Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  the trial

  Doctor Hawley Crippen and Ethel le Neve were taken back to London on board the White Star liner Megantic to face charges of murder. It was decided that they would be tried separately, and Crippen’s trial opened before Lord Chief Justice Lord Alverstone on October 18, 1910, at London’s Old Bailey. The trial lasted for five days, throughout which Crippen maintained his innocence. However, the prosecution gave incriminating evidence during the trial, which included the purchase of the poison and the identification of the old surgical scar on the torso of Cora Crippen by the pathologist, Spilsbury. The trial also revealed the meticulous manner with which Crippen had disposed of his wife’s body. After killing her, he professionally removed her bones and limbs and burned them in his kitchen stove. He then dissolved her organs in a bath of acid and placed her head in a handbag, which he threw overboard on a day visit to Dieppe.

  Crippen showed no remorse whatsoever during his trial and after just twenty-seven minutes, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. He was hanged at Pentonville prison on November 28, 1910, by hangman John Ellis.

  Ethel le Neve, who hired herself a high-powered attorney, was acquitted as an accessory after the fact. She changed her last name to Allen and, on the morning of Crippen’s execution, she set sail for New York. When she arrived at her final destination of Toronto, she changed her name again to Ethel Harvey. Although it is uncertain as to the date, Ethel eventually returned to England and married a clerk called Stanley Smith. They lived in Croydon and are believed to have had several children and grandchildren. Ethel eventually died in hospital in 1967, at the ripe old age of eighty-four.

  The once-famous house, 39 Hilldrop Crescent, was destroyed, together with surrounding houses, by German air raids during World War II, leaving no grim reminder of the fiendish doctor Crippen.

  Doctor John Bodkin Adams

  The town of Eastbourne in East Sussex nestles under the shadow of the South Downs, and has for many decades been a favourite place for retirement. Its genteel reputation and healing sea air made it ideal for people to spend the last years of their life, especially if they had money. Doctor John Bodkin Adams, a general practitioner who resided in Eastbourne, preyed on his elderly patients, including a large number of extremely well-to-do widows.

  Adams graduated from medical school in 1921 and arrived in Eastbourne the following year, where he set up practice. Intially he lived with his mother, but in 1929, he borrowed a sum of money from an old friend and patient named William Mawhood to buy a house in the select area of Trinity Trees. However, Adams had not taken into account Mrs Edith Mawhood, who became suspicious when the doctor asked to be left alone with her husband. She decided to listen at the door, and it was just as well that she did, because she heard Adams asking the elderly man to leave his estate to him and that he would make sure that Edith was well looked after. Mrs Mawhood was fuming and stormed into her husband’s bedroom wielding a walking stick. She struck out at Adams, forcing him to run out of the room and down the stairs.

  Adams was certainly a most popular doctor, who seemed to have a certain bedside manner, especially with the elderly widows under his care. He charmed them by stroking their hands and combing their hair, but what he also did was make sure they weren’t in any pain. In his little, brown doctor’s bag, Adams not only carried large amounts of painkilling injections such as morphine, but allegedly blank will forms as well.

  However, one fact that should be taken into account is that Adams trained in the 1920s, when there were very few trusted and tried remedies. Much of a patient’s wellbeing came from a good bedside manner, and the ability to make the person as comfortable as possible in their final years. Many patients probably pleaded with their doctor not to let them suffer and this is probably the way Adams worked, but with an extra bonus at the end. It is obvious that the good doctor certainly eased his patients’ passing into the next world, but whether he did it with malicious intent will always be a matter of contention.

  The case of a Mrs Emily Mortimer is similar to the one regarding the Mawhoods. When a member of the Mortimer family passed away, the estate was always divided up between the remaining relatives, in that way the money always stayed within the family. However, when Emily Mortimer was being treated by Adams, he managed to convince her to break with tradition. Shortly before she died she signed a will which transferred £3,000 of the family money to her doctor. Several days before her death, she signed a second document leaving Adams £5,000, which meant that the Mortimer family were totally cut out of the will.

  The first rumours regarding Adams’ method of treating his patients started in 1935, when he received the first of many unsigned postcards. It was just after he had inherited the sum of £9,385 from a patient by the name of Mrs Matilda Whitton, whose whole estate only amounted to £11,465. Although Mrs Whitton’s relatives contested the will, it was upheld in court.

  suspicions mount

  On July 23, 1956, the Eastbourne police received an anonymous phone call from a popular music hall comedian by the name of Leslie Henson. He was concerned because his friend Gertrude Hullett, had died unexpectedly while being treated by Adams. During the ten months prior to her death, Hullett had been prescribed 165 grains of morphine and 140 grains of heroin, not as one would have imagined for pain, but merely because she was unable to sleep. A strange prescription for such a minor ailment.

  Mrs Edith Alice Morrell was exceedingly wealthy and during the months Adams treated her, he received many gifts. She left him a canteen of silver cutlery and an antique Elizabethan cupboard. In March 1950, Adams called on Morrell’s solicitor, saying that his patient wished to bequeath him her 1929 Rolls Royce as well. In September, Adams decided to go on holiday, which was something that made Morrell very angry and she cut him out of her will. Adams immediately rushed back to Eastbourne and managed to placate his patient, reinstating himself back in her favour and in her will.

  During the last few days of Hullett’s life, her doses of opiates were greatly increased. These were given by injections, either by Adams himself or the attending nurses and his eventual murder case was to hinge on these administrations.

  When Morrell died on November 13, Adams deliberately lied on the cremation certificate, stating that he had no pecuniary interest in the deceased’s estate. Also, when questioned about the administered drugs, he replied, ‘Easing the passing of a dying person is not wicked. She wanted to die. That cannot be murder.’

  At the time of Morrell’s death no action was taken, but six years later rumours started to escalate and eventually the police were forced to launch an investigation. It was felt that the death of Edith Morrell was a strong enough case and Adams was brought to trial for her murder on March 18, 1957.

  The investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard, who had made a name for himself during the infamous Teddington Towpath murders in 1953. Adams fully cooperated with the investigations and seemed to be at complete ease answering Hannam’s questions. As the evidence mounted, it was discovered that the kindly doctor had not only amassed numerous trinkets, cars, antiques and Old Masters, but over his twenty-five years of administering to his elderly patients, he had also become the beneficiary in no less than 132 wills.

  Hannam managed to collect enough evidence on four cases and of these Adams was charged with the murders of Edith Morrell and Gertrude Hullett.

  the trial

  The prosecution was led by the Attorney-General himself, Sir Reginald Manningham, who was famous for his bullying tactics. Adams’ defence was led by Geoffrey Lawrence, QC, who was little known at the time of the trial, but soon became a hero as the case got underway. On the first day, the prosecution pointed out the excessive amounts of drugs that had been ordered from the dispensing chemist. This evidence was followed by that of the four nurses who had looked after Mrs Morrell at her home. They confirmed in exact detail, even though it was six years later, that large quantities of opiates had been administered to Mrs Morre
ll and that they had all been recorded in log books. When asked the whereabouts of these records, the nurses replied that they had long since disappeared.

  Lawrence faced the judge and said, ‘If only we had those old books, we could see the truth of exactly what happened.’ To the astonishment of the court, he ordered that a large suitcase be brought in as evidence. When Lawrence opened the case, to everyone’s surprise it contained all the record books of the last eighteen months of Mrs Morrell’s life. It turns out that Adams had actually filed them away, but they had been forgotten about until a couple of days before the trial. This all happened on the second day of the hearing and Lawrence methodically went through the books year by year and soon found glaring inconsistencies in the nurses’ stories.

  On day three, Lawrence pulled off his coup de grâce. The QC had established that all four of the nurses had travelled from Eastbourne to the Old Bailey in London in the same railway carriage and, no doubt, discussed the case in detail, even though two of the nurses had not yet taken the witness stand. What they didn’t know, however, was that the man sitting in the corner of the carriage reading his newspaper, was a senior civil servant who was fully aware of the legal implications that this conferring would have on the outcome of the case. This information, plus the evidence in the books showing far lower doses of opiates than stated by the nurses, cast considerable doubt on the case put forward by the prosecution.

  Then the prosecution brought in the heavy artillery, in the name of Doctor A. H. Douthwaite. He was a senior physician at Guy’s Hospital in London and was also President-Elect at the Royal College of Physicians. He was a man at the top of his profession and he told the court that, in his opinion, the doses given to Mrs Morrell were such that were intended to kill. The evidence in the books, however, disproved this, showing that the amounts given were not high enough to cause addiction, let alone death. When Lawrence cross-examined the doctor, he said, ‘Would not another doctor reviewing the matter be forced to a different conclusion?’ Douthwaite, regrettably, had to admit that this was the case, and his confusion added to the element of doubt already put in the minds of the jury.

  As the trial entered its third week, Dr John Bodkin Adams had not been called to the witness box. However, despite normal procedure, Lawrence had another trick up his sleeve and decided not to call the accused to the stand. Although this was unprecedented, Lawrence felt by keeping Adams out of the witness box, it also kept him away from the bullying tactics of Manningham. Lawrence was well aware that the bumbling, now ageing Adams, could well have hanged himself if he had had to face such a fierce prosecution.

  By the end of the trial the jury were so confused as to what was a lethal dose of morphine and what was not, Lawrence felt he had handled his defence perfectly. After three weeks of high drama, on April 15, 1957, the jury only took forty-five minutes to return a verdict of Not Guilty, to the astonishment of the legal and medical professions and all the good folk of Eastbourne.

  Doctor Bodkin Adams, with a grin all over his face walked from the courtroom straight into the waiting arms of the Daily Express, selling his remarkable story for £10,000.

  reputation intact

  Doctor Bodkin Adams left the Old Bailey with his reputation intact, and it wasn’t long before he was back patting the hands of his wealthy, silver-haired old ladies, who seemed only too willing to part with a little bit of their antique silver in return for some TLC. Adams died in 1983 at the age of eighty-four, leaving behind him an estate worth £403,000. As he had never married and had no family, the money was divided equally among the forty-seven friends who had supported him throughout his ordeal back in the 1950s.

  The case of Doctor Bodkin Adams has gone down in the annals of history because of the sensational aspects of the trial. The defence cleverly manipulated the jury over the issue of whether palliative care, which hastens death, is a bad thing. One thing is for certain though, Adams seems to have got one over on the legal fraternity, which not only failed to convict him for numerous murders, but allowed him to go free and resume his medical career, only to kill again. The final conclusion will have to be in the hands of the reader as to whether Adams was in fact a fiendish killer, or just a kindly old doctor trying to appease the suffering of his infirm, but wealthy, patients.

  Doctor Josef Mengele

  Most people have seen gruelling images of truckloads of people arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but how many know what went on behind closed doors. Amid all the despair stood a solitary figure wearing an immaculate SS uniform and white gloves, inspecting the new arrivals and dividing them up into two separate groups merely by the wave of a riding crop. The group on the left were heading straight for the gas chambers, while the ones on the right were heading for a fate far worse than death. The man making this decision was Josef Mengele, dubbed the ‘Angel of Death’, one of the many doctors assigned to Auschwitz, where medicine was used as a tool for genocide.

  early life

  Mengele was born on March 16, 1911, in Gunzburg, in Germany’s Bavarian region, and was the eldest of three sons. His father Karl Mengele had a successful company producing farm machinery, Karl Mengele & Sons, and Josef was expected to following in his father’s footsteps. However, the young Mengele had far greater aspirations.

  In October 1930, a confident and ambitious young man left his family home and headed for the Bavarian capital of Munich. The city was fast becoming impregnated with the racist doctrines of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party. Mengele, who had had a strict Catholic upbringing, found it difficult at first, but soon discovered that the Nazi movement had a strong attraction for him. It was in Munich that Hitler first gave birth to his idea for a new German super-race that Mengele was eventually to get involved with.

  Mengele enrolled at the University of Munich and studied philosophy and medicine. He also went on to study anthropology and paleontology and showed intense interest in the evolution of man. Precisely what corrupted the young Mengele’s mind is hard to ascertain, but it is obvious that at this stage in his life he was driven by a searing ambition to succeed.

  Mengele passed his state medical examination in Munich in 1936, and for four months was a resident junior doctor, a compulsory period of work that was required for his full medical practitioner’s degree. During this period of long hours and exhausting ward rounds, Mengele met Irene Schoenbein, his first and only real love. Irene was just nineteen, blonde and beautiful, and together they cut a dashing pair.

  Mengele was desperate to return to his studies in genetics and with the help of one of his professors, T. Mollinson, he was appointed as a research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt. It was this appointment that changed Mengele’s life. Working under one of Europe’s foremost geneticists, Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, he devoted much of his time to studying the genetics of twins. Verschuer was quite open with his new student about his admiration of Adolf Hitler and his dream of a perfect race.

  Mengele soon became Verschuer’s favourite student, and they developed a mutual respect for each other. Mengele became indoctrinated into the Nazi theories of race ‘purification’ and was just one short step away from the act of genocide. By the time his education had finished, Mengele was a member of both the National Socialist Party and the SS, and had developed a deep hatred of the Jewish race.

  active service

  By July 1938, Mengele had finished his medical training and had received his degree. In July 1939, he married Irene, who was just twenty-one years old, after an initial hitch when her family had to be tested to make sure it carried no Jewish genes.

  With war clouds gathering over Europe, Mengele was keen not to be left out of the action and at the beginning of World War II, was enlisted for service with the Waffen-SS. Mengele served as a medical officer and was stationed with various units in the Ukraine, receiving four medals for his bravery. However his career in the Army was cut sh
ort when he was wounded and declared unfit for active service.

  auschwitz

  In 1942, Mengele was posted to the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, which meant he was involved in the medical supervision of the concentration camps. It is pretty certain that this position was secured with the helping hand of his old tutor and friend, Professor Verschuer. At the time Verschuer was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, which was responsible for over-seeing research programmes into racial purity. There is evidence that Verschuer convinced Mengele to take the next major step in his career – to go and work at Auschwitz.

  Mengele’s posting came in May 1943, and by the end of the month the young captain arrived at the vast barbed-wire enclosure in a swampy valley just a short drive from Krakow in southern Poland. In just twenty-one months at Auschwitz, Mengele was to commit untold atrocities ‘all in the name of science’!