Hawley Harvey Crippen Hawley Harvey Crippen Hawley Harvey Crippen (September 11, 1862 – November 23, 1910), usually known as Dr. Crippen, was an American homeopath, ear and eye specialist and medicine dispenser. He was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London for the murder of his wife Cora Henrietta Crippen, and was the first suspect to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy. In 2007, DNA evidence questioned the identification of the body found in Crippen's cellar that was supposed to be Crippen's wife. This evidence suggested that the remains discovered in his cellar were, in fact, those of a male person. These
Hawley Harvey Crippen his wife because she had syphilis. Whether Crippen murdered his wife has been disputed. The novelist Raymond Chandler commented that it seemed unbelievable that Crippen would successfully dispose of his wife's limbs and head and then, rather stupidly, bury her torso under the cellar floor of his home. Dornford Yates, a novelist who was a junior barrister at the trial, records that the remains were placed in lime so that they would be destroyed, but suggests that Crippen failed to realise that while dry quicklime destroys, if water is added, it becomes slaked lime and preserves. Yates used this fact