Word: crippen
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...Crippen. The brick was loose...
Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard bent down and carefully removed it from the cellar floor. Ten minutes later, he sat on a pile of earth and stared in disgust at the putrid and dismembered remains of Belle Crippen. Some months later, Belle's husband, Dr. Hawley Crippen, was brought to trial for her murder. The penny press played him up as Britain's own Bluebeard, and the scandal provided some of the least savory sensations of the Edwardian era. Dr. Crippen was convicted, and on Nov. 23, 1910, he went to the gallows, protesting his innocence...
...Crippen telling the truth? This tidy thriller makes a fascinating case that he was. With considerable acuteness Director Robert Lynn demonstrates that murder can sometimes be understood as a species of double suicide, that sometimes in moral truth the victim is a killer and the killer a victim...
...Crippen emerges as one of those improbable figures that hold the headlines of the British penny-dreadful press. He is a poor man's pill-pusher, a sallow runt with "codfish eyes" and a large compensatory mustache, which doesn't impress his wife. "You're not a man!" she hoots at him. "Go clean the lodger's boots!" And while her husband cleans the lodger's boots, she nibbles the lodger's ear. After several years of playing the cuckold, creepy little Crippen dares at last to play the man-with a pretty young...
...Crime and Criminals-juvenile delinquency, penology, prostitution, war crimes-exhibit a drab sociologist look and a stylistic prison pallor. But as a refresher course in big-name crime, the book often proves happily terse where there no longer can be much tension, yielding forgotten details into the bargain. Crippen, perhaps England's best-known wife murderer, was born in Michigan; Captain Kidd, most famous of pirates, probably was not a pirate at all but a legitimate privateer who got a bum rap from a British court. While the never-caught Jack the Ripper was terrifying London, Queen Victoria sent...