Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Cream continued his practice in Chicago, but expanded his repertoire by inventing what he called an ‘elixir for epilepsy’. It wasn’t long before he acquired quite a considerable following of patients who swore by his miracle potion. One of his patients, a railway agent by the name of Daniel Stott, made the terrible mistake of sending his wife, Julia, to the good doctor to fetch regular doses of his elixir. However, Cream provided her with more than a dose of medicine, and Stott eventually became suspicious that the couple were having an affair. When things got a little too close for comfort, Cream added a new ingredient to Stott’s medication – strychnine. Stott died on June 14, 1881, and if it hadn’t been for an act of sheer stupidity, Cream would have got away with the perfect crime.

  Stott’s death had been attributed to his epilepsy, but for some unknown reason Cream wrote a letter to the coroner saying that the pharmacist was responsible for his death and requested that the body be exhumed. Although the coroner dismissed the letter, the District Attorney was not so disdainful and ordered that Stott’s body be exhumed. When the coroner found that his stomach contained an unusually large amount of strychnine, Cream’s luck had finally run out. He was found guilty of murder and imprisoned for life in the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet.

  given a second chance

  Due to good behaviour, or possibly a bribe, Cream was granted early release on July 31, 1891. After a quick detour to Canada to pick up an inheritance of $16,000, Cream set sail for England. Back on home ground, Cream started to frequent many of his previous haunts, such as the prostitutes who worked by Waterloo Bridge. He had taken lodgings near St Thomas’ Hospital, where he posed as a resident doctor, signing his name ‘Thomas Neill, MD’. Back to his old habit of ingesting large amounts of morphine, Cream returned to his other, even nastier habit of murder.

  Just two days after his return to England, two young prostitutes fell victim to his promises of good health. Matilda Clover and Ellen Donworth were both found to have lethal levels of strychnine in their stomachs when the coroner carried out his postmortem. However, because the women were ‘working girls’, a trade that thrived in Victorian England, neither the Metropolitan police nor Scotland Yard pursued the matter and Cream was left alone to kill again.

  After a brief romance with a woman named Laura Sabbatini, Cream resumed his murderous activities, but one prostitute managed to get the upper hand over him. Cream met a young working girl by the name of Lou Harvey in Piccadilly and convinced her to meet him later that evening so that he could take her to the theatre and dinner. Just before the couple parted, Cream handed Harvey some pills, saying they would help her with her pale complexion which he diagnosed as being caused by the contaminated London air. However, Harvey was suspicious of ‘Dr Neill’ and waited until he was out of sight before throwing the pills into the Thames. Prepared to confront him, Harvey turned up for the proposed assignation, but of course Cream didn’t arrive, presuming that she was already dead.

  too cocky for his own good

  Scotland Yard eventually started to pay attention when two more prostitutes were found dead from strychnine poisoning. It is possible that Cream would never have been discovered if it hadn’t been for his own arrogance. Cream had made friends with a former New York City detective by the name of John Haynes. Haynes was now living in London and was desperately trying to get a position in Scotland Yard. The murder of the prostitutes had become big news and Haynes was fascinated, reading every piece of information he could find about the case. Cream, foolishly started to brag to his friend about his vast knowledge on the murders, and even went as far as taking Haynes on a tour of the murder scenes. At supper one evening the men were talking extensively about the case, when Cream gave details of one of the victims, Lou Harvey. When Haynes asked his friend how he knew so much about the murders, Cream simply replied that he had been following the cases closely in the newspapers. Haynes, who had also been avidly reading the news stories, didn’t remember any mention of a victim by the name of Lou Harvey.

  Haynes took his suspicions to Scotland Yard and told a friend working there, Patrick McIntyre, what Cream had relayed to him. McIntyre decided to put the doctor under surveillance and soon found out that Cream had a forged passport in the name of ‘Doctor Thomas Neill’. Cream was watched twenty-four hours a day and it wasn’t long before prostitutes gave police details of being approached by a man matching Cream’s description.

  As evidence mounted against Cream, the police moved in and he was arrested on June 3, 1892. He continued to maintain his innocence and remained composed throughout his incarceration and forthcoming trial. In fact Cream showed no real emotion until the bailiff introduced Miss Lou Harvey into the witness box to give evidence. Cream’s mouth fell open at the shock of seeing Miss Harvey alive, and that must have been the first time he really knew that his time was up.

  The crowds gathered on November 16, 1892, to watch Cream get his comeuppance. According to legend, just before the trapdoor released Cream to his death, he is said to have uttered ‘I am Jack . . .’ but his sentence was cut short as the noose tightened around his neck. As the Ripper murder case was still being investigated at the time, the immediate assumption was that Doctor Thomas Neill Cream had confessed to being Jack the Ripper.

  However, yet another good Ripper theory ended there, because Cream was incarcerated in Joliet, Illinois, in 1888 when the Ripper murders took place.

  Doctor Crippen

  The bizarre case of Doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen began in 1910 in London and became famous for being the first British murder case in which Marconi telegraph signals were used to track down the suspects. During the Victorian era there were quite a number of high-profile murder cases involving poisoning, due to the fact that the purchase of toxic substances such as strychnine and arsenic was relatively easy. This was compounded by the rise in the number of life insurance companies doling out policies, which meant that any greedy relative could get their hands on the money if only they could get away with murder. Doctor Crippen, a homeopathic doctor, was just one of those people who felt they had committed the perfect crime.

  Crippen was born in Michigan, USA, in 1862. His dream was to become a doctor, so when he was twenty-one years of age, Crippen went to England to improve his medical knowledge. He gained several diplomas, but these qualifications were not sufficient for him to practise as a doctor in the United Kingdom. On his return to the USA, Crippen started practising homeopathic medicine in a number of cities, during which time his first wife died. They had a three-year-old-son, who Crippen sent to live with his mother-in-law in California.

  During one of his stays in New York, Crippen met and married a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Kunigunde Mackamotski, but who the doctor knew as Cora Turner. Cora, who was a very mediocre singer, preferred to use her stage name of ‘Belle Elmore’. She was deluded into believing that she had a superb singing voice, and spent several months training as an opera singer. Cora was described as being an exceptionally overbearing woman with a love of frilly clothes, diamonds and alcohol, with a reputation for constantly flirting with men at parties. Crippen, by contrast, was a quiet-spoken man, short in stature and who was persistently nagged and henpecked by his wife.

  In 1900 Crippen moved back to England, where he became manager in the Munyon Company’s offices in Shafesbury Avenue in London. Although Cora pursued her career for a while in the theatres of New York, she eventually joined her husband in rented rooms in South Crescent, just off Tottenham Court Road.

  Cora constantly moaned about her husband’s inability to earn a good wage, and although he put up with her meanness for a while, he eventually found solace in the arms of twenty-eight-year-old Ethel le Neve. Ethel had worked as a typist for Crippen for over seven years and by 1910, the couple had been lovers for three years.

  39 hilldrop crescent

  Late in 1909, the Crippens moved to a much larger premises at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, in Camden Town. Due to an annual rent of £58 10s, they
were forced to take in lodgers to compensate for Crippen’s meagre income of around £3 a week. Cora continued her ‘career’ under the assumed name of Belle Elmore, which kept her in the lifestyle she loved, enabling her to buy furs and jewellery and to still put some money aside. Crippen, who was becoming overdrawn at the bank, was well aware that Cora had over £600 squirreled away in her name.

  Cora by this time was getting bored with her husband and was well aware of his affair with Ethel. She threatened to leave him, which should have been excellent news for Crippen, but she was also planning to take their savings with her, which meant he would be left penniless. On December 15, 1909, Cora Crippen gave notice of withdrawal to their bank to remove her savings.

  One month later, on January 17, Crippen visited a chemist shop in New Oxford Street, Lewis and Burrows, and ordered five grains of the poison hyoscine hydrobromide, also known as ‘nightshade’. Because it was such a large order – a quarter-grain would be sufficient to kill – the chemist had to place a special order. The chemist was not suspicious, as Crippen was a regular client of theirs and the drug was commonly used, in exceptionally small doses, to sedate insane or alcoholic patients. Crippen went and collected his order two days later.

  On the evening of January 31, 1910, the Crippens held a dinner party for a retired music-hall performer, Mr Martinetti and his wife. After the meal the four of them played several games of whist until 1.30 a.m. when the Martinettis left.

  Before retiring to bed, Crippen mixed his wife a drink, adding several grains of hyoscine hydrobromide. Neighbour’s later reported hearing shouts followed by a loud noise, similar to that of a gunshot. Crippen then apparently dragged his wife’s lifeless body to the cellar, where he disembowelled, decapitated and cut off her arms and legs before burying the body under the cellar floor.

  The next day Crippen carried on as if nothing had happened. He pawned some of Cora’s jewellery for £80 and that night Ethel le Neve slept at

  39 Hilldrop Crescent. When neighbours asked what had happened to Cora, Crippen simply told them that she had been called suddenly to the USA to look after a sick relative. Crippen also told them that Ethel was his niece and that she had come to stay for a while. Crippen also forged a letter to the Secretary of the Music Hall Ladies Guild, saying that Cora was resigning her position as their Honorary Treasurer. When Mrs Martinetti called at the house later that day, Crippen told her the same story about the sick relative, but she reproached him for not telling her sooner about her friend’s departure.

  Crippen continued to pawn Cora’s jewellery, but the pair made a silly mistake when they attended a ball later that year. They bumped into two good friends of Cora’s, Mr and Mrs John Nash. Lil Nash happened to notice that Ethel was wearing an expensive brooch that she knew had belonged to her friend. When Mrs Martinetti called on Crippen and said she had heard nothing from Cora, he fabricated another story that his wife had been taken seriously ill in America and had died. When the Nash’s heard the news, they asked Crippen exactly where her death had taken place, but he said he couldn’t recall the name, ‘some little town near San Francisco, with a Spanish name I think’. The Nash’s were not convinced by his strange response and began to wonder if something had happened to their friend.

  Crippen was starting to get nervous and decided to give three month’s notice of his intention to vacate the property at Hilldrop Crescent.

  SUSPICIONS MOUNT

  Mrs Martinetti received a telegram on March 24, 1910, saying ‘Belle died yesterday at 6.00 p.m.’ It had been sent from London’s Victoria Station just before Crippen and Ethel set off together for Dieppe. During their absence, many of Cora’s friends were getting suspicious about what had happened to her. When Crippen and Ethel arrived back in England, he explained that his wife had died in Los Angeles and that her ashes were being flown back to England.

  Crippen now thought that the heat was off and he started to go about his daily business. Ethel, on the other hand, stupidly continued to wear some of Cora’s jewellery, something which her friends considered to be in very bad taste. The Nash’s, who had not believed Crippen’s story, decided to visit the USA and made some enquiries of their own. When their search proved to be fruitless, they returned to England and decided to take the matter further.

  On June 30, 1910, at 2.00 p.m., John Edward Nash and his wife Lil walked into the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard and asked to speak with their old friend Chief Inspector Walter Dew. Nash told Dew that he wanted to report the disappearance of a close friend, Cora Crippen, also known as Belle Elmore, who had not been seen since February of that year. He explained that he had seen Doctor Crippen, accompanied by Miss Le Neve, who had been wearing a brooch that had belonged to Cora. He also explained to the inspector that Crippen’s explanation as to the whereabouts of his wife’s death was less than satisfactory.

  Inspector Dew decided to start an investigation, as he also felt that Cora Crippen’s disappearance was mysterious, and said in his report:

  It will be gathered from the foregoing that there are most extraordinary contradictions in the story told by Crippen, who is an American citizen, as is Mrs Crippen, otherwise known as Belle Elmore . . . without adopting the suggestion made by her friends as to foul play, I do think that the time has now arrived when ‘doctor’ Crippen should be seen by us and asked to give an explanation as to when, and how, Mrs Crippen left this country, and the circumstances under which she died . . .

  Inspector Dew decided to pay Crippen a visit on July 8, where he met Ethel le Neve for the first time. When Crippen was confronted by the police, he panicked and started to change his story, saying, ‘I suppose I had better tell the truth, all my stories about her illness and death are untrue, so far as I know she is not dead at all’.

  He explained in earnest that his wife had run off with her lover, a prize fighter by the name of Bruce Miller. He told Dew that he felt so humiliated, he had decided to invent a story about her death. The officers carried out a search of his property but found nothing suspicious and told the doctor that they were happy with his explanation. Dew told Crippen that he would like to come back the next day to clear up a few final points, but when the police returned Crippen and Ethel le Neve had disappeared.

  crippen on the run

  Not aware that the police were no longer suspicious, Crippen panicked and left for Antwerp with Ethel, disguised as a young boy. When Dew returned to the house and found it empty, he raised the alarm and obtained a warrant for their arrest. In the meantime, he had the house searched once again and, while in the coal cellar, Dew dug into the brick floor and uncovered the few gruesome remains of a human body.

  There was no head, all the limbs were missing, as were all the bones, with the exception of one piece of thigh. The pathologist assigned to the case, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, established from an old operation scar and a single piece of hair, that the remains of the buried woman really were those of Cora Crippen. This was to be Spilsbury’s first murder case and it was the one that eventually established his reputation. Dew ordered a massive manhunt and quickly distributed the descriptions of Crippen and le Neve.

  The story soon made the headlines in the London tabloids and, getting nervous, Crippen decided to escape by boarding a ship heading for Canada. They hid for a while in a hotel in Brussels while they waited for the Canadian Pacific steamer Montrose, which was scheduled to sail from Antwerp to Quebec. Crippen attempted to disguise himself by shaving off his moustache, growing a beard and discarding his spectacles. He made Ethel have her hair cut short and put on boys’ clothes, and she had to pull a hat down over her eyes whenever she was in public. Posing as father and son, Crippen signed the passenger list of the Montrose as Mr John and Master Robinson.

  However, the captain on board the Montrose, Henry Kendall, considered himself to be a bit of an amateur detective and liked to keep a close eye on what was happening on board his ship. He thought it strange that a father and son should walk about the ship hol
ding hands and occasionally disappear behind the lifeboats.

  Wanting to investigate further, Kendall decided to invite the Robinsons to dine at his table. He told Crippen that he had a form that needed filling in before they reached North America. It was while they were eating dinner that Kendall noticed a number of safety pins on Master Robinson’s clothes that were designed to disguise her feminine curves. When he compared their features to those in a newspaper article he became convinced that he had the fugitives on board his ship.

  He sent a message via the Marconi telegraph on July 22 which read:

  Have strong suspicion that Crippen London Cellar murderer and accomplice are amongst saloon passengers. Moustache shaved off, growing a beard. Accomplice dressed as a boy, voice, manner and build undoubtedly a girl.

  The Montrose was one of the few ships that was fitted with a Marconi telegraph and when Dew received the information he quickly boarded the White Star liner, Laurentic, in hot pursuit. Although the Montrose had a three-day lead, it was still eleven days out of Quebec. The Laurentic was a more powerful boat and easily overtook the Montrose, so when they reached the St Lawrence River, Dew, disguised as a tug pilot, boarded the Montrose. He walked up to Crippen, shook his hand and as he removed his pilot’s cap said, ‘Good afternoon, Dr Crippen, remember me? I am Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard’. Crippen stared in disbelief and then sighed, held out his wrists for the handcuffs and replied, ‘Thank God it’s over’.