MR CRIPPEN, CORA AND THE BODY IN THE BASEMENT

J. B. Priestley said 'It was hot news indeed; something was happening for the first time in world history. I am no connoisseur of murder, but I fancy that in the grisly annals Crippen and his actual crime would not be given a prominent place; it is what happened afterwards that is important.' It was an open-and-shut case. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American quack doctor had murdered his wife, the music hall performer Belle Elmore, and buried parts of her body in the coal cellar of their North London home. But by the time the remains were discovered he had fled the country with his mistress, disguised as his son. After a thrilling chase across the ocean, he was caught, returned to England, tried and hanged, forever remembered as the quintessential domestic murderer. But why did he leave only some of the body in his house, when he had successfully disposed of the head, limbs and bones elsewhere? Why did he stick so doggedly to a plea of complete innocence, when he might have made a sympathetic case for manslaughter? Why did he make no effort to cover his tracks if he really had been planning a murder? These are the tantalising questions that remain in a mystery nearly 100 years old. New DNA tests have been conducted in America which exploded everything we thought we knew for sure about the case and this book is the first to make full use of this astonishing new evidence. Written with the assistance of scientists, experts in law, toxicology and mortuary science. 236pp, photos.