A story of murder...

Late one evening in 1910 London, the American born Dr. and Mrs. Crippen bid farewell to their dinner guests. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that night except for the fact that that was the last time Mrs. Crippen was ever seen alive again. Over the next few weeks friends of the Crippens noticed that Mr. Crippen began pawning off his missing wife's jewelry and openly paraded around with his new love interest Ethel Clara LeNeve. When asked for the ware abouts of his wife, he simply replied she had taken ill on a trip to America and died there while visiting relatives. Unsatisfied with this answer, friends of Mrs. Crippen went to the police. During an interview with the police, Crippen admitted that he had lied about his wife. He told them that she had run away with one of her past lovers and he had lied to keep them both from any embarrassment. Satisfied with the answer, the police dropped the case. Everything might have gone off well after this had Mr. Crippen and Ms. LeNeve not suddenly decided to leave the country by boarding a boat to America in full disguise. When the police got wind of this, a thorough search of the house was conducted.

What the police found was of no surprise to them...a body buried in the basement of the house. What was surprising, however, was the complete absence of any limbs, bones, the head or anything else that might be used to identify the person. The only identifying mark on the body was a small scar on the abdomen. It was well known that Mrs. Crippen had undergone surgery in her past which left a small scar very similar to the one found on the body. There was also a trace of the chemical hyocine in the body which Crippen, being a doctor, had access to. The police took this to be absolutely incriminating evidence and had Mr. Crippen captured, tried and hanged in a matter of months. So did he really do it? Apparently Crippen received a letter while awaiting sentencing that was from his supposedly dead wife claiming she was sorry but could not identify herself for fear of embarrassment. The court didn't seem to think this was worth looking into.

Tom and I went to a talk on this murder last Friday by a toxicologist who believes there may be some evidence to prove he didn't. The murder case itself is second to only one in England and that of course is Jack the Ripper. There have been numerous movies and books on this case, not to mention a very VERY cheesy Broadway musical. Just recently this toxicologist was able to obtain a small piece of one of the samples taken from the body. He was also able to identify several relatives of Mrs. Crippens making it possible to do a DNA analysis. The thing that is so cool about this is the tests are all being done here at MSU. So if you are interested, I'll let you know how the results turned out.