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,
remembered forever after as the quintessential domestic murderer.
But if it was as straightforward as the prosecution alleged, 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 and other
questions remained tantalising mysteries for almost a century, until new
DNA tests conducted in America exploded everything we thought we knew
for sure about the story. This book, the first to make full use of this
astonishing new evidence, considers its implications for our
understanding of the case, and suggests where the real truth might lie.