lot of forensics and there's a lot of twists and turns with the Crippen case. And then I was very surprised just at the mystery behind it. And I know you love a good mystery just like I do. So that's why I thought this would be a good case for us to look at that people have heard of but not analyzed by you just yet.

All right. Well, I'll see what I can bring to the table. So, Crippen is a doctor, and already I think things get a little complicated because as a doctor, he's trained in multiple disciplines, and he understands, what, anatomy first, maybe some toxicology. He has gone through medical school in the late 1800s.

So he would have known some of this stuff. So already he's a suspicious guy, I'm assuming. Well, somebody with medical training, of course, when you start talking about a homicide, what knowledge is that medical person bringing to the table in order to commit the homicide?

you know, sometimes the commission of the crime is not any different than what the average person does. But sometimes they rely on their medical training in order to try to get away with the crime. And that's what becomes important is, okay, is there clues within the case that indicates the person has specialized knowledge? Well,

Well, and one thing that, you know, I've read an awful lot about with profiling is that idea that if you are a baker, a cake baker, and you commit a murder just because you murder someone, does that mean you stop having the instincts of a cake baker? So maybe you're writing, you know, in one of my cases, you're writing a ransom note with certain loops that...

It's ingrained in you, right? So with this doctor, maybe it lets doctors, people with medical training, get away with stuff. But also, it might yield some clues if you, someone like you, can look at a body and say, boy, this does look like somebody who knew what they were doing with some training. A cake baker? Yeah.

So are they? No. I mean, so I'm like, okay, so you've got a body and it has this person taking frosting and written a ransom letter. Where is this going with a cake baker? I'll have Alexis remove that. Well, I don't know if it necessarily needs to be taken out. I was just thinking, of course, I went to the extreme. All right. What does a cake baker, you know, bring to the table?

But you are absolutely correct in that offenders will commit crimes and rely upon their own skill sets that they've developed, whether in their personal life or their professional life.

in order to assist them commit the crime. That's how, by evaluating the scene, what was done to the victim and the behaviors that the offender expresses can give insight as to who the offender is. So what we know so far about said offender, Harvey Crippen, is that he's been training as a doctor in the late 1800s. I would say training is a loose term.

I have done stories on many doctors who it was really more of a mentorship. They would be under someone. He had experience in ear, nose, and throat, it sounds like, also dentistry and homeopathic medicine, which was very, very popular in the 1800s using herbs. And so he had an array of skills that I'm sure all involved being able to use instruments. Yeah.

Yeah. You might have to educate me on this. He's an ear, nose, throat guy. But in this day, medical doctors first go through medical school before they specialize. So they get a holistic approach to human anatomy, to physiology, et cetera, before they specialize. Was that the same back then? Yeah.

You know, in the late 1800s, medical school, you would have had the full anatomy classes. So you wouldn't have specialized right immediately. So he would have understood surgery and every aspect of anatomy that he needed to. And also, I think he took dentistry courses. If they were organized courses, I'm sure that they went over a lot of aspects of that also. So I think he sounded actually well-rounded. Okay. So now we have the doctor who has a broad skill set.

And tell me more. I mean, is he the suspect in this case? Are we thinking he's the offender in the case? We are. He is the suspect in the case. And that's what's interesting from the beginning is I'm going to say suspect. I'm not going to say offender. Okay. I'll explain that later. Well, if I can put out my definition, because people sometimes confuse the term suspect and sometimes are questioning why I use the term offender. Okay.

When I talk and we have a crime and we know that there is a person that has committed the crime, but we don't know who that person is. Okay. It's this unknown entity. Well, I refer to that unknown entity as the offender. So,

So it's just, there is this entity that has committed the crime. Okay. A suspect in my world is somebody who has come to the attention of authorities and there's something suspicious about them in which now authorities are taking a look at as to whether or not they are the offender and can they prove the case. And in,

unsolved cases. You know, let's say it's a whodunit homicide. I respond out and for weeks we have no idea who committed this crime.

We can have tens, if not hundreds of suspects. Just because somebody is a named suspect doesn't mean they are the offender. That just means authorities are going, oh, I need to dig into this guy a little bit more. So that's how I utilize those terms. And then of course, you have individuals who are arrestees, individuals that are now charged with a crime and their defendants. And so it shows where they are at in the justice process. But when we are talking about an unsolved case,

I'm either going to say it's an offender. Some people will say perpetrator. I'm not into the, oh, it's a perp. It's the perp. I don't like that term. I always say offender. And then if I'm saying the suspect, I'm not saying that's the person I believe did it. I'm just saying, oh, there's something about this person that I need to look at

whether it be forensically or investigatively, in order to see whether or not they were the ones that committed the crime. We're going to go with suspect in this case for right now, and maybe suspect throughout the whole case. We'll see. Oh, wow. Right. Okay, so we have Harvey Crippen, Dr. Crippen, I'll just call him Dr. Crippen from now on,

And he's a little bit of a mystery in his 20s. We know he's from Michigan, Coldwater, Michigan, and he was in Detroit for a little bit, and he traveled the country, which was very common in the 1800s. And actually, common now, my niece is going to be a traveling nurse, and she's very excited about that. So this was very much like that. He would go from city to city, wherever he was needed. I'm sure he made a nice income doing that. He had

up meeting a woman in the late 1880s, meeting a woman and marrying her, and her name was Charlotte Bell. And they lived in Utah and they had a son together. And she unexpectedly passed away in the early 1890s.

And what's interesting about Crippen, and I'm not saying that's suspicious, although I'm suspicious of everything, but unexpectedly passed away could be a multitude of things. It just probably means not a prolonged illness, I'm assuming. And we are talking about the 1800s. Yeah. This was something that was relatively common. I mean, today, you know, of course, we have many things that cause sudden death.

But back then, with the limited medical interventions to prevent death, I'm sure that there was exponential increase in the number of these sudden deaths. Yeah. And so what's interesting is that Crippen, I don't have a good sense of what his relationship with his first wife was like. But this child, when she has the child and then she dies, the child is young, quite young, a toddler.

And so he, Dr. Crippen, sends the boy to go live with his parents. He really just didn't have much interaction with his son going forward. This is not at all surprising to me. And this is in almost every case that I've seen where the mother dies, the child is sent to a family member, of course, where there's a mother there, a maternal figure there. So as terrible as it sounds now, just in context, it just was so commonplace for a man to just

If he couldn't find a woman immediately to take over and to marry, then the child would be sent off to what he would consider to be an appropriate household in which to be raised. Sure. And I can see that where if you have somebody who's very, whether it be a man or a woman, you know, that's very career-centric,

and now loses a partner that is the primary caregiver to that child. That child is now going to be tough to be very involved with if you're really focusing in on your profession. And so you're looking for help. Obviously, Crippen is like, well, you know what?

I've got people over there that can handle the kid and doesn't sound like he was very attached to the child. No, I don't think it sounds like it at all. You're right. So he has left his child. He's continuing to travel and make money as a doctor. And less than two years after Charlotte Bell died, Crippen marries another woman and she's 17. Her name is Cora Turner. Sounds very young to me and it is very young, but in the 1800s, this was not surprising at all.

It doesn't make it right. It just is a fact. He married a 17-year-old girl. And we aren't really sure where they met, but it seems like it would have been in New York because she was in that area and he was also in that area. So here's where we start thinking about the relationships. We haven't really been able to talk much about the dynamics of relationships.

Okay, well, just remind me, at the time that he's marrying the 17-year-old, what was her name again? Her name is Cora Turner, and it looks like he's about in his 30s, 32, 33, and she's 17. Okay, first name is Cora? Yes, Cora Turner. Okay, so like my dog's name, Cora. Yeah, I didn't want to say that, but yeah, it's like your dog. I was just making sure I was hearing it right. I don't want Cora the yellow lab mixed up in all of this, so I did not want to say Cora.

Okay. Yes, Cora Turner. So 17, so there's 15 years time in between the two of them. And here's where, as I said before, the dynamics of the relationship come in. I don't know if you believe in the opposites attract. Do you believe, we'll start with that. Do you believe in opposites attract or not?

Do you believe more so that opposites attract and it works out? Oh, geez. I would say, you know, in my personal experience, yes, I can see sometimes opposites do attract just because that person that you're interested in, there's aspects that it's like, well, I'm unfamiliar with that. And that's enticing. Now, the question as to whether or not it's compatible in a longer term relationship,

versus if you have greater commonalities. You know, like in my experience with relationships, it seems like longevity is going to be easier to obtain when there's some commonalities where you can have, you enjoy life together versus apart. I agree. I have that same experience. I would love to say opposites attract in my sense, but it doesn't. I work well with somebody...

Very similar to me, as egocentric as that sounds. It's the truth. So unfortunately for Dr. Crippen and for his new wife, they were very, very different. And I think not in a productive, oh, let's learn from each other kind of way. I think in a acrimonious eventually kind of way. So Dr. Crippen, if you look at his photos, he seems to be sort of meek.

He's quiet. He's bespeckled, which I love, and sort of unassuming, and he's short and slight. And Cora is the total opposite, his wife. She is vivacious and energetic and lively and very bold and outspoken. And so the dynamic that friends and family say they witness is...

that he shrinks a little bit in her presence, that he is a little overpowered with her. And really, really in the media, once the story opens up, there are a lot of accusations that she dominated him and she belittled him in public, all kinds of things that were really pretty disparaging. But it really does sound like this was a clash of personalities.

I'm actually surprised because here you have the elder in the relationship who's a medical doctor. He's got success. He's got life experience. Marrying somebody so young, I would almost expect the opposite. He would dominate that relationship and she would be subservient. But it sounds like her personality is so strong that she is one that is kind of taking control. Yep.

What's difficult about this is that, like in so many of our cases that we deal with, when we come down to needing data about the relationship, just to understand the dynamics, understand the motive, sometimes the only source you have is the offender, the person, the killer, whoever did it. So it's one-sided. So we don't really know what caused it.

Cora, who we will talk about soon what her role is, we don't know what Cora's interpretation of their relationship was. We just know what some friends and family observed from the outside. And it seemed like this was not going to be a compatible relationship, which is dangerous. That's also important information, even though the victim, and I'm assuming that's Cora, Cora ends up being the victim in this case, right? Yes, if you want me to spoil it, yes. Okay.

Just kidding, yes. But talking to family, friends, and particularly with Cora would be who's her best girlfriend. This is acquiring victimology and understanding who Cora was and then also the relationship with her husband. That is critical. And in this day and age, that's the type of information that should be acquired very, very early on in an investigation.

Well, and one of the things that just seems like makes them incompatible is Quora really wants to be a famous singer. She's young and attractive and has this really kind of electric personality. So she has aspirations of being on stage. But often when we see later in the media, when people portray her talent, it is not talent that is going to be welcomed in Hollywood or anywhere else. So...

She is someone with big aspirations, and I'm not sure that Dr. Crippen would have been enough for her, number one. And number two, I don't know he could have offered the life that she really felt like she deserved. And why would she not deserve it? I mean, why not go after your dreams, even though this is 1900 England in New York? Right. Well, he's a doctor. He has financial assets. I'm assuming back then that doctors were also very well compensated.

Yeah. Okay, so he has the financial assets to be able to afford her a lifestyle and possibly the freedoms to pursue her singing and/or acting career.

They don't have kids. She's not staying at home so she can pursue something along those lines. He's not overbearing based on their dynamics. No. But is he preventing her from pursuing her dreams? Maybe. It seems like he's trying to help her, is my interpretation, in a way. They talk a lot and they decide that they need to make a change and they move from America to England.

and they eventually rent a home in London. I'm not sure whose idea this was. This is at 1900. But this is a big change to go from America to England. This is sort of the beginning of, in London, really where you could see the abject poverty versus the wealth. And so he rented a nice flat for her, and they went on with their lives.

And when you say he rented a nice flat for her, not a separate living quarter, but they are living together. Living together. They're living as man and wife. Okay. And she pursues a singing career in London, but she becomes a fixture on the social scene there, on the bohemian scene in London.

And she seems very happy. She would like to be a singer, but she starts trying to reimagine herself. And she takes the stage name called Belle Elmore, which becomes important later on. And she just comes off as a figure who is larger than life and

He buys her furs and he buys her jewelry. And she is really trying to get attention. And I'm not saying in a bad way. I'm saying this is the fact of this woman's personality. She's described in a really good book, The Trial of Holly Harvey Crippen. She's described in being good looking with large, dark eyes, raven black hair,

elaborately dressed and in the brightest colors. Her appearance was likened by one enthusiast to that of a bird of paradise. I will never be described in the...

Oh, come on. She sounds like a hoot. She sounds like a hoot to me. I mean, you know, she sounds like somebody who's a lot of fun. I'm not sure this would be somebody I would be married to, though. It seems intimidating. So she obviously is flourishing over there in London. Yes. What about his medical background?

career. Is this a step up for him going over to London or is he sacrificing aspects of his medical aspirations for her? Well, I don't get the impression that this has hurt his business. There was not, in my research, I have not found that there are board certifications that you have to pass in America. He could just transfer his skills and

from anywhere. You see in the 1800s and early 1900s, people move from country to country. And it's just like if you have the skills and people like you, you're going to make money. Nobody's looking for your medical license. So I'm assuming he did well, well enough to buy her furs and keep her in the lifestyle that she wanted. So still the marriage was tumultuous. And an acquaintance of Dr. Crippen said that he can pretty much tolerate anything except

if she cheated on him. 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.

He was a very, very jealous person, which I'm assuming is insecurity more than anything else. And that's dangerous. Yeah. And when you say tumultuous relationship, was there any reports that went past maybe verbal arguments? Was one or the other physically abusive to the other one? Not that I have heard about, no. Today we hear, oh yeah, the police have been called there multiple times for domestic violence. You know, they just didn't have those kind of records.

From all of the information we have, there didn't seem to be an instance of violence between the two of them. There just seemed to be this older man who was very busy trying to keep his younger wife happy. And he was losing his cool because he felt like she was flirting with other men. The friends said they quarreled often because she was pretty unattractive and she had a lot of male friends.

and when he would take her out, men would pay attention to her, of course, because she was beautiful in the way she dressed and just her energy. And they said that it just drove him insane, that he was so upset over it, and they would argue about it. And the career that she's pursuing is, you know, she's going to get a lot of attention. Flashy, yeah. Yes. So, you know, already we're seeing this dynamic, but something that's so interesting about it is,

He is described as meek, physically meek, as a personality, someone with not a dynamic personality. So this is not who you would look at and say, this is a brute, this is a guy, she really needs to watch it. I mean, this does not seem like a ready-made killer to me at all. When we say meek, now, I'm assuming we don't know his physical specs, how tall, how heavy, anything like that. I'm going to show you a picture, and it's an unfortunate picture. He

He is not big. He's considered pretty slight. And then below I'm showing you is Cora. So really big difference. And actually, it looks like maybe a size difference between them, as in she might be larger than he is. Okay. When I take a look at, let's say, two combatants, size is part of it. Skills in terms of combat are part of it. But also just their innate strength.

has to be factored in. A smaller male that looks very slight, and we see this in like the boxing world or the MMA world, but they are very, very strong. It's part of the male biology. And so that's where it becomes tough to just kind of compare two photographs and say, oh, she would dominate him in a physical confrontation. I'd go, well, hold on. I wouldn't necessarily say that.

he may be a lot more physically capable than that nerdish photo shows him to be. Stop saying nerdish. I'm going to show you another photo of him that puts him in perspective a little bit more. But first...

I would also say we should never underestimate adrenaline and sheer anger also when it comes to strength. I mean, you hear all those stories about people being able to lift cars off of other people. When you're angry or upset or highly motivated, I would never discount anyone.

being able to really be physical against someone. So Crippen and his insane jealousy, he accused Cora of having multiple affairs, of which I think she denied. But all of this leads up to his friends saying that he was really getting to kind of a breaking point. He said she was violent because

and was constantly threatening to leave him, but one person's point of view. So this is not a reliable source, obviously. Yeah, and this is all coming from Crippen's side, right? Right. Okay, so if he is being suspected in a crime, of course, he's trying to justify how cantankerous the relationship was, how difficult she was. Excuses for any marital discontent was based on her behaviors and not his.

Yeah, and you know, her friends eventually did say, yes, she was unhappy with the marriage. She thought about leaving him, that they did fight all the time. Now, Dr. Crippen seems like the man who has been harmed through this whole thing. In the meantime, he has been having an affair himself. He had a mistress named Ethel. Please, anyone who knows French, don't criticize me too hardly on this, but it's Leneve, I believe, Leneve. I'm just going to call her Ethel, though.

So he was having an affair. She was his secretary for several years, and

And she has been described more closely to Crippen, very reserved, really neat and quiet, very similar to Dr. Crippen. So now it sounds like he's found someone who is a little bit more his speed, someone who is a little bit more of his personality type. Yeah, you know, as we talked about earlier, you know, do opposites attract or he's found somebody who sounds more similar to him, right?

And he's maybe frustrated with Cora's acting out and, you know, all her escapades. So he's now finding solace with Ethel. So Ethel, he's having an affair with Ethel. We don't know what Cora's doing. There's rumors she's having an affair, but we can't confirm that. We just know that her friends say she knew about his affair with Ethel, and Cora was very unhappy about that. So...

Now somebody has to make a decision. Are we going to stay married? Are we going to divorce? Because a decision is going to be made one way or the other here pretty soon. So when people are going through this, I'm assuming it's important to talk to friends and family about what their thought process was leading up to this. I never understand why people just don't get a divorce. Why don't you get a divorce? Why does murder have to be into this? Has there been a consistent answer that you have found about why people choose

Murder over divorce? Nope. He's shaking his head. The audience can't see you shaking your head. I know. I'm sitting here trying to make all sorts of gestures, passing it through the microphone. Now, you know, it all comes down to the circumstances. Is there money involved?

That's a primary thing. People will often choose to kill versus split their assets with somebody that they are outraged with, they're jealous about. They don't want to see benefit from a divorce. There could be cultural and or religious reasons, especially back during this time.

where it may be a stigma to pursue a divorce. And again, this is your wheelhouse more than mine, but I'm just kind of extrapolating back having been born and raised Catholic. That was one of those things where I am divorced, but it was when I was going into it, is that going to be something that's accepted by my family, by the church, et cetera?

And ultimately, there's the, I don't want that person to enjoy their life with somebody else. Yeah. That's the sad aspect. And to be frank, it's men. There are some women that resort to violence as a result of jealousy, but men are the ones that predominate it. And it's such a sad and tragic aspect to these situations. It's just like, yes, get a divorce, enjoy the rest of your lives. Yeah. Yeah.

So it doesn't seem like divorce is in the cards for this couple. And it seems like things are going to be coming to a head one way or the other really soon. So the night where this all starts to unravel, it's a cold night in January in London. I've been in January in London. It's very cold most of the time in 1910.

And Cora is hosting a dinner party in the Crippins' home, which again tells you a little bit about their socioeconomic background. They were in a nice area. She liked to entertain. She liked to be the center of attention. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that as someone who really enjoyed society and liked being in London at the time.

So, Crippen and Cora say goodnight to friends. We're going to assume that Ethel is not there, smartly. Cora says goodbye to her friends. They kiss her goodbye. And then she's never seen again. Really? She disappears after that. So, at a party, people are there. She says goodnight. And that's the last her friends and family see of her. Okay.

So now she's missing. Yep. Are the attendees of this party interviewed? Eventually. Okay. Not right now because this was what was wonderful about being a criminal in the 1800s and the early 1900s.

Everything was so painfully slow. You'll appreciate this. I interviewed a woman who's an expert on policing in 1800s England, and she talked about how they had a system where if the police had gotten a really good description of a criminal, they would handwrite it and literally

it was like a relay race. They would race it from one post to the next, like handing it over because they didn't have any other options. Of course, there's no phones and the telegraph had not been invented in the early 1800s. So this is a time where you could simply say what Crippen said, which is she went back home to the U.S. I haven't heard from her in a while. If I don't hear from her soon, I'm just going to assume that she got sick, kind of like my first wife did, kind of like a lot of people do, and died there. But I might never know what happened to her.

And that's what he said to friends who asked about her. Yeah, you know, and trying to verify whether or not she actually left. Did she make it on a ship? Did she actually make it to port? Yep. It's so different then. I mean, I could see where that would, if it occurs at all, it minimally would take months to try to verify that. Right. And she could have gone under an assumed name. What if she left him? That's what he was insinuating. She said she was going to leave me. She left.

She could have gotten fake identification. She didn't even need identification to travel. She could have gone back to America and just vanished. And that is what happened with a lot of people. So this was a very difficult story to refute, like you said. Well, this is again...

looking at the victimology. Let's look at Cora. She likes the high life. She likes the furs. She likes the jewelry. She likes the attention. If she's picking up and leaving, I don't see her as abandoning financial assets. So, investigatively, it's now, okay, what does she have access to after she leaves? Had she set up other accounts? Did she have her own accounts before this happened?

Does she have assets back in the United States that she could live off of? For me, I'm now thinking, okay, if I can't physically and quickly lay eyeballs on her, I'm now wanting to take a look at, okay, what are the clues about who she is that I would be expecting her to leave to tell me, yes, she likely has left? And it's like, oh, yeah.

two months ago, took a block of money from a joint account and put it in an individual account. Right. Now has the means in order to continue living the lifestyle that she wants. If you worked in 1910 as an investigator, you would be perpetually frustrated. Women did not have bank accounts most, certainly were not, did not have bank accounts and definitely not joint bank accounts. I'm sure he gave her a cash allowance. That's pretty much what always happened.

She could travel on cash. She didn't have checks, I'm sure, in her own name. It doesn't sound like she took things with her like furs and jewelry necessarily. But if she met the right people in America, people could set her up and she could find work somewhere and again, live totally anonymously. The

issue is this. Crippen started raising suspicion because he moved Ethel into the house about five to six weeks after people last saw Cora at that dinner party. And Ethel starts wearing her furs, and she wears Cora's jewelry. And of course, this ticks off all of the people in high society who had become friends with Cora.

And they start pressuring Crippen, where is she? Where is she? And he just pleads ignorance. I have no idea where she is. She wanted to leave me. She probably left me and that was it. They go to the police and that's what kickstarts this. Okay. His mistress is now being afforded the very luxuries that Cora was living off of. And it's only six weeks later. Yeah.

That's a quick grieving process. Okay, so this is what it comes down to because I talk about this all the time. I don't judge the way people grieve just because people grieve differently, but they sounded like this marriage was not such a great marriage to begin with. Mm-hmm.

And it sounded like it was running its course already. And there was talk of leaving and he was having an affair and she might've been having an affair. So maybe he just thought, thank God she's gone. Good riddance. I'm just saying devil's advocate here. For sure. You know, people do grieve differently. There's different timeframes. But as an investigator-

If you see something that's way outside the norm, then it's a red flag. You have to consider it. You have to look at it. It may be innocent, but you have to look at it. Yeah, and I agree with that. So there was a detective named Walter Dew who worked on the Jack the Ripper case. Jack the Ripper happened just two decades in 88, 1888, and this is 1910. So these same police officers who worked Jack the Ripper are getting involved with this case because it was becoming big news.

So Walter Dew listened to Crippen and Crippen said, you know, I have no idea where she is at first. And then he said, I think she's in America. And he said, I'm just embarrassed. I don't want to talk to her friends about the fact that she left me. I think that's what happened. And Dew really felt like Crippen, who had so many insecurities to begin with, he thought that that made sense, actually.

He said that Crippen was being distant and not forthcoming with information because he was embarrassed that his wife left him. And he didn't want everyone in the newspapers knowing that he had had this woman leave him. Right. But here's the conflict.

Six weeks later, his mistress moves in with him. Yeah. She's assuming the role of Cora. If he's so embarrassed about having Cora left him, you would think having a mistress move in that quickly, that would be embarrassing. Yet he's letting that happen. That's where now I'm going, okay, anytime there seems to be conflict within the investigation team,

that's where attention needs to be paid. Well, and what's interesting is that the investigators don't really get involved until six months after Cora is last seen. Six months. And I think it must have to do with his status as a doctor, which I think held even more weight than it would today. I think they just thought there's no way that this little meek doctor would have done anything violent to his wife.

Of course she left him. And it wasn't until the friends spent months pressuring them to go and interview him that this happened. Okay, so we're talking about six months, which is a substantial period of time. Yeah. So what happens after six months, once the investigators start engaging into this case? So Walter Du, here's all this information. He registers that this guy is an embarrassed husband whose wife left him. And then he just tried to move on.

quickly by moving this mistress in. There seemed to be no reason for him to have killed his wife. She's probably in America. And Walter Dew bought it. And he just said, case closed, no big deal. The issue is this.

Walter Dew went back to go talk to Crippen the next day after this interview. So this is summertime London. Cora disappeared end of January 1910. So this is summertime London. He goes back the next day, knocks on Crippen's door, expecting to see Crippen or Ethel there in this house, and they're gone. Everything's gone. 24 hours after he interviewed Crippen about the disappearance of his wife, they have moved out and they're gone.

and no idea where they've gone to. No, on the run. But I want you to keep an open mind about on the run because not everything is as it seems in this story. There are a lot of twists and turns because maybe Dr. Crippen is saying, forget this. I don't want to be talked to by a cop anymore. I don't want to be under scrutiny. I'm tired of chorus friends knocking on my door. I just want to clear out of here and start my new life with this woman who actually loves me. Maybe that is his thought process.

But Dew is now suspicious, just like you. I can see the look on your face. You're now suspicious. Well, yeah. And so, of course, I'm wondering what Dew saw, you know, at the house. I mean, this is a situation to where all the furniture and all the possessions inside the house were left and you just have two people that have

absconded with their checkbooks and, of course, not credit cards back in this time frame. But did they just kind of take off? Or did they back up a moving vehicle and get this house cleared out of all the items that

have value. The impression I got is that in order to live in this house, you would need the things that they took with them. So they cleared out the house as much as they could. So this is somebody who's ready to hit the road, either arguably to get away just in general because something happened to his wife or just said, forget this, I'm going back to America or somewhere else and I'm done with this town. It seems like this,

type of gathering up stuff out of the house and everything that Dew is seeing is gone. I mean, that's resource intensive. It's not like they could just call up a company at 10 p.m. at night in London back in 1910 and say, come over here and I need to get stuff done. He must have prearranged something to be ready to go. And then whatever that tripwire was...

It may not necessarily have been having a detective show up at the door, but he ended up prearranging resources in order to be able to just get the hell out of Dodge and

And then when Detective Dew showed up, that was the trigger. That's the tripwire where resources come overnight, we're out of here. My impression of police officers, detectives in the early 1900s, particularly in a place like London, is they would have given him notice. I don't think they would have gone and...

knocked on the door sporadically, especially a doctor. This is not something that's supposed to be suspicious right now. He's just interviewing him. That's the impression I got. I think he would have known probably a few days before that he was being initially questioned and

He had this story, and then that was it. And then the next day, unexpectedly, the officer came back by, and this is what happens. Oh, wow. So I think he probably knew a couple days beforehand that this was coming, that he was at least going to get questioned. And so maybe that notification, hey, we're going to come question you about the disappearance of Cora, is what triggers him to put the resources in place that...

that once he's questioned and he's able to say, denial, Cora's in the United States, I don't know what happened. And then once Detective Du leaves, boom. Yep. The truck backs up to the house and they're out of there. From my perspective, this is a poor investigative strategy. Here you have a wife that has disappeared. Of course, the spouse is going to be one of the primary individuals that you want to get information out of. Mm-hmm.

and to send some sort of notification, oh, on this date, we're going to want to interview you, blah, blah, blah. You're not getting that organic response that you get if you knock on the door and say, hey, we want to talk to you. Today, that's what investigators, they want to see how somebody responds.

in that moment versus somebody like a Dr. Crippen, who's obviously intelligent, he's sophisticated, he's going to think about things, he's going to be able to develop certain stories and rehearse those stories in the 48 hours after the notification. And so you've lost that element of surprise to assess an organic response to law enforcement knocking on your door.

I agree. And I'm just assuming that's what happened. But regardless, Crippen and Ethel are gone. And now is the opportunity for Scotland Yard to come in because this is now an abandoned property. And they are now searching the house.

because now they're wondering what's happened with Cora. So now they are suspicious and they start searching. And after two or three days of searching, they find something in the home cellar. It doesn't all bad things. They all happen in the cellar of a house, at least in my experience. So they go into the house and beneath the bricks is a mutilated corpse. ♪

Okay, so that's suspicious. It is suspicious. So this case, as you can tell, I'm not even halfway through my research. So this has to be a part two. So I hope you enjoy the story of Dr. Crippen because you're going to hear it again next week. We're going to have to talk about it again. Yeah, but we're going to be talking about what ultimately happened because right now we've got a missing wife. We've got a missing husband.

We've got the suspect husband and his mistress missing, and we have a corpse in the basement. Oh, gosh. That's like a Saturday night for me. I love hearing about all that stuff. So get your popcorn ready. The popcorn, yep. Okay, so I'll see you next week.

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.