Crippen Was Innocent?

[Lonan3]

GUARDIAN STORY

 

It is one of the most notorious cases in British legal history, the story of an apparently mild-mannered doctor who poisoned and dismembered his showgirl wife, then fled across the Atlantic with his young lover - only to be caught after a sharp-eyed captain recognised him from the newspapers.

Dr Hawley Crippen was hanged in 1910, after an Old Bailey jury took just 27 minutes to find him guilty of murdering his wife, Cora, who had vanished earlier that year.

Nearly a century later, research appears to show that the evidence which sent Crippen to the gallows was mistaken: the human remains discovered under his London house could not be those of Cora.

Working from a sample kept at the museum of the Royal London Hospital Archives, a team of American forensic scientists compared mitochondrial DNA from the remains presented at the trial with samples taken from Cora Crippen's surviving relatives. The results were conclusive, said Dr David Foran, the head of forensic science programme at Michigan State University. "That body cannot be Cora Crippen, we're certain of that," he said.

The team concede that they may never discover what happened to Mrs Crippen, but several intriguing clues emerged during the research. Cora sang on the British stage under the name of Belle Elmore. Ten years after the trial, a singer with a similar name was registered as living with Cora's sister in New York. Records show that the same woman entered the US through Ellis Island from Bermuda in 1910 shortly after Mrs Crippen disappeared.

 

So, nearly a century later, who really cares. Well, to begin with, I'd suggest that it may be of some passing interest to those who clamour for a return of the death penalty!

[Gladys]

How true.

 

We watched the Albert Pierrepoint film the other weekend, his final comment (in the film) on capital punishment was that it was pure and simple revenge. Sadly, irreversible.

[Bananaman]

As a relative of one of the last people to get the birch on the Island - only to be pardoned after the event, I dislike capitol and corporal punishment. I would rather the perpertato.....perpatrate.........the buggers that commited said heinous crime either did chokey and chokey properly. Or if in a certain age group had to do boot camp - with the Marines or the Paras. Obvioulsy not for rape, murder, question an MHK's sexuality, etc., etc..

 

That'll learn 'em

 

 

And if found to be innocent? They can either stay the course and join the army or leave. No smoke without fire, I've always said.

[cheeky boy]

Lets have a Bring Back the Birch debate

 

I love those nostalgia threads

 

I was up in court as a young rip and one of the sentencing options for my dreadful crime was the birch, I was bricking it

 

Having said that, getting birched was not a consideration when I committed the crime in the first place

[Gladys]

Were you birched?

[Pat Ayres]

I've actually handled the last birch used on the island, I would be bricking it as well.