SotD: How did you become involved in your role on re-examining the Crippen case?

Foran: I first became aware of the Crippen case when John Trestrail gave a talk at an American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting several years ago. I have many years of experience working on these types of materials, including historical work of interest, such as our DNA analyses in the Boston Strangler case or the missing Lindbergh baby a few years ago. They are always fascinating.

When Beth Wills located maternal relatives of Cora Crippen, we were more than happy to test them. By the time we finished our DNA analysis on the Spilsbury slide, almost two years had passed, so it was not a quick undertaking.

Please briefly explain your lab’s role in providing the DNA analysis for Crippen’s criminal case.

The DNA analyses in the Crippen case was conducted in the Forensic Biology Laboratory at Michigan State University, which I direct. As is our norm for historical cases, this work was done pro bono.

The first samples we analyzed, in 2005, were from Cora Crippen’s grand-nieces and great-grand-niece, located by Beth Wills. All of these produced identical mitochondrial DNA sequences, which indicated (as expected) that the women were all maternally related.

The next challenge was obtaining samples from the burial in the Crippen house. An early request to the Scotland Yard Museum and The Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum (Barts and the London NHS Trust Archives and Museum) for the samples was pretty much rejected by both. So I contacted the same entities via email, letting them know what I and my lab could potentially do through DNA analyses with the hair and tissue (respectively) they had. Both groups had doubts, but after numerous back and forths, Scotland Yard said they would be willing to analyze a hair from the grave, for a fee. When I received the quote, the price was way over the top. So I continued working with Mr. Evans at the Archives and Museum, and he and his board agreed to send one of the Spilsbury slides to me as a museum loan. Knowing DNA work is destructive, it was an extremely nice gesture on their part. That slide made everything possible, and changed what had been assumed about the Crippen burial for the previous 100 years.

My lab’s mitochondrial DNA work, showing that the remains were not Cora, was released to the press by MSU in October of 2007, and it made a somewhat controversial splash in the U.K., as well as receiving a lot of interest from the U.S. to Norway to South Africa.

But, I and my lab had one more test we wanted to do—sexing the remains—using some new tools we have developed and perfected over the past few years. Those tests showed unequivocally that the remains were male (remember, all identifying features, including the sex organs, were missing). I decided to withhold that piece of information for the PBS film, so that they would have new material to include.

Is this the first time you’ve researched DNA this old? What are the challenges with samples like these?

I and my graduate students regularly work on biological material as old and much older than the Spilsbury slide. We have conducted a large amount of research on skeletal remains dating as far back as 1000 B.C. So the tissue on the slide was relatively fresh by our standards. And, since the tissue was housed in a museum, it was wonderfully preserved.

One tricky part was that the tissue on the slide had been treated with formaldehyde by Spilsbury, which preserves (‘fixes’) it, but makes DNA harder to recover and analyze. We have worked out specific techniques for obtaining DNA from tissues treated in this manner, so that problem was overcome.

Also, the adhesive Dr. Spilsbury used on the slide cover slip was a bit troublesome. He probably used pine resin (sap), given its yellowish color, and that made cover slip removal tricky. But once it was off, the ‘scar’ tissue was in fine condition.

From then on, it is the standard forensic DNA testing we regularly perform in the lab, with all the sundry controls and redundancy. As you might imagine, there was a lot more DNA work than what is portrayed in the film. I and my laboratory co-workers ran a battery of tests to prove to ourselves that the DNA came from the tissue on that slide, and nowhere else, for instance. Only when everything works exactly as it should, when we have repeated the testing and obtained the same results, and when we are as convinced and confident in them as is scientifically possible, do we release our results.

How long can a DNA sample be preserved?

DNA preservation is very dependent on where and how tissue or a sample is stored. In warm, wet conditions, tissue and DNA will degrade fairly quickly. Stored cool and/or dry, DNA can last a very long time. We have worked on skeletal remains just a few years old that are awful, and remains thousands of years old that are in quite good shape. And, the appearance doesn’t always predict DNA typing success. We have conducted research on the appearance (level of weathering) of bone and how that relates to DNA typing. Somewhat surprisingly, there is no correlation. So you cannot just look at a sample and know whether or not it harbors DNA.

For the Crippen work, a slide in a museum is a pretty nice way to preserve DNA. Compare that to bones that have been in the ground for thousands of years – you can guess which ones we would prefer.

How has forensic science progressed since Crippen’s time?

Obviously the techniques we have today far surpass anything that Dr. Spilsbury had available. Biologically, ABO blood typing was new then, and DNA hadn’t even been discovered. Dr. Spilsbury could not have performed tests similar to ours; it just wasn’t possible at the time. Today, remains such as those in the Crippen home would almost automatically be subjected to DNA testing. And in this case, the trial would have had a far different outcome.

In the same way, many individuals in the U.S. over the past few years have been exonerated of crimes they did not commit, based on new DNA evidence. People wrongly imprisoned for 10, 15, 20 years or more have been released, because DNA testing showed the prosecution, judge, and jury had the wrong person. It is very similar to the Crippen case, except now we can do something about it, at least sometimes.

I do need to remind everyone that the remains in the Crippen cellar were human, though we now know they were not Cora. Someone placed the remains there, maybe Dr. Crippen, maybe someone else. There is still a mystery out there.

What is the “next big thing” in DNA research?

I assume you don’t mean all DNA research, as that would include about a million different things.

The forensic sciences have really progressed over the past several years, both in the science itself, and in the professionalism with which that science is undertaken. Training and education are much better, as is oversight and quality control. That doesn’t mean there are not still problems, but today any problems are more and more likely to be caught.

DNA testing is now standard in the crime laboratories, but it continues to evolve. There is a push for processing samples faster and easier, which will lead to more robotics, automation, and miniaturization. Likewise, physical characteristics can be gleaned from DNA, such as hair and eye color. These can help reduce the pool of suspects.

Another new aspect of forensic DNA work is the sensitivity of testing. Not long ago a good blood stain or similar was required to get DNA results. Today we can sometimes obtain results from objects people have only handled (so-called “touch samples’”). In my laboratory we are conducting research on identifying individuals who assemble improvised explosive devices. IEDs have become well-known in Iraq, but they are also widely used in the U.S. We work with the Michigan State Police bomb squad, and after volunteers mock-assemble a device, it is armed and deflagrated. We collect the shrapnel and attempt to determine who assembled it based on remaining DNA. And you know what? We are getting pretty good at it.

London Police received a series of letters from a man calling himself “Jack the Ripper” (one of the letters included a part of a human organ) and the name struck a chord with the media and the public. The crimes of “Jack the Ripper” were reported in full detail by the mass media and readily consumed by the general public—and was one of the first crimes to earn the title “Crime of the century.” Over a hundred years later, Jack the Ripper is still the subject of horror stories and films and was an important precedent in the way the media treated the case of Hawley Crippen.

“Crime of the century” was a phrase used throughout the twentieth century to describe horrific events that shocked the nation and became part of the media’s fascination. David Berkowitz, Elizabeth Short, Lizzie Borden, Leopold and Loeb, Charles Manson— — they were all the focus of crimes that shocked, and haunted us. They are remembered for their news headlines and rumors at the time as well as their cultural impact. All of the crimes and cases listed below obsessed the news media of the day and well over a century later they still generate books, movies– even the occasional PBS documentary.

The Fatty Arbuckle Scandal – 1920

Crime: Charged for murder
Date: September 3, 1920
Place: St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
Suspect: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
Victim: Virginia Rappe
Sentence: Acquitted

Arbuckle threw a small party in his suite at the Hotel St. Francis, during which actress Virginia Rappe suffered a fatal internal injury. Although the evidence showed the bladder rupture was not caused by external force, she claimed Arbuckle sexually assaulted her. “Fatty Arbuckle Sought in Orgy Death,” “An obese Hollywood comedy star takes advantage of a naïve young actress, puncturing her bladder during forced sex,” ran the newspaper headlines. Arbuckle went through three trials and while the third trial acquitted him of all crimes, and the jury issued him an apology, the media destroyed his reputation and film career. Arbuckle died in 1933, after falling into alcoholism, and obscurity.

The Lindbergh Trial – 1932

Crime: Kidnapping and murder
Date: March 1, 1932
Place: New Jersey
Suspect: Bruno Richard Hauptmann
Victim: Charles Lindbergh Jnr, age 2
Sentence: Executed by electric shock, April 3, 1936

On the night of March 1, 1932, someone snuck into the home of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh and kidnapped his baby son out of his nursery. On May 12, two truck drivers found the child’s body in the woods about four miles away from the Lindbergh mansion. “Lindy baby found dead near home,” ran the newspaper headlines. In all, there were literally thousands of leads followed by the FBI, but eventually 34-year-old German carpenter Bruno Hauptmann was arrested in his car, and tried for the crime. The trial, which the renowned journalist H.L. Mencken called “the greatest story since the Resurrection,” took place in a small town in New Jersey, with hundreds of reporters and spectators. While Hauptmann was found guilty and was electrocuted at Trenton State Prison, his guilt, to this day, remains an unanswered question. The case remains a “Crime of the Century” because it involved Charles Lindbergh the first man to fly the Atlantic in a one-engine airplane. Hauptmann’s trial, which was filmed and shown in movie theaters, began on February 2, 1935. A number of novels have been published about the trial, as well as several television documentaries including the PBS program, reliving the Lindbergh Case.

The Black Dahlia – 1947

Crime: Murder
Date: January 15, 1947
Place: Leimert Park, Los Angeles
Victim: Elizabeth Short, aged 22
Perpetrator: Unknown

On the morning of January 15, 1947, a housewife was pushing a baby carriage along a residential street in South Los Angeles, when something caught her attention. She saw what appeared to be a store mannequin dumped in the grass a few inches from the sidewalk. On closer inspection, it was the body of a young woman, cut in half, and completely drained of blood. The two detectives assigned to the case determined that the murderer had used a knife to cut 3-inch gashes into each corner of her mouth. The sensational nature of the murder resulted in the victim being referred to as the “Black Dahlia” by the Los Angeles press. The victim was identified as 22-year-old Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Short. “Police seek mad pervert in girl’s death,” ran the Washington Post. In early newspaper reports, the press played up the fact that Short was a struggling actress, and very promiscuous. The Examiner went so far as to call her mother, Phoebe Short, and made up lies about her daughter. They told her that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest, and once they got the got as much personal information as possible from Mrs. Short, the paper informed her that daughter Elizabeth was actually dead. The case generated a huge list of suspects, possible motives, and urban legends. More than 60 years after Elizabeth’s body was found, the case remains unsolved. The famous murder became the subject of movie directed by Brian DePalma based on the 1987 James Ellroy novel “The Black Dahlia.” “What’s amazing about the Black Dahlia, besides the fact that her body is in two parts, and the way her mouth is slashed… she’s displayed in like a horror show,” DePalma said in 2006 ABC interview about his film.

The Murder Of Marilyn Sheppard – 1954

Crime: Murder
Date: July 4, 1954
Place: Cleveland, Ohio
Victim: Marilyn Sheppard (and her unborn baby)
Perpetrator: Unknown

On July 4, 1954, Marilyn Sheppard was bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of her home in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was asleep on the sofa downstairs when he said he heard his wife’s screams and ran upstairs to find a man standing over the body of his wife. Within weeks after the murder, the Cleveland press turned against him, and called Sheppard a “liar.” Dr. Sheppard was charged with his wife’s murder, and he spent ten years in the Ohio Penitentiary before he was eventually acquitted. The trial was a national and international sensation in the media, but it eventually destroyed the Sheppard family. Dr. Sheppard eventually drank himself to death, in April 1970, at the age of 46. His son Sam Reese Sheppard sought to clear the family name for his father’s unlawful imprisonment, but the jury ruled that he had failed to prove that his father had been wrongfully imprisoned. The public has speculated that the case became the inspiration for the 1960s TV series and Oscar-winning film “The Fugitive” in which a doctor, who is wrongly accused of the murder of his wife, goes on the run in order to track down the killer, although the creators of the series and film deny a connection.

In Cold Blood – 1959

Crime: Multiple murders, robbery
Date: November 15, 1959
Place: Holcomb, Kansas
Victims: Herb Clutter, aged 48; Bonnie Clutter, aged 44; Nancy Clutter, aged 16; Kenyon Clutter, aged 15
Suspects: Perry Smith and Richard Hickock
Sentence: Hickock and Smith were hanged on April 14, 1965 at Lansing Correctional Facility
Media Coverage: more than 288 stories on the “The Clutter Family” killing to date

In November of 1959, four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, were murdered in their home at River Valley Farm by two small-time criminals. Herb Clutter, his wife and two of their four children were killed, and the fear and suspicion spawned by the crime almost destroyed the entire community. The writer Truman Capote saw a news account of the murders and decided to travel to Holcomb to investigate the case. He researched the town, the victims, the locals and the killers for years, publishing In Cold Blood in 1965, after the murderers Smith and Hickock were executed. Capote broke new ground in literature, and some say he even changed the face of journalism, by writing what he came to call a “nonfiction novel.” The best-selling book was the subject of a 1967 film. Actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman won the 2005 Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the famed writer in the film Capote, which deals with the writing of In Cold Blood.

The Zodiac Killer – 1968

Crime: Serial murder
Date: December 20, 1968 – October 11, 1969
Place: San Francisco, California
Victims: David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecillia Ann Shepard and Paul Stine
Perpetrator: Unknown

On December 20, 1968, teenagers David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were parked in a “lover’s lane’ near San Francisco when shots were fired into their car. While both had been murdered, neither victim had been robbed or sexually assaulted, and the police failed to identify a motive or a killer. Then, on July 4, 1969, the gunman struck again, and then again on the afternoon of September 27. Before it was all over, the killer took five lives. The killer wanted to let the police and newspapers know what he had done. Three letters were sent to local newspapers confessing to the murders and including a description of the ammunition. The San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from the “Zodiac Killer” confessing to the crime. Inside the letter was part of the victim’s shirt. Even though the murders ceased in 1969, the unknown killer continued to taunt the police with phone calls and cryptic messages. And, while the police investigated over 2,500 potential suspects, and the unknown killer claimed responsibility for as many as 37 deaths, the case was never officially solved.

Charles Manson Murders – 1969

Crime: Serial murder
Date: July 27 – August 9, 1969
Place: Los Angles, California
Victims: Gary Hinman, Steven Parent, Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, ‘Votek Frykowski, Leno LaBianca, Rosemary LaBianca
Perpetrators: Susan Atkins, Bobby Beausoleil, Clem Crogan, Linda Kasabian, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Charles Watson and Charles Manson
Sentence: Death sentences were changed to life imprisonment

On the night of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson and friends committed several brutal and bloody murders of actress Sharon Tate and four other people in Hollywood. The leader, ex-con and failed musician, was later found to be responsible for ordering the murder spree—his name was Charles Manson. During the trial, which started on June 15, 1970, Manson’s followers—followed his every move, even carving swastikas into their foreheads. After the longest trial in US history, the members of Manson’s group were found guilty and sentenced to death, but in 1972 California revoked the death penalty—before Manson or the murderers could be executed. Right after the trial, there were a number of articles written that were favorable to Manson and his followers. For a while, it appeared that he might become some sort of cult hero. While that never really materialized, Manson still receives a large amount of mail, much of it from young followers. There have been several plays about him, movies and documentaries– even an opera.

Related resources:

• PBS: Lindbergh: The Kidnapping
• Time Magazine: Crimes of the Century
• Charles Lindbergh
• TruTV Crime Library
• Casebook
• ABC News: Ellroy’s Obsession With the Black Dahlia
• Salon.com: “In Cold Blood”
• ABC News: Still Searching for the Zodiac Killer
• University of Missouri: Famous Trials
• 101 Crimes of the Century, Alan J. Whiticker, New Holland Publishers, 2008

As far as the murder of individuals is concerned there are relatively few agents that have been used and of course there is no way of knowing how many people have been deliberately killed this way because no doubt many such deaths were attributed to natural causes. The following list is my estimation of the poisons most widely used in murders. Murder by poison is now extremely rare because modern forensic techniques make it possible to identify all toxic agents no matter now little remains in a corpse.

1. Arsenic: known in Roman times and used to poison rivals and even emperors. White arsenic, which is arsenic oxide, is a water-soluble, tasteless solid easily added to drinks. This material was obtained as a by-product of copper and lead refining. It the 1600s it was sold by agents of a woman known as Toffana of Sicily, to people who wished to dispose of someone and it became known as “inheritance powder”. In the 1800s arsenic compounds became widely available – as weed-killers, flypapers, rat poisons, etc. – and were used in domestic murders, being cited in many famous murder cases.

2. Atropine: aka “belladonna” and extracted from the juice of the berries of the deadly nightshade bush. In small doses this chemical causes hallucinations and was used for this purpose as long ago as ancient Greece. In larger doses it was reputed to be one of the favourite poisons of would-be murderers in Medieval Europe and the juice of only a few berries is fatal. The symptoms it produces would be easily mistaken for one of the many fevers which afflicted people in those days.

3. Strychnine: can be extracted from the seeds of the nux vomica tree, which grows in Southeast Asia and it became widely available in the west as trade with the Far East expanded. It was reputed to be a tonic and prescribed in small doses by doctors to aid convalescence. It was also widely used to poison rats and other animals and as such was easily obtained, and although cited in only a few domestic murders its ready availability suggests it would be used in many undiscovered murders.

4. Cyanide: can be distilled from the kernels of certain nuts such as almonds and also present in the leaves of some laurels bushes. The industrial chemical sodium cyanide is widely used, especially in mining, and has been involved in attempted mass murders. It was used to contaminate Tylenol capsules in the US in the 1980s and killed several people in the Chicago area. Cyanide has also featured in domestic murders and it causes death within minutes. It is the fastest acting of all poisons and for this reason it is the poison of suicide pills of the type carried by secret agents.

5. Thallium: this element was only discovered in the 1860s and while it has been used in some domestic murders – in some countries it has been available as rat poison –  it has been more widely used as an agent of assassination. It is ideal in this respect. Thallium sulfate is water-soluble and tasteless and they take several days for the symptoms to appear and even then these are generally attributed to other illnesses. This poison was used by Saddam Hussein’s secret police and by the Russian KGB.

– John Emsley is author of Elements of Murder and Molecules of Murder.

Download the PDF here (4.2 MB).

Casebook courtesy Michigan State University.

According to the police report, the victim had been poisoned, and then filleted. The horrific murder, so reminiscent of Jack the Ripper’s attacks only two decades earlier, quickly became headline news. The media glare and close government scrutiny put Scotland Yard under intense pressure to catch Crippen and solve the crime. Even a young Winston Churchill, then Britain’s Home Secretary, was intimately tracking the investigation. Crippen and Le Neve tried fleeing to Canada, but were apprehended after the captain of their ship used a brand new technology—the Marconi wireless machine—to alert authorities of his whereabouts. The high-profile case that followed included incriminating pajamas, a rare poison that Crippen was known to have possessed, and a showy pathologist with a red carnation who convinced the jury that marks on the skin samples proved they were from Cora.

“The Crippen case was the O.J. Simpson case of 1910,” said forensic toxicologist John Trestrail, one of the key investigators revisiting the Crippen case. “I don’t think any murder in history had been covered that much in the newspapers. It was being read about all over the world.”

Trestrail, a poison expert, was troubled by its circumstantial evidence. He had never heard of a poisoning case where the perpetrator had dismembered his victim—poisoners usually did all they could to make death look like an accident. And even if Crippen had committed both acts, why would he have disposed of so much of the body, then left just a few incriminating pieces behind? His questions led to a careful analysis of the court records, and new forensic testing on the physical evidence that still remains from the crime scene. Trestrail traveled between the U.S. and England to piece together details of the infamous crime, working closely with DNA expert Foran and genealogist Wills each step of the way.

Dr. Foran’s team, working in his forensic biology lab at Michigan State University, compared the DNA from the 100-year-old tissue to modern DNA from relatives of Cora that Wills has managed to track down. Expecting to confirm that the body was Cora’s, the team instead found that the DNA doesn’t match, and even more startlingly, that the body parts were not even female—they were from a male victim.

With convincing evidence that the body did not belong to Cora, Trestrail began to dig deeper into the police and court archives, slowly unraveling a series of suppressed documents. Among the noted evidence is a letter to Crippen from Cora, in which she claims she is living in America and has no plans to save him from execution. The letter was deemed a hoax by investigators, but was never even shown to Crippen or his lawyers. Could the police have tampered with the evidence used in trial?

With all the new findings, James Patrick Crippen, the closest living male relative of Crippen, is now formally requesting that the British government pardon the doctor and return his bones to America.

Before he was executed, Crippen wrote an eerily prophetic letter to Ethel Le Neve. In it, he said, “Face to face with God, I believe that facts will be forthcoming to prove my innocence.” Modern forensic science has now fulfilled his prophecy.

In 1910, an American doctor named Hawley Crippen was convicted in England of poisoning and dismembering his wife. The vicious murder—and execution that followed—made international headlines. It was a landmark case: The first trial by media, and the first to be dominated by forensic science. But did the prosecutors get it right? Almost one hundred years later, investigators have re-opened the files on a murder that became known as one of the crimes of the century.