Dr Crippen is innocent OK!

[desperance]

Gotta love retrospective justice. Tho' what continues to fascinate me is how fascinated other people become, in just a few old murder stories. Solved or apparently solved or otherwise. Crippen, Jack the Ripper, a few others. Why are murders from a hundred years ago worth so much time and ink and trouble? Because they're both mythic and practical, I suspect: long enough ago that they're sunk into the public consciousness, near enough to now that they can still be "investigated". Hence leading to lurid headlines, which everybody loves. Yeah, right...

Comments

[markdeniz.livejournal.com]

I love this stuff, I'm a sucker for it!

Not that I don't agree with you but...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I love this stuff, I'm a sucker for it!

Okay, but why? What's the fascination?

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Just because the body's DNA does not match that of his wife's known relatives doesn't mean that the body isn't that of his wife. It might mean that his wife was, say, a covert replacement for dead offspring (there was a lot of that about). Or something. But it certainly doesn't prove him innocent (like he'd care).

Crippen was only interesting because of a) the telegraph and b) Ethel being dressed as a boy when they ran off.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, there are a bunch of different questions here, and a bunch of different "levels of proof". It's my understanding that the United States system of justice is based on the British principles, so I THINK what I'm about to say is applicable to both court systems. . .

Let's start with the assumption that tests were done correctly and the body in the basement had no significant genetic connection to Mrs Crippen's family. That makes it significantly more likely that the body wasn't Mrs Crippen. Not, as you say, impossible, but if that fact had been part of the trial, would that have caused enough reasonable doubt that Dr Crippen might have been found "not guilty?" I think that's certainly possible.

However, as I understand it, once a verdict has been reached, the burden of proof shifts, and, to gain a pardon, you need to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person is NOT guilty. And I think that, with the difficulty of getting really good genetic material from a hundred-year-old corpse, and the possibility, as you say, that Mrs Crippen might have been adopted, there still is enough reasonable doubt to avoid giving a pardon.

In any case, the possibility raises a second question: if the body WASN'T Cora Crippen, who was it?

And why did it have the same four-inch surgical scar that Mrs Crippen did?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

However, as I understand it, once a verdict has been reached, the burden of proof shifts, and, to gain a pardon, you need to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person is NOT guilty. And I think that, with the difficulty of getting really good genetic material from a hundred-year-old corpse, and the possibility, as you say, that Mrs Crippen might have been adopted, there still is enough reasonable doubt to avoid giving a pardon.

I don't think you're right about that, at least not in English law. In fact, I'm sure you're not. Any significant doubt thrown on the reliability of a conviction is enough to win at least a retrial, if not an outright acquittal. (We don't deal so much in pardons: a pardon implies guilt with remission of penalty, it's a royal prerogative (which means the govt decides, not the queen), and it's very rarely used. Dubious cases go back to the courts for resolution, unless there's some reason why they absolutely can't.)

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

And why did it have the same four-inch surgical scar that Mrs Crippen did?

Which would seem to imply that my original contention (it was Cora Crippen, but she wasn't a blood relative of her family) might be correct.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It is a lovely idea. And, as you say, entirely plausible. And, of course, not going to make a blind bit of difference to anything except the acres of post-facto discussion. To which I seem to have contributed. Ah, me...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Or that it was a fairly common kind of scar.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

That's it, RUIN my fun.

Spoilsport.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Nah, stick with it. xiphias could be right - but not necessarily. Surgical scars were not so common then. Tho' of course Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen. That's the joy, both tracks run in parallel. Which is of course why there are whole industries of speculation about these matters, because nothing disproves anybody else's best-loved theories. Which is why I get so bewildered by it all: when even the best-loved proof-of-the-day doesn't really prove anything, why oh why...?

Etc.

Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen.

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

Quite probably. Though why he would wish to manufacture a piece of evidence that would lead to him being hanged escapes me for the moment.

Re: Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Pfui, you're not trying. He wasn't thinking about the rope; it wasn't evidence, when he made it. There may (very possibly) not have been a crime when he made it, except perhaps for criminal conversation (which is still my favourite euphemistic legal term, and I still want to use it in a book). Maybe he was just kinky for women with scars. Just there. And then, who knows? Maybe his wife found out that he was scarring his lovers just the way she herself was scarred. Maybe she killed the poor girl herself, and then decamped. If the woman he was picked up with was scarred in the same place, that could be evidence for the defence. Or for the prosecution. Parallel tracks...

Re: Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen.

[markdeniz.livejournal.com]

Now you asked me why I find this stuff fascinating and all I can answer is look at your comments!

*grins*

Re: Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*blows raspberry*

*carries on commenting*

Re: Crippen was a doctor, he could make scars happen.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*isn't fascinated, honest*

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I saw a similar article recently, which was ironic because I just finished reading Thunderstruck by Eric Larson, which interweaves Crippen's story with Marconi's.

Not sure how I feel about resurrecting old cases (Patricia Cornwell did the same with Jack the Ripper not too long ago, but I didn't find her arguments as convincing as she'd like). It does seem kind of pointless, and yet certain cases do seem to stick in the public mind. I wonder if it's the gruesomeness, or some other factor?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Nobody finds Patsy's arguments half as convincing as Patsy does. My own problem with them is fundamental: almost all the recent Ripper identifications are famous men. Why is this? This is because famous men are the only men for whom we have the kind of incidental detail you need to build a Ripper case. You can't say "it was Joe Bloggs", because Joe Bloggs has left no mark in history; you have to say it was an aristocrat or an artist or whatever, because they're the only people with a recorded trail. The chances of said serial killer actually being a famous person in real life are negligible to non-existent - has any serial killer been a famous person otherwise? I suspect not, I suspect that's one of the motivations - so really their efforts fail at the first hurdle. I think.

[windsea.livejournal.com]

So we have three possibilities, I think:

-- Mrs. Crippen in the coal cellar, with biological relations
-- Mrs. Crippen in the coal cellar, with no biological relations as she was adopted but that was never known beyond a small family circle
-- God only knows who in the coal cellar, and she ain't talking

I'm not sure about the adoption possibility. Informal adoptions were rampant in those days and well into the 20th century; I know this from my own family. My mother and my aunt weren't sisters, which caused me huge confusion as an only child.

Pay attention now: my maternal grandmother's sister [M] married a man [D] whose sister died in childbirth with her second child, when the first was only five. The sister's husband was not a particularly house-husbandish sort, he didn't make enough to hire a nanny, and this was 1925. M & D just assumed that they would take the kids, and they did, with their father's blessing.

So my mother's aunt (her mother's sister), and her uncle by marriage, took in said uncle's niece and nephew. They grew up knowing who their biological and their adoptive parents were, and with their original birth certificates. In those days, that was all that was needed.

BUT it was all known, and not uncommon (beyond my aunt's prematurity and her adoptive mother keeping her in shoeboxes full of cotton wool on the warming side of a woodstove, which is yet another story). You would think that if Crippen's wife had been part of a family adoption at some point it would have come out in the incredibly intense media coverage of the time.

The only possibility is that she was adopted with no relation at all, and even that's hard to believe would not have somehow leaked.