http://www.detnews.com/article/20110221/ME...ous-murder-caseLast Updated: February 21. 2011 2:07PM
DNA undermines notorious murder case
Michigan doctor convicted of killing wife a century ago
Kim Kozlowski / The Detroit News
One of England's most notorious murderers is buried in an unmarked grave in London, but he may be coming home to Michigan to rest among his ancestors.
Dr. Hawley Crippen, a native of Coldwater, Mich., was hanged in 1910 after he was found guilty of poisoning his wife, Cora Turner, dismembering her body and hiding her torso beneath their house. He intended to run off to America with his young lover aboard a ship when he was caught.
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The case was an international sensation.
More than a century later, DNA evidence is casting doubt on Crippen's guilt and reopening questions about a British murder on par with Jack the Ripper's exploits. Though there have always been skeptics of the case, the evidence discovered by a Michigan State University forensic scientist has created tension between Crippen's family, skeptics of the science and especially residents in the United Kingdom with deeply held beliefs.
" The popular perception of Crippen, fairly or unfairly, is that he did it," said Joseph Sanderson, a resident of the United Kingdom who understands DNA through his work at Cambridge University's Innocence Project. "The U.S. analogy is to O.J. Simpson — most people continue to believe that he did it, and unless the contrary can be proven, they will continue to believe that."
MSU forensic scientist David Foran said he has proven Crippen didn't do it by comparing a DNA analysis of Turner's grand-nieces with 100-year-old evidence from the trial. Those who doubt the work don't understand the groundbreaking science that is widely used now to solve old criminal cases, date archaeological discoveries and free wrongly imprisoned inmates, he said.
"What we did is not rocket science," said Foran, whose peer-reviewed work was published this month in the Journal of Forensic Science.
Crippen's family agrees, and the new evidence has led one of the doctor's descendents to lobby the British government for a posthumous pardon and to return his remains for burial in the Crippen family plot in Coldwater.
"I have to do this for the family," said James Patrick Crippen, the doctor's second cousin from Dayton, Ohio. "It's my duty."
Crippen was born in Coldwater in 1862.
He studied homeopathic medicine and moved to England in 1900 with his second wife, Cora Turner, who appeared on the music hall stage under the name of Belle Elmore.
She reportedly had many affairs during their marriage. Ten years later, Turner disappeared.
Crippen and his secretary, Ethel LeNeve, began an affair.
British authorities interrogated Crippen, who said his wife left him after an argument and he believed she ran off with another man. Within days, Crippen was aboard a ship sailing to Canada with LeNeve disguised as a boy. During that time, investigators searched Crippen's home and in the cellar found a torso that was later identified as Turner's from a scar she had from abdominal surgery. Tests showed the torso had a lethal amount of poisoning.
A wireless message was sent by the captain of the ship Crippen was on, and he and LeNeve were arrested in Canada. Proclaiming his innocence, Crippen was convicted and hanged.
The murder, which is still listed among London top 10 murder cases, has spawned more than 40 books and several documentaries, including some that offer alternate theories of what happened. For instance, some wondered why a body would be poisoned and dismembered. Other suggested that British authorities planted evidence.
Because so many theories existed and DNA evidence from the crime was still available, the Crippen case was ripe for analysis, said Foran, who previously worked at George Washington University with forensic scientists who used DNA to study the outlaw Jesse James and the Boston Strangler.
The analysis included one of nine slides that contained a tissue sample of the torso from the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum. Meanwhile, genealogist Beth Willis took five years to track down female ancestors of Turner's and found three to give a DNA sample.
Female ancestors were needed to examine the mitochondrial DNA, which is in the cells that are passed on through maternal lineage.
The results: No match between Turner's living descendants and the century-old evidence. A second testing produced the same results, and additional testing showed that the torso belonged to a male.
Foran's work was announced in 2007, but it wasn't until now that the science has been peer-reviewed and published. He said he had no personal interest in the results and no one paid him to do the study. In fact, the results startled him, he said.
"I was a little surprised because it is so widely accepted that the remains were Cora's," Foran said. "But the whole identification was based on this one scar. In this day and age, no one would accept that as being a positive ID."
Some, however, are skeptical, including Jonathan Menges, creator and host of the podcast Rippercast. He questions the expertise and methods of the genealogy, the relationships and motives of the researchers, and whether the tissue sample slide was contaminated. "This has been showbiz from Day 1," said Menges, a crime buff from San Diego. "This hasn't been science."
The critics haven't stopped Crippen's cousin, who is getting help from an Italy-based attorney, Giovanni Di Stefano, who has defended high-profile personalities, including Saddam Hussein.
Di Stefano has been denied motions for a pardon and transfer of Crippen's remains to his family burial plot, and he filed several appeals late last year.
"I don't abandon clients albeit alive or dead," Di Stefano said in an e-mail.
"In this case, Dr. Crippen is clearly innocent of the charge as laid out. The prosecution presented its case in a certain way. Today Dr. Crippen would have been acquitted. So the only determining factor is the passage of time. That cannot be a reason to sustain a conviction that is fallacious in all senses."
From The Detroit News:
http://detnews.com/article/20110221/METRO/...e#ixzz1EqhrxJox 