Episode 228 - Pretend to be a Mule

Some people take "until death do us part" as a challenge rather than a vow. Join us this week as we dive into the dark, twisted world of spouses who decided divorce was simply too much paperwork. Grab a drink, lock your doors, and listen in on the ultimate cautionary tale about picking your life partner very, very carefully.

Research links below!:

POMC - "Robert Curley 'Bobby' 32 Years Old"
Yahoo! News - "Taking a look back at how a wife poisoned and killed husband"
Standard Speaker - "Bobby Curley remembered 30 years after his murder"
Criminal - "Joann Curley's Tortuous Murder Plot"
The Citizens' Voice - "Timeline of the Curley case"
Times Leader - "Convicted killer Joann Curley finishes 20-year sentence, apparently returned to NEPA"

Britannica - "Hawley Harvey Crippen"
The History Press - "The notorious case of Dr. Crippen"
PBS - "Executed in Error"
Gettyimages - "Hawley Harvey Crippen"
Crime + Investigation - "Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen"
National Library of Medicine - "Solanaceae III: henbane, hags and Hawley Harvey Crippen"

Speaker 1: Yeah, their arrivals unspeakable. They did. It's got to worry about.

Speaker 2: Something.

Speaker 3: If I couldn't keep them there with me whole, at

least I felt that I could keep their skeletons.

Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Bad Taste Crime Podcast. I'm Rachel,

I'm VICKI Hi. How is everybody? It's Rachel. Just forgot

how to do intro thing. I was like, why is

she looking at the book? She was like, we got

to start the sor we got it after a running start.

We got it. See, I'm just soun drunk. Sat out

on the portrait on the porch for like ten minutes.

It was so nice. It was really nice. And I've

petted the dogs that whole time. It's true, best, It's true.

I'm a simple woman. All I need is like a

cold beverage and a dog, maybe a little Punjamin and

a dog. And it's a sunny day, sunny day. I'm

so happy. And a million dollars.

Speaker 3: I mean yes, I literally was like when I got

back from Washington, I was like, can someone just give

me some money?

Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't have to work again. I mean there

are websites that will do, but you will have to

show hold I know only feet Yeah, only your tutsies.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 3: Anyway, all right, Well, if this is your first time

was listening a special hello to you.

Speaker 2: Put a link for the feet picks in the description. Well,

but they'll be on our Patreon. Yeah, we've got a

great show for you today. It's very excited. It's gonna

be a lot of fun. Yeah. First, let's head over

to the newsroom. Let's go there. Favorite. Wait, maybe watching

local news tells us today we had fifteen size, but

he fends.

Speaker 1: To wait, supore we know.

Speaker 3: Okay, so this week our news comes from Georgia, a

George man. So this guy, Arthur Lee Cofield Junior, has

had quite the criminal history.

Speaker 2: Oh no, so here's the deal. He was first incarcerated

in two thousand and eight after he pled guilty to

armed robbery. He was accused of using a handgun to

steal twenty six hundred dollars from a Douglasville bank as

a sixteen year old. Oh my god, he gets put

into jail.

Speaker 3: Then he had a contraband cell phone seized from him

in twenty twenty from the Georgian Department of Corrections in

one of their high security facilities, and turns out that

Cofield and this is what he was sentenced on. Most recently,

in four he got an additional eleven years in federal prison.

Speaker 2: So the first one was state. Oh, here's in federal

prison because he played guilty to charges of conspiracy to

commit fraud and aggravated identity theft after he'd been.

Speaker 3: Accused of stealing eleven million dollars from the bank account

of Hollywood movie producer Sidney Kimmel. What and this all

happened while he was in state prison?

Speaker 2: Oh my god.

Speaker 3: Okay, multitasker, yes, overachiever. So he stole this money while

he was in prison.

Speaker 1: Uh huh.

Speaker 2: I had to look it up because I you don't

necessarily know producers names, all right, I was gonna say,

that doesn't sound familiar.

Speaker 3: So he did the twenty ten remake of Death at

a Funeral Hyrunner United ninety three, Breach Lars and The

Real Girl.

Speaker 2: I love Land. I love that cynic Doce. I don't

know that one.

Speaker 3: Uh New York Gone, The Place Beyond the Pines and

the Age of Adeline. Okay, I love Adventures Sidney Kimmel entertained.

Speaker 2: And that other one. You said that I forgot uh kay,

runner No, the the Lars and the Real Lars and

the Real Girl. That's the one where Ryan Gosling is

in love with a like a blow up doll. Eh yes,

yeah yeah, and like surprisingly you think it would be

like really like stupid and goofy. It's actually a very

poignant and sad movie. Yeah, everyone should watch it.

Speaker 3: He also owns Jones Apparel Group, uh, which is let

me see ones that you would have known here. Notable

lines produced by Kimmel includes Jones New York, Evan Pico,

and nine West.

Speaker 2: Oh. He's also got licensing deals.

Speaker 3: With Rulph Lauren Okay, money bag, Yeah, anyway, I steal

from him. Apparently he funded an erotic drama called nine

and a half Weeks.

Speaker 2: What about nine and a half inches anyway, So this

is the guy he Okay, he I like two of

his movies. So prosecutors alleged that he gained access to

Kimmel's Charles Schwab account by posing as him on the phone,

and it was one of only only one of multiple

thefts he pulled off in person. Wow. And then it

also says that he used those proceeds to buy thousands

of gold coins from a company in Idaho and chartery

plane to bring them back to Georgia, and then bought

a four point four million mansion in Buckhead while in prison. Okay,

I got this isn't even the main part of the story.

What okay, he did all this? He gets sentenced to

federal prison. He has escaped federal prison. He was discovered missing.

Let me see, this is Tuesday afternoon, so this is

just end of May. Oh no, oh, this is like

recent reason. This was like last tuesdays. Oh my god.

They found out he was missing. Missing. They are describing

him as a quote unquote walk away. He ran away

at a leisurely pace. Uh yep. Wow, this guy's slippery.

I haven't found him yet. Whoa dude, if you're listening,

isn't that crazy? Yeah, there's so many aspects of that

that I'm just like, that's that's a wild one. That's

gonna be a crazy documentary one day. Yeah, Like, yeah,

I hope so, I hope so too. I'd love to

watch it. Yes, Oh my god, don't steal from that guy.

I like those movies he made. Oh man.

Speaker 3: Okay, So we're gonna move on to Netflix and kill

which this week we are back with the Untold series.

Oh yeah, they just dropped another couple like three or

four maybe from the US, and then they have started

releasing Untold UK, which is I saw. I haven't started

watching those yet, but I'm also very excited about its

about things like, uh, they're football teams and cricket. There's

like cricket scandal, like yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like I

love it because again I love it. If you remember,

Untold typically has to do with some sort of sports,

yeah scandal. Many times it is true crime or true

crime adjacent, like they're always something like that. Okay, so

they released this one. I was so excited about this.

Speaker 2: It has everything the Olympics, horse people, you know, and

attempted murder. Oh my god. It was crazy your intersection

crazy people like love it.

Speaker 3: Very Karen. Everybody in this story is God. Everybody in

this story is a Karen. In my opinion, yuck even

horses this ad here.

Speaker 2: So this.

Speaker 3: The worst is the only INNOCE. So this is Untold

the shooting at Hawthorne Hill. It is about uh, these

two people, Lauren can canterract and Michael Barrisone. Michael Barrisone

is an Olympic winning equestrian.

Speaker 2: Uh dressage talk. I know you hate horses. I do, frighten.

Speaker 3: Drissage is one of these things I find very interesting

because it's like horse dancing, Like it's very you know,

they kind of like rance over here and then they

could sort of prance in a slightly different way in

the diagonal and then they do a weird little walk

and then dancing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, like horse dancing. Right, he's won that on the

Olympic level. Wow. Uh, So this is what.

Speaker 3: Happens Lauren can Interac is getting involved into stage. She

by like a connection through a friend, finds out about

Michael barrisone who has well, she doesn't find out about him.

She knows about him because he's like this Olympic guy, right,

but gets connected gets connected with him. He has this

basically a training facility. He has this huge property where

he lives and has other houses for people to live.

Speaker 2: And yeah, but he's making like.

Speaker 3: I know, like all of the horses are and he

makes money like allowing other people to ride his horse

and you know what, I selling the horses and whatever.

But he has all these people that will come in

and train at hiss like training Olympic level or people

who have that. Benjamin, Yeah, okay, so that's that's the

stage for this, right Dang.

Speaker 2: She rolls in and did her and him start horsing around?

Speaker 3: No, he also has his girlfriend who she is a

horse trainer. Oh, she's a horse trainer.

Speaker 2: I thought.

Speaker 3: And they start having so she was getting frustrated with

like his assistance and staff, and then there and she's

like posting on social media about it, and then there's

this whole controversy with this horse that he had that

he was getting ready to sell that she started riding,

and he was like, I didn't give her permission to

ride this horse blah, which and that became a whole thing,

and so then they became I mean, the whole thing

just became contentious and people are like, why didn't you leave?

Why didn't you just leave the property, And she's like, well,

here's the thing is, we have to we She was

like trying to buy this horse from him, and she

needed to find another stable where the horse could go,

and that takes time, and it's like yeah, yeah, and

so basically this escalates escalats. They're like calling nine on

one on each other. Oh God, escalates escalats this does

until there is a So basically she is like, I'm

going to report you to basically the disciplinary body okay

for uh.

Speaker 2: I think it was for I don't know if it

was specifically for horse sports or if it's the general

like international body. Okay, that sort of is the disciplinary

committee for what a thing I've never thought about in

my life.

Speaker 3: I think it might be just for equestrian It's like

the equestrian disciplinary body interest that can basically Bey made

that joke, but like I'm just imagining their slogan no

horse in around yeah, really make it. So she's like,

I'm going to report you. She calls and reports them.

They start asking questions about the guys Barrison's girlfriend's kids.

They are living on the property. Then one night DCFS

shows up and is talking to the girlfriend about her kids,

and he this is what he alleges. Both of these

people are in this documentary. By the way, they are

both in it. He is like, well, I heard from

behind this door because they asked him to leave, so

he was like listening behind the door that they were

asking about potential like sexual assault from him or something,

and he freaks out. Okay, he according to him in

this moment blacks out.

Speaker 2: He was like, well, wha, I don't think.

Speaker 3: It was a blackout, but it never is, gets this

gun out of his gun safe, goes over to where

she is staying. Cannaik goes over to where she is

staying and shoots her. Oh my god, shoots her twice

in the chest. She calls nine one one.

Speaker 2: When the police get there, her boyfriend and I think

who had been staying with them at the time, was

like on top of barrisone tackle them to the ground,

was waiting for police to get there. They take her

to the hospital. She survives, goes oh my gosh, urgency surgery, survives.

Speaker 3: He gets He's like on the ground, like I just

wanted a normal life.

Speaker 2: Oh and you could have that cell stuff. So he

gets charged with attempted murder. Basically goes to court attempts

to plead insanity, saying that he is temporarily insane. He

blacked out during all of this. He doesn't remember grabbing

the gun or shooting her, and just remembers like waking

up in the hospital the next day. He was handcuffed

his bed. That's all he how convenient he was.

Speaker 3: The trial took three weeks, the jury delivery for four days.

He was found not guilty by reason of insanity what

and then he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and

then released in twenty twenty three. That's horse feathers interesting story. Yes,

there is still like the thing is a lot of

this happened in person, but a lot of it also

happened online, like they have like all these Facebook posts

and all of these like and she is still trying

to prove that he did it on purpose and uh planned.

Speaker 2: All of this, and yeah, wow, it's a very interesting

story untold the shooting at Hawthorne Hill. I would absolutely

recommend it because again it's like, yeah, it's this much

about it's the teeny amount about horses, but the rest

of it is just about there is for you.

Speaker 3: I'll tell you to do. There is horses in the documentary. Sorry,

you can't get away from it.

Speaker 2: I can see the munch. You should watch it. I

will watch it.

Speaker 3: There's a lot more to it, like about how the

gun got on the property and yeah, but like I

don't know, it's just a bizarre, very bizarre story. And

they're still trying to fight. She's like I still have

the end of it is like her pulling together her

packet of information that they but look at this post

day she said, here's this text message and she's like.

Speaker 2: Like, get out of here.

Speaker 3: This is that part of the show where were saying

contenting up appropriate for all listeners. We are talking about murder.

Speaker 2: It's a murder. It's a murder one. So it's mine's

like on the lighter side of murder. I guess, yeah,

mine's really sad. But I mean I said there, it's

all sad. It's always sad. But yes, So what are

we talking about today, Rachel? Well, today I picked spousal killing.

Speaker 3: There's anytime you suggest this as the married, the one

of us best married, I'm.

Speaker 2: Like, what's been going on in here? Like we need

to talk about spouse on murder. We actually just went

on like this little weekend trip. He surprised me for

my birthday, so we had to go. We went back.

We used to live near Schomberg for a few years, yes,

and we went. We haven't really been back there since

we had kids, and we really liked it there, so

we went back. We went to our old movie theater,

saw the Mandalorian and Grogu. Okay, it was a film, okay,

and like swam in the pool and it was really

really nice. So he is wonderful. This is about other people.

Speaker 3: I'm like, So all of that made you think no, no,

no killing spouses.

Speaker 2: So what led me to this one is I've been

watching to Fall Asleep because you know, I'm normal Forensic Files.

Oh I do that too, though, love forensic files. That's

one of my faite. That actually was probably one of

my like big intros to like watching true crimes, like

leading about it. Sure as I don't know what like

channel it was, but I remember like coming home after

school and I would watch it and I was like,

oh my god, this is so this was on like Discovery, yeah,

because it was I'm one of those like creatures of habit. Yeah,

I'm like, how would I have gotten there? Like all

I watched was like fucking cartoon.

Speaker 3: Yeah, but Discovery was in between Nickelodeon and Network, and.

Speaker 2: Discovery had all of those like super real shows about

like haunted destinations and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3: It might have been on what was the Man Channel

Travel channel, No, the Man Channel.

Speaker 2: It was Spike O the Man Channel.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that doesn't exist anymore, but that was kind of

like the whole deal with Spike TV is it was like,

but they.

Speaker 2: Had good they had good ship, they did have I

used to watch that all the time. They had a mex.

Speaker 3: So I'm happy, you know, I'm Xi's extreme elimination challenge.

Speaker 2: Here. That's the only valuable thing that Spike ever brought

was MC. That's true. It might but I'm no, you're right. No,

You're not wrong at all. You're literally not wrong. I'm

glad it's done. But like I've been watching a lot

of that to go to sleep, And a lot of

the cases on forensic files are like obviously like really

really centered on forensic evidence, so sometimes they tend to

be like kind of weird cases. Sure, this one, I

think is a pretty typical one, And I'll get into

like what, like I think the it's more about not

the answers that were revealed, Okay, the things that are

left unset is what's interesting to me about this one

that would otherwise be kind of a black and white

like spouse murder spouse Sure, because like it happens every

day normally with the murdering of one's spouse. It has

to be assumed that most of these are crimes of passion,

like it's like a passionate thing to kill one's own spouse,

like issues adultery, issues, like the emotions are you know

what I mean, like not necessarily like not planned.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say crime of passion, like a

more spur of the moment. I meant like, yeah, but

you mean like it's personal. Yeah, Like it's always like

some sort of romantically.

Speaker 2: Adultery. There's financial issues. All of these are things that

like can really set people off. Yes, you know, and

with this one there are elements of that, but what's

missing is like the big emotions. Okay, very strange, very

strange case. So this one takes place in America, in Pennsylvania. Okay,

this is in the nineties.

Speaker 3: So then the good old murdery nineties. Oh yeah, it.

Speaker 2: Was in the air, in the water, in the paint.

So Robert, known uh to pretty much everyone as Bobby

Bobby Curly, met and married Joanne Chopak. Okay, so they

were both where in the US is a Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Okay.

He was thirty one, I think she was thirty. They

were like about the same age. They were both just young,

healthy people. They kind of met and got married. He

was very excited about this upcoming marriage. The cool thing

about this case is that Bobby Curly was so well

known and well liked in his community that there's a

lot of testimony from people who knew him. Okay, so

there's like a big like outside perspective, Like he was

super excited, always talking about his like pretty new bride

and how much he loved her and he really wanted

to provide for her. Yeah, he was a union carpenter.

He was, which I think great thing to have around

the house. I think every man should be a union

car Yeah. I mean this is why, This is why

I have a lot of friends who like no things

right you have and I have like, uh, my friend

Damien is that guy.

Speaker 3: Like he's like like he love did union work for

a while and he does electrical stuff some like yeah,

he's my handyman friend.

Speaker 2: I need a car friend. I need a handyman friend.

I need like, yeah, I'm the tech friend. Like to

be fair, I play that role in other people's I'm

like the tech friend and you're like my law friend.

And yes, the police station, I'm calling you on the well.

Speaker 3: And I'll say I'll get you in touch with the

lawyer because I can't give legal advice.

Speaker 2: Well no, I know, but like but i'll know who

to call. I'm calling you, give me a lawyer. I'll

be like done. Okay, I could do that. Yes, just

making it very clear, listen, Yeah, I have ethical responsibilities.

Ethical responsibilities. So so Bobby Curly, union carpenter. Yeah, they're

like maybe six months into their marriage. Okay, things have

been going fine. According to everybody, they've been going I

forgot for a second what this episode was I right,

Oh yeah that's right. Okay, here we go. So just married,

young couple, pretty pretty normal. Everything's going great. You know,

he has this good job. They're talking about like maybe

starting a family, and all of a sudden he starts

to have these mysterious symptoms. Now, he's been healthy his

whole life, Like I watched an interview with his mom

where she was like, he wasn't even really sick as

a kid. He was always very healthy, and he was

like kind of like a stacky, like just seemed like

a very like physically healthy dude. You know, he's a carpenter,

he's scurrying up the right, right right, But all of

a sudden he started noticing that his vision was blurring,

he was feeling numbness and pressure in his limbs when

he would be at work, because obviously you're a carpenter,

you gotta look real, real hard to make sure the

nails going into the right place. He's getting not only

blurred vision, but like disorientation and severe pain in weird

parts of his bodies and hair loss. Oh. He's like,

I'm only thirty one, Like why am I losing my

hair all of a sudden, All of a sudden, all

of us and combined with all these other weird symptoms.

So he goes to the doctor because all of this

kind of happens at the same time, and it starts

small but is accelerating at a rapid response, So like

within a week of the onset of these symptoms, he's like,

I'm going to go to the doctor. Yeah. So he

goes to the doctor and and initially the doctors were like,

this kind of sounds like this rare neurological disorder called

a Gillian bar Oh yeah, yeah bar. So they're like, oh,

it could be that. So we're gonna have to like

run some tests, but in the meantime, we'll give you

some of the treatment specifically for that disorder. Okay, so

they're like, take two of these calls in the morning. Yeah,

he calls in the morning. He's like, I feel like shit, Oh,

I feel way worse than before. So all of this

is accelerating. Yeah, so obviously his symptoms are getting worse.

Eventually he would end up being hospitalized. So this all

started in the summer. By September of that same year,

nineteen ninety one, he had been hospitalized. Oh he was

unable to I mean, at least he's going to the doctor.

That's the thing. Like, I do feel like this is

like such a stereotype, but I feel like a lot

of these like blue collar guys are like, oh, you know,

my hands off, but like whatever, Well there's just some

people who are like that. And I get it. Like

the cost even then, like the cost of healthcare. Oh come, And.

Speaker 3: This is why again we have friends for everything, Right,

I have rapped o friends that I will alick.

Speaker 2: I'll message and be like, is it serious enough to

go in total? Would I worry about? You know what

I mean?

Speaker 3: Because they're obviously if it's I'm bleeding from my head

like I was that one time, I'm going to go

to the fucking emergency serious. Like, you know, I'm kind

of blah, is it serious?

Speaker 2: Because I don't want to waste the money or the

time having to go if it's like and he was

a very like I think that's very practical. You know,

there are some people who, like they have a cough,

they go.

Speaker 1: To the er.

Speaker 2: I'm always like, oh my god, how do you have them?

Speaker 1: Yeah?

Speaker 2: For what, I hate the doctor. I don't want to

go there, no offense to doctors. Wait until the urgent

care opens. It's at least a little cheaper, exactly, and

like a little chiller, I feel like the ar Like god,

but this is how serious it was because he was

one of those guys. He was not the type of

guy to like raise a fuss nothing. Yeah, he did

not want to make a big deal and he did

not want to lose work, right, So but he was like,

I gotta go to the fucking hospital. So this was

obviously very serious. So something kind of interesting happened at

the hospital where he started to get better. Okay, that's

a weird go out. It's better. I know, that's almost

like that's you're supposed to do. Strange. But if it

was this neurological disorder. Then like why would he get better?

You know what I mean? So he started to get

better and that he started to show a lot of

signs of improvement. Okay, but on the twenty sixth of September,

his condition took a huge nose dive and he was

all of a sudden way worse than before in the hospital.

In the hospital, okay, okay. The very next day, on

September twenty seventh, nineteen ninety one, after having this like

huge recovery, Bobby would succumb to his illness and pass

away in the hospital. Oh he had just thirty two

Oh so sad. Yeah, so they were the hospital staff

was like totally baffled. They were very confused as to

how any of this happened. They had to inform his

wife Joanna that he had passed away and he uh

was buried in the cemetery, and everyone kind of tried

to pick up and move on with their lives, but

kind of in the background, the police are still like,

all right, let's try to figure out like what is

going Yeah, they were being like really low key about

it at first, because did the hospital go to the

police and be like, there's something weird about this. No,

the police were just like, yeah, there's something weird about this.

The police were like, all right, he's thirty two, he's

never been sick. Yeah, and there's like other things happening

that's like hya, there's a lot of like whispers in

the community, right, but like what could potentially mars? Yeah? Yeah.

So they're like, okay, let's try to figure it out.

So they started looking into this is like a weird

little thing because like at first they thought it was

the Gillian bar syndrome. Right, gian Bar Jan, I've been

watching the X Miles of the fair a Bar always

thinking about her, isn't it Giamboret? Yeah, something is it that?

I guess? Yeah it is. You're right, that's French. You

were just in French mode. French is so hard. I

love French though it's beautiful. I think they're beautifuller languages,

like any of them. I like French. Get it on record,

Rachel hates the French people. I hate the we we No,

I love y'all. I don't. I'm lying. So there was

this thing that the police were pursuing because they were like, okay,

you know, where do people find stress in their lives

problem in their lives obviously at home. The second place

to look into would be someone's workplace. He obviously had

this union carpenter job and he worked a lot. They

were like, let's look into his work. Turns out that

he was kind of like a prankster and was constantly

like fucking with his coworkers, putting like pepper in their drink. Yeah,

like stuff like that, which I love. And they were like,

he works on this construction site. What if one of

them slipped him something like meaning for it to be

a joke, oh, and didn't realize and it was realized. Okay,

so that was a big like trail that they went

down for a long time. Yeah. But of course all

of his coworkers are like, no, we didn't do it.

It's harmless, right. It was all just like very silly,

sure stuff, which I think happens when a bunch of

men work together they're twelve years old. But they were like, no,

we didn't fucking poison him. And they were like, okay, well,

let's go back to the other place, the home. Yeah.

And when they looked into the home and they were like, oh,

there's a lot of shit going on there. So it

was from Bobby's perspectives, so from Bobby's family's perspective as well.

When they're like talking to his friends and family, they're like,

it just seemed like a very happy marriage. It was

a new marriage, you know, everything's fine. But when they

started to look into her, they found that not only

were their financial problems, but she was having an affair.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there was.

Speaker 2: There was this other thing. So I details on this

weally kind of weird. But she had ended up being

in like a lawsuit and she was awarded one point

seven million dollars while they were married. Now because of

marriage laws, he would be entitled to like so much

of that money, right to have right. Yeah, so that

was that was a big stressor okay, where she was

like but I okay, she didn't, Yeah she didn't. Yeah, okay, okay,

I'm like, these sound like the opposite of money problem. No, no, no,

no no. She was like, that's gotcha would like that

They went They were obviously like, okay, like there's financial

issues in that she was spending a lot, Like he

made good money, but she was spending a lot of

that money. She had all this money, she wanted to

hang on to and she was having an affair. So

they're like, Okay, well all of this is pointing to

the wife. Let's go back to the hospital and look

at the records.

Speaker 3: Now, they would have taken blood all these samplings while

he was there.

Speaker 2: And one of the samplings they did was something that

like I think you'll be pretty familiar with in any

of my other weirdos to watch Forensic Files. They go

big into this on the episode where they were doing

a relatively new at the time drug test, which is

called sectioning. It's like the hair section Oh yes, so

like your hair will be exposed to so much of

whatever poison or chemical or drug or whatever, and so

they it's almost like tree root kind of stays.

Speaker 3: Any anything that you take that like alters your body

chemistry will stay in your hair for longer, Like you

can go further back, yeah, than with a blood or urine.

Speaker 2: Yes, that's what they say. Yeah, that's what they what

they say. But it is kind of like rings on

a tree.

Speaker 1: A little bit.

Speaker 2: Yeah, very that's I always think of that when I

think of it, and it's like a pretty common if

you watch like crime TV, you'll see that's at some point,

I mean obviously hair evidence and forensics has changed quite

a bit over the last thirty years, and what is

actually science like what is not? So just we'll put

that in there as a ka continue. So they were like, Okay,

let's look at like all of his all of these

tests that they ran on him, and what they found

was a large amount of thallium. Oh boy, Gallium is

commonly found in rat poison. Yes, so that's whenever you

see someone with like a big thallium, it's rat poison. Yeah,

and you have to ingest a lot. Humans actually have trouble,

Like I feel like every like kid who's writing like

a murder mystery is like she poisoned him by putting

the rat poison in his coffee. But yeah, it's rat poison.

A rat's physiological system is a lot different than humans

in that they're unable to vomit. Rats can't barf, so

it just stays in their system. Humans are able to vomit,

so we barf it up a lot of times before

it can enter our system our bodies like, no, actually

don't want that.

Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of I mean, there are

obviously a handful of we'll say common poisons that are

fast acting, right, yeah, like arsenic or like yeah, what's

the one that tastes like almonds cyanide and that's all

like fast acting will kill you within like five to

ten minutes, right, But most of the time that things

that people can realistically get their hands on, things like

rat poison, are not. It's like a you have cumulative

yeah yeah yeah, or like whatever is in eye drops,

like you know what I mean. Like these are things

that you have to take for a while in large

doses before a human body's going to like right.

Speaker 2: And especially this because like what happens is it gets

in your system and you throw up, so then it

actually doesn't affect you at all. Your body will get

rid of it, right, So he had to have this

for like a long time. Yeah, So that was showing

up in his tests, like a large amount of fallium.

And so they were going through all of these certain

dates because even before he was like admitted to the hospital,

they had taken blood to see if he had this

neurological test right right, this neurological disorder. Yeah, So they

were looking at all of these results and they were

able to see like, oh, there's a big spike here.

And then it kind of goes down and then there's

a big spike here. So they're putting all these states

to see who would have been with him on all

of these states, like this is when this big portion

entered his system, and who do you think that would be?

His wife? My wife? My wife. So remember how he

was in the hospital and he was like getting better

and they were like kind of even being like, hey,

you might be able to like leave soon. You're like,

if this is.

Speaker 3: Why, I'm like, well, at least he was going to

the hospital, because you would think like.

Speaker 2: Well, at this point, they didn't let him leave. He

was admitted to the hospital, right, you're gonna fucking die,

and they were like, actually, you're getting much better better.

He's like, I do feel better, and he's like even

better enough to have a visit from my wife. She's like, hey,

you must be so tired of hospital food, so I

brought you a pizza and and iced tea. Oh my gosh,

drink and eat all of it, and then me guess

he got really stick after her. Yeah, and then died

the next day. Oh okay, yes, wow. So she had

picked so much in it that and his system was

already so weak at this point, even though he was

getting better. I think it was just like too much. Yeah. However,

by this point it turned out that Bobby had actually

like when his wife was like out of the room,

he was like, dude, I've been putting it together. I

think she's trying to kill me. Can he tells somebody

that he told the nurse, Oh, it's like I have

a bad feeling. I really like I need help, Like

I don't know what to do, like do we kick

her out here? And it's kind of unknown what actions

were taken at that time. Okay, because like pretty much

right after that he coded yeah, because he had just

eaten it. Yeah. Okay. So during this whole investigation after

Bobby's death and internment in the cemetery, Joanne, his wife,

the widow, was able to avoid suspicion. This investigation took

five years. He probably had life insurance too, I bet, oh,

absolutely so. Not only was she enjoying her lawsuit money

that she had won her pout settle, the payout thank

you her one point seven million dollars, she was also

able to enjoy his sweet sweet union packaging. Oh the

union got good shit, Yeah, good shit. They were able

after the five year investigation, which included getting exhooming Bobby's body,

and they did what I was talking about, the hair

sectioning test to see like the specific dates that the

thallium entered his body. They were able to have enough

evidence to arrest her and charge her with first degree murder.

This was on December twelfth, nineteen ninety six. I think

he wasn't cremated exactly because the thallium was so high

they honestly probably still would have found it. Yeah, oh yeah,

but they wouldn't have been able to do the sectioning.

But I think they would have been able to find it. Like,

so like lucky for that. So something interesting that was

taking place, like in the court. So obviously like she

goes to jail, they take her to court. Something that

the defense, her defense was kind of hinging on was

the fact that this hair sectioning testing was so new

that they were like, that's boloney, that's here, grass fed baloney.

You know what is this weird test? And there was

this weird thing where like his coffin was not sealed

properly and they were saying like heavy metals from the

ground could have seeped in. Yeah, which like ill, but

like also there's no evidence of that. That's what. Don't

think they would have been absorbed into rror that is

no longer living. That's what they were saying, Like there

are certain forensic things like you were talking about that

have now been exposed as like more of like pseudoscience.

But like I looked at like the I mean on

forensic files in particular, they show like the court foot

and stuff, and so they're showing like the picture of

like this is the hair root. Look at the thallium here,

and it goes like way up and then it's like

and then it goes down for a while and it

goes way up. I'm like, how would that be from

the ground. It would all be like the same.

Speaker 3: Right, especially if you're getting it from the root, which

is right, I have now found out the most reliable Yes, right,

the hair testing has to come froment the actual root.

Speaker 2: Yes, but yeah, that's right. So they were like trying

to hold on to whatever you hate, what you don't know.

There was also the thing that I haven't mentioned that obviously,

since they were like, Okay, for whatever reason, this guy

who's passed away has this thallium poisoning, right, we should

get everyone else who like is living in his house

to make sure that it's not something that like they've

been ingesting accidentally. Oh yeah, so they did test Joanna

and Joanna had a daughter from a previous marriage who

was like really little. Ye, they did test them. They

both also had small amounts of thallium poison in their body. Okay,

this has never been confirmed because she to this day

is like no, no, Well she did eventually confess, but

she's very wawfully about it. What's suspected because they did

the root testing on them too, so they were able

to see like, oh, it's just at this one time,

is that she poisoned herself and her daughter to avoid suspicion,

to make it look like, oh, it's just something in

our water or something that we paid accidentally, because otherwise

there would have been like no way.

Speaker 3: Because also I'm like, well maybe it was like a

murder suicide.

Speaker 2: It was a pretty small amount of thouands either one

of them ever got.

Speaker 3: Just enough to like have it in your bloodstream. Yes,

then okay.

Speaker 2: Because I think she didn't want to risk it. She

was like, I'm going to spend this money if I'm dead.

I mean in but like to poison a little bit

terrible approach. Well, yes, yeah, she's an asshole.

Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god, especially baby, because right, I feel

like adults people just like always underestimate or overestimate how

much to dose a baby with something whatever it happens

to be.

Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, yeah, it was crazy. Fuck this lady. So

originally she they were like, we're gonna give you the

death penalty. But Bobby's family they obviously didn't forgive her,

but they were like, we just want closure. We don't

really believe in the death penalty. So they were able

to kind of go down, which is something I think

unfortunately they would kind of learn to regret because somehow

Joanne was able to plead guilty to third degree murder,

which what the fuck is that? Like, I've always thought

that was so stupid. I'm like, yeah, murder is murder,

you know what I mean. I understand there's like certain

things that play into it. I understand, but I'm like,

you poisoned him. How is that third degree murder? Yeah?

You did that on purpose. You bought the rat poison,

you had it in your house, you put it in

his food, and you gave it to him. That's premeditated.

I have no idea how she was able to get

away with thirty Yeah, and she like it, had a

full confession, she confessed to it. She said that it

was all for the insurance money, is what she said. Okay.

She ended up being sentenced to twenty years in prison

in nineteen ninety seven, and pretty much as soon as

she got into prison, she was like, parole, parole, parole,

I want every parole, and they were like no, she

was never granted parole. I mean good, And twenty years

was the maximum that they could do for third degree murder.

That was the judge gave her the maximum sentence. Sure,

this was in nineteen ninety seven. On December twelfth, twenty sixteen,

she was released, okay and is now out in society. Okay,

the end, the end isn't that crazy. So the whole

thing was I haven't been able to find like the

full tapes of her confession. There's part of it in

forensic files, and I saw like little clippies of it.

But she is one of the coldest people that I've

ever seen. Like there's no tears, there's no she is

never ever, even after confessing, shared any remorse. She has

never apologized. She's never said she was sorry or that

she was sad about it.

Speaker 1: Nope.

Speaker 2: Just they were like the detectors were like, we have

all of this evidence, this is all this thallium poisoning,

this is all this stuff. Look at this hair chart.

You did this, And she was like, yeah, I did.

I wanted the end, I said. So that's what I

mean by like usually like a spousal murder is like

the emotions are very high, yeah, you know, the hatred,

the betrayal, the stress of like maybe financial issues, which

they did have financial issues, but not that bad.

Speaker 3: No, those are not financial issues. No, she had a

spending problem, right, she had a spending problem totally, and.

Speaker 2: Those are not financial problems. No, so much money, right

especially I bet she did, but that all of that

was sort of and like she was having an affair,

But there wasn't any of that like back and forth

like betrayal, big fights. I don't even know if he

was aware that she had any concrete evidence that the

police discovered that she was having an affair, right, not him, right,

So like whether he knew or not, who's to say.

But there wasn't any of that like big fighting his

friends and family and everything were like they never fought,

like they were super chill. Everything was fine. Yeah, so

she's this cold, calculating like under the surface. Turns out

when they did the thallium testing on the hair route,

they were able to discover like the first time she

gave it to him was six weeks after their marriage.

That's it.

Speaker 3: So it almost seems like maybe it was a marriage

of that's what his family convenience that his.

Speaker 2: Family is like, she never even liked him. She tricked

him because he had a good job at all of

these like insurance benefits so that she could have this money. Yeah.

His family continues to be very vocal about like she

needs to go back in prison, they feel, and I

agree that twenty years is not fair for murder. Yeah,

and the fact that she's just like out there in

society is like very alarming to me. I think that's

pretty crazy. I mean, don't think about it too hard,

because there's a lot of that well, I don't know hard.

There's a lot of people out there, sure is, but

like it's just I'm just like, how on earth did

she get talked down to third degree? I have no

idea super stupid guilty well, yeah, I'm guessing, so I'm

sure the confession like worked in her favor. Yeah, but wow,

that's crazy, isn't that crazy? Crazy? So I decided for

this one to go old timey. I love old timey time.

So we are going to talk about Holly Harvey Crippen

aka doctor Crippen. But before we get started, Rachel, Hi,

how do you feel about homeopathy? I feel that I

don't know what it is? No like a homeopath, homeopathy

like blood? No?

Speaker 3: Okay, So for the uninitiated like me, it is largely

considered a pseudoscience and sort of alternative medicine. It's a

very very old timey idea from like seventeen oh wow,

like late seventeen hundreds, where it's in Layman's terms, it

is this idea that like cures like right, like a

little bit of something that would make a normal person

make a sick person homeopathic.

Speaker 2: I have heard that before.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Oftentimes it uses tinctures, which is like you take

a thing and you dilute it and you dilute it,

and you dilute it and you dilute it and you

dilute it and you delude it. Like I'm not even kidding.

Speaker 3: And it's the idea that even this basically water having

a single molecule of the cure will cure you of

well whatever. Als This is kind of christ It's bullshit.

It's bullshit in my opinion. It is, like I said,

it is a pseudoscience. It's one of these, but it's

one of these things that's still very much around, you know,

things like essential.

Speaker 2: Oils and curing also bullshit colds.

Speaker 3: Andlus and autism and cancer like that.

Speaker 2: All is I thort of that, so much apathy that

has essential oils in it. And I'm still autosted. I

know it's not working for I am rollers by the day.

The other day I saw a train and I said,

oh my god, you WEREGGD one. Hell.

Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's homeopathy. Oh that's yeah, but it's

slightly as important. It's it's slightly important, slightly important for

this case because doctor Crippen is mainly a doctor of homeopathy.

Speaker 2: So not a doctor, right, so just a person. Yeah, God,

let's talk about this. You will love this. Oh yeah.

So Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in eighteen sixty two.

Wow to Andress Skinner and Myron Augustus Crippen. It truthfully

does not seem like there was anything in his child

childhood worth mentioning. Okay, but he did attend the University

of Michigan's School of Homeopathy before graduating from the Cleveland

Homeopathic Medical College in eighteen eighty four. Wow, you gotta remember,

we know it's bullshit. In twenty twenty six, right, they

were probably like whoa, yeah, magic from a wizard.

Speaker 3: Yes, this lavender a lot more viewed more as acceptable

until they started learning more about actual medicine.

Speaker 2: Well, it's like that thing of like what is it

where they'd like feel your head, yeah.

Speaker 3: Like lump here, yeah, yeah, phrenology for this is also

a time of humors and things like that. So it

was a different time, different time, different time. So, following

his schooling, Kirpin got married to Charlotte Jane and the

two had a son named Holly Otto. Unfortunately, Charlotte Jane

died from a stroke in eighteen ninety two, and Krivin

was like, I have my career going for me. I'm

not I get the impression that he was not. I

don't want to say that he didn't want kids. He

probably wanted a son as socially acceptable. But I don't

know that he had a fathering bone in his body.

Speaker 2: To be honest with you. So he talked his parents

into basically taking over guardianship of his son. But this

is also a time where it's like, well, I don't

have a wife at home to write. Yeah, so he

sends Holly Otto to go live with his parents in

San Jose, California. Two years after Charlotte's death, Crippen moves

to New York City, where he wants to practice homeopathy.

He's got the schooling, he was okay to do it.

It was there that he would meet his second wife,

Corinne Turner, who also went by Cora. Now Cora was

a music hall singer who performed under the stage name

Belle Elmore. Oh very fancy, And so she's in New

York trying to get this music hall yeah, career going.

He did read that she was not very good, but

she was she was determined. So Crippin meets kra they

get married. Uh.

Speaker 3: This same year, Crippin starts working for James M. Munion,

who is a super interesting guy in his own right.

That is, honestly, if you have time just say. But

he is like a very prominent figure in the patent

medicine interesting, which you know if patent medicine is very

type stuff, you know, So he's kind of this he became.

The reason he's so big is because he sort of

took patent medicine and made it into this very He

was like the first one to do these huge advertising

campaigns really sort of.

Speaker 2: Corporatize it all.

Speaker 1: He was.

Speaker 2: Kind of in a way, kind of in a way, Yeah,

I wish she hadn't done this. So Cryppa goes off to.

Speaker 3: Work for this guy money In. He has actually a

branch office that's in London, and so Kribin and Cora

relocate to London in eighteen ninety seven to manage the

office that he has there.

Speaker 2: Cool.

Speaker 3: Corara is kind of excited about this because she's like

London would have a pretty big scene stage like the

theater in London. She decided to continue pursuing a stage

career in London. She managed to get into this sort

of variety show scene okay, and start hanging out with

these kind of people and making friends. Now London seemed

to be treating her a lot better than it did Crippen.

Turns out being a doctor of homeopathy in the United

States doesn't qualify you do practice medicine in the UK.

Speaker 2: They're like, that's dumb America. That's not medicine, that's not

for us.

Speaker 3: Was forced to I know, He's like, what do you mean,

I can't practice medicine.

Speaker 2: I have a doctor of homeopathy. They're like, oh, you

have a piece of paper. That's so cool. I have

lots of those, yeah, reinvented paper.

Speaker 3: Okay, So he can't practice medicine how he wants in

the UK. So instead he sort of is forced to

like focus his efforts on the distribution of patent medicine. Okay,

so he's just out here schill and snake oil love

it in eighteen ninety nine money and fires Krippen understand,

And so he goes off and he's sort of like

for a little while working for these other patent medicine companies, Yeah,

doing distribution things for yeah. Find his place, Yeah, And

then he gets hired as the Drouet Institute for the

Death as a manager.

Speaker 2: Okay. Now, when he Strange started there, he needed to

hire a new typist. Oh no, and he chooses this

young woman named ethel Leneve for the job in nineteen hundred,

He says, can you type? She's like, I don't know,

but I'm really cute. What's typing? I've never heard of

that of chess.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she's she's this young woman hires as a typist.

Five years later, she and Crippen are having an affair.

Of course, as you would guess. Yeah, she's typing like

I love you, yeah, slipping it.

Speaker 2: Under his door. So Crippen and his actual wife, Cora,

they sort of move around London to a couple of

places before they settle to They settle into this place

in Holloway where they start housing lodgers as a way

to supplement Crippen's income because lodgers is not a good

sign on a true crime podcast. I know, I don't

be bad.

Speaker 3: So this is from the street press quote. Part of

the thinking behind this move was that the pair could

now have separate bedrooms.

Speaker 2: Oh. Bell had never really been a sexual person, and

according to what Crippen would later say, all physical relations

between them ceased by nineteen oh seven. Oh so they

were in a sexless marriage. Oh, Crippen had already at

this point started an affair. By this time, Cora had

actually started her own affair right with one of the

lodgers that was at their house, and so I thought

she'd be like making her way through the tenor section

at her Yeah.

Speaker 3: No, so she she was having a fair with them

of the lodgers. They talk about this being perfect because

they had separate bedrooms, like, you know whatever.

Speaker 2: This is kind of a marriage of convenience at this point.

I mean, I don't even know. I'm sure in the

beginning it was because she's like this flashy singer. He's

you know, I weird. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3: It was kind of a weird arrangement. It's not like

he's making a ton of money.

Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I don't know why. Hmmm, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3: I don't get any But once Cora took her, she

sort of has this affair on the side. Crippen officially

takes lenev as his mistress, which to me seems more

of I don't know, to me, having an affair, having

a mistress kind of the same thing. But I think

back then it was like an affair was in secret

and a mistress was a little bit more. Yeah, like

I have this wife, but I always.

Speaker 2: Have this young lady on my arm.

Speaker 3: On the side, on the side, and it's not a secret,

you know, I know, I think that's that's the vibe

that I get the.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely a license side shape.

Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, which is kind of depressing because that means

either your what like your wife is just.

Speaker 2: Like resigned to yeah. But also divorce was like what

are they going to do about it? Yeah? You know, yeah,

you can't. Divorce was not really there's also no like

equivalent of that for women. No, it's not like this

is my mister no, you know, no, definitely now that

definitely not women don't even have sex? Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1: Right?

Speaker 2: Youw what's that?

Speaker 3: So she came out as a mistress in nineteen oh eight.

This whole sort of arrangement relationship continued until nineteen ten,

wow two years. In January nineteen ten, the Crippens hosted

a dinner party for a couple of Cora's friends, Paul

and Clara Martinetti. Okay, there was a small argument between

Cora and Crippen during the dinner party. It was something

like somebody had one of the guests had asked where

the where the restroom was, and instead of getting up

and at physically showing them where the restroom was. He

was like, oh, it's just like down the hallway or whatever.

When she was like, you're a bad host.

Speaker 2: You should have guided him to like you should have

gotten up and take it like that's bad hosting ball

and they get into this little argument, right, uh huh Okay,

But it wasn't like outside of that, everything went pretty smoothly.

There wasn't anything that was like not like they're raising

each other up, no, or just like constantly throwing like

passive aggressive blows. Okay.

Speaker 3: The Martinetti's left the house around one am. But following

the dinner party, Cora wasn't really seen out in public,

Like she wasn't really showing up to the place that

she would normally show up to.

Speaker 2: I was hoping she killed him.

Speaker 3: I was rooting for Cora, oh Dard, I know. I mean,

it's just natural to root for the woman. No, unfortunately,

not Bummer. So about a week after this, people start

asking questions, Yeah, they're going to Krippen and they're like,

I haven't seen Cora on while in a while, she

missed practice, What where is she at?

Speaker 2: What she doing? He says. She decided to go back

to the US. She left she went back to the US.

Speaker 3: People continue to ask where she was, and then he

starts saying, well, she fell ill. She's actually been really sick,

that's why you haven't seen her. And then eventually the

story became she fell ill and died. We're talking like

over a number of weeks.

Speaker 2: People, Oh, where is she? Where is she? Or she? Oh,

by the way, she's done. Yeah, she got she got

really sick.

Speaker 3: She died, and she was cremated, cremated, and her ashes

were sent to California.

Speaker 2: I don't ask us about it anymore.

Speaker 3: But interestingly enough, not long after Cora seemingly vanished, Miss

lenev was seen in public wearing Cora's jewelry.

Speaker 2: Oh my god, which is this damn dirty dog?

Speaker 3: Sketchy at all? And a month after moved in, Oh,

doctor Kurpin.

Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, she says, I'm the new Cora. Yeah, move

right in there. Yep.

Speaker 3: To friends and observers, this was super fucking weird. Yeah,

and some finally became suspicious enough to like tell the police.

Speaker 2: Good finally. So the first report was from strong woman

Kate Williams, who went by Volcana on stage. Oh my yod,

but she's a woman still well, so they they she

made this report, and I think they kind of were like,

what about you found her at the police station all

about yourself? Yeah, right, even though she's literally like this

fucking she's like yeah, Like they're just like that's cute.

But it wasn't until actress lil Hawthorne and her husband

John Nash used their connections to a friend and Scotland

Yard Superintendent Frank Forrest that police finally started to take

it a little seriously and look into it at least.

Speaker 3: Yeah, but they had to like pull strings to be

like okay, no, but really, can you go please go

check this out.

Speaker 2: I'm still stuck on Volcana. That is so cool. Love

her this I do? Okay, so Chief Inspector Walter do

for this Skyland Yard or for like yes, okay, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: Uh.

Speaker 3: He visited the Crippen's home to ask him a few questions,

and he was more than happy to give him a

tour of the house.

Speaker 2: Do you want the house tour?

Speaker 3: But when he was talking to Inspector do he said

that Cora had actually left him for another man, probably

this American guy who was like an acquaintance that she

had met years ago. I think his name was Bruce.

I have it later it's Bruce something. But he's like,

she met this guy, she left me for him, went

to America.

Speaker 2: So she's all of her friends that she's dead because

I'm a normal guy. Yeah, girl, but also like, I'm

so fucking mad she dead to me, Like what the hell?

So this is what he tad the cop he did

ask Krippen to.

Speaker 1: Do.

Speaker 3: He was suspicious, you know, inspectors was suspicious, Yeah, because

there wasn't any evidence. So he asked Krippen to have

Cora contact him directly to verify, like, please have her again.

We're talking nineteen hundreds. It's not like, you know, you

can text or call somebody up. So he said, okay,

I'll have her call you, get in touch with you.

He agreed to place some advertisements in newspapers requesting that

she make contact with the police, which is about the

best of teen hundreds, which seemed to satisfy the Chief inspector,

so at least for the time being, he was fine

and left. Now clearly feeling the pressure, Crippen immediately took

steps to evade police because he's like, at this point,

he's thinking, oh, they have all this evidence against me,

Like that's why they're all of a sudden showing up

after weeks and weeks and weeks, right, So he immediately

shaved off his mustache, he dressed, starting to think he's innocent,

dressed to Lenev as a boy, and two of them

left for Brussels. While they were in Brussels, they purchased

tickets for the SS Montrose to sail to Canada as

father and son get out, which I'm always like, they always,

especially in these days, they always be dressed in women

like boys.

Speaker 2: Like, why couldn't she Oh my god, they should have

just like like had a horse costume, pretend to be

a horse, pretend to be a mule. Yeah, that's the

dumbest thing I've ever heard. So they are like, well,

calling her ugly, you can be the little boy.

Speaker 3: That's what they always did though, every single time they

have weird hide women, they're like, we're gonna dress you

as a little boy and pose you as my son.

Speaker 1: Dad.

Speaker 3: So, while Krippen and Lenev be in what appears to

be an escape attempt, Chief Inspector Due returns to their residence.

Like the next day he comes back and he discovers

they are not home. So he's like, oh, I'm just

gonna let myself in.

Speaker 2: And take a little harder look. So he goes in.

Speaker 3: I think he called some other officers over to help

him look around. While he was looking through the cellar,

he notices that there's some loose bricks. Oh no, now

again from the history press quote, officers were ordered in

to make a more thorough search, and beneath those bricks

they found the remains of a body. The body was headless, slimless,

and boneless, little more than pieces of flesh.

Speaker 2: But it was female. Oh my god.

Speaker 3: So they literally find basically a torso. Yeah, under these

bricks in his cellar. Examination of the torso by a

senior scientific analyst found traces of hyocin hydrobromide, also known

also known as scopolamine.

Speaker 2: Or devil's breath ah.

Speaker 3: It's typically used for the treatment of like motion sickness,

they use it for post op nausea and vomiting, and

sometimes they use it prior to surgery to decrease saliva.

It also happens to be the main active component produced

by certain plants of the night shade family, and large

doses of it can cause at nightshade'll getcha.

Speaker 2: Yeah, ude, you know that's in tomatoes. Tomatoes are part

of the night Shade family. Yep. I mean there's arsenic

and apples. Some people can't like tolerate them to meats, Yeah,

because they have like they're more sensitive to like night shade.

Oh isn't that interesting? I mean fine, you're like no,

it's I mean, I was like, we eat poisonous shit

all day every day. I'm like less less, that's fair

impressed when it's like, oh, guess what else they're eating

that has poisoned And I'm like cool, whatever, why hasn't

it killed me? Yeah? Please, I'm seriously. Yeah.

Speaker 3: So they find this compound in this Torso surprise. Meanwhile,

the ship to Canada, Okay, there's a ship to Canada

that's moving, moving along. Some of the passengers are kind

of getting sketched out by this weirdly affectionate relationship between

a father and his son because they were like constantly

holding hands and like, oh no, kind of being outwardly

affectionate a freak.

Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of being.

Speaker 3: Outwardly affectionate in a way that's like a father and

son should not be like kissing each other on the

cheek so much like in weird why are they holding hands?

Speaker 2: Kind of weird? So just grab your son's ass. Yes,

so awkward.

Speaker 3: And people were noticing that the sun. They were like,

his clothes don't fit quite right. Yeah, like something there's

something not right about this fit right. Even the captain,

Captain Kendall, he became suspicious and he decides to send

a telegraph message to Scotland Yard. Wow that said quote

have strong suspicions that cripin London, sellar, murderer and accomplice

are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off, growing beard, accomplice

dressed as boy manner and build undoubtedly a girl.

Speaker 2: Quote. They didn't even buying her titties or nothing.

Speaker 3: No, And it was interesting because they're talking about because

now you're talking about ships at Yeah, said things right,

And he was about to get into an area where

the telegraph signal would not work for a little while.

So it was like right before he got to that,

he's like, I'm gonna send this telegraph. Oh, thank goodness

he did to Scotland Yard. Yeah, thinking yeah, so Chief

Inspector du gets this. He has a hunch on what's

going on. And he is like, I need to intercept

this father son quote unquote father son duo before they

disappear into Canada. So he and some other officers boarded

a faster ship called the SS Laurentich and race to

like intercept this be such a good movie Montrose, Yeah,

which I just love. It's like, how am I going

to get there faster? Well, aster shit, faster ship. Yeah,

And I'm wondering if it was like a passenger ship

versus like a cargo ship or like a you know

whatever it was. On July thirty first, nineteen ten, Do

catches up boards the Montrose, posing as a pilot and

he joins. He and another Canadian officer join Captain Kendall

on the bridge. They then invite Crippen to meet the pilots.

Speaker 2: They're like, come on, you want to meet the pilots

on the bridge, like a dick head, He's like, little close.

They want to meet Yeah, would you like to sample

some of my tinctures?

Speaker 3: I have to tell you when I imagine, I imagine

this as one of the most like the most dramatic

scene in the movie, right, Like I I hope it

played out like this. Yea, it is incredible. But this

is what I imagine, right, they call him up. Okay, this

actually happened, do again, I imagine dramatically takes his pilot's

cap he had like this pilot cap on, takes his

pilot cap off and says, quote, good morning, doctor Crippen.

Speaker 2: Do you know me. I'm Chief Inspector due from Scotland Yard,

to which Crippen replied, quote, thank god, it's over. The

suspense has been too great. I couldn't stand it any longer.

And he basically like holds out his wrists to yeah

slap coofs Yeah. So doesn't that sound like it be

like this very like oh my god. He's like, hello, pilotman.

He's like, actually it's me. It's me, Doctor Holmes. He's like,

thank god.

Speaker 3: So yeah, So they arrest Crippen and lenev both of them.

They were pretty much arrested without incident. It wasn't like

anything crazy because Crippen. So this I thought was kind

of interesting. So because Crippen was technically a US citizen

and at the time they were on a Canadian ship

heading to Canada. Canada was still under the British Empire

at that point in time, so authorities did not have

to go through an extradition process because all worked out.

Had they traveled to the US instead of to Canada,

they would have had a big problem because they would

have had gone through the extradition to bring him back.

Speaker 2: Thank god they had that quick boat, I know.

Speaker 3: The super fast and I think, honestly like the story

would have been much much different, so way different. Three

weeks later, the pair were taken back to England to

face trial for corus murder. Now it was decided that

Krippin and lenev would be tried separately. Okay when so

Kripin was going to go first. It started in October

nineteen ten, lasted four days.

Speaker 2: Now.

Speaker 3: Despite having a torso, witnesses called said they were not

necessarily able to identify whether the torso was.

Speaker 2: Male or female.

Speaker 3: They did point out that there was a piece of

skin that they had that had an abdominal scar, consistent

with Cora's medical records. Oh wow, now let me show you.

I'm going to show you what they because I'm curious

to get your thoughts on it. This is the piece

of skin that they have that they said is a scar. Oh,

you don't have your glasses on?

Speaker 2: Can you see it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, because this is currently in a music there's

like a.

Speaker 2: Muse and that has this in it looks gross. Yeah,

but I don't know, that's so interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

What do you think? I don't know. I don't know either.

I don't know.

Speaker 3: It's hard to tell and it's very red and I

don't know if that is drawn on to show where

the scar tissue is at or what the deal is

with him. That looks more like a like a recent

injury than like a healed injury.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that.

Speaker 3: But they said we have this abdominal scar consistent with

Cora's medical records. Prosecutors also presented curlers and bleached hair

consistent with Cora's found amongst the remains. Okay now, defense

attorneys opted to stick with the claim that Cora had

fled to the US with American Bruce Miller was his name.

Speaker 2: They Miller Miller going to Texas.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: They suggested that the torso had been placed in the

basement by the previous owner. Oh yeah, that just happened

to be there, and that the scar tissue was actually

just folded skin. Okay, which I'm kind of like I

don't know.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like so little to go off of because

they couldn't do anything.

Speaker 3: Definitely more circumstantial, definitely like there is a thing to

be said where it's like, your wife is missing, no

one's seen her. She has contact the police, and we

found a torso in your basement, So like, you tell

me what you think fucking happened, you know, but I mean.

Speaker 2: Could could be. Yeah, sometimes on your movie you leave

things behind deer, did you grab the torso? Oh damn it,

torso forgot I did that? Whoopsies, I blacked out. I

wish there was something like preserved that they could test

at this point, you know, we'll get to that. Oh

my god.

Speaker 3: So the jury deliberated for twenty seven minutes before me

before finding Cripen guilty of murder. Lynev had been charged

with being an accessory after the fact, but she was acquitted.

I do think that was probably legit. I have a

feeling she probably did not was not aware that he

potentially murdered his wife. And I mean, she was a

young young girl in love that was finally moving up

in the world from mistress to full time girlfriends. So yeah, yeah,

it's hard to know what her perspective was. They also

want easier on women back in the nth You gotta.

Speaker 2: Really be in love to be like, let me quick

draw on some five o'clock shadow and pretend to be

your son.

Speaker 3: Yeah, whatever you say, dear, it's like, clearly you didn't.

Speaker 2: You didn't at that point. She might have known. Right

at that point, she might have known, But I don't

think that she or it's like, oh, they're falsifying these

claims and it's my innocent husband. I'll do anything to

get him safe. But like it's just a big leap.

She might she might have known. I just don't think

she was an active participant. I get you in the

murder and hiding of the body. Maybe an active participant

in not saying anything about it, right, keeping her trap shut? Yeah, yeah,

she was going for that ring. So it's reported that

Kribin did not show any remorse at all for killing

his wife and was actually only really concerned with what

was happening to LENEV, like, oh my god, please make

sure you're treating her right, et cetera, et cetera, Oh

my god.

Speaker 3: He never gave a specific reason for killing his wife,

although you can only assume that it was like to

be with his mistress.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 3: I'll also say what he says to Chief Inspector do

on the boat, Right, He's like, I'm so glad it's over.

Speaker 2: Like that's crazy, Like, dude, you did that? Also, why

would whatever, why would you run? Why would you for

whatever take fuse identity and run. Yeah, that's what innocent

people do. Yeah.

Speaker 3: So he didn't give a specific reason to kill his wife,

but there were people who pose theories that he had

been using scope bolamine on cora as a depress or

an anaphredisiac, which is the opposite of an aphrodisiac. So

it's like to lower your sex drive to make you

less excitable to So he's doping her up.

Speaker 2: You think maybe he was.

Speaker 3: Doping her up so he didn't have to have sex

with her, or didn't you know, so he could have

this mistress whatever. Wow, who knows, but that he potentially

accidentally gave her a fatal dose. That was one theory,

claims a rose from Okay, So there's this article that

got released in nineteen eighty one that during an encounter

like many years prior with lenev that she had claimed

Crippen murdered kra because she had syphilis. This is again

like a second or third hand account.

Speaker 2: You would be able to tell from the boneshis puts hold,

but they didn't really have bones left.

Speaker 3: There were none of the limbs and head never just

got Yeah, uh, there was a torso, but they didn't

really say that they found bones. They just found like

just fleshyet.

Speaker 2: Oh, that's true, that's very true.

Speaker 3: So wow, whatever the reason, Kriptin was sentenced to death

and was hanged in London on November twenty third, nineteen ten,

by lynev. After that she left for the US. She

eventually landed in Canada, where she found work as a typist,

and she stayed there for a number of years before

returning to Britain. Lenin Average Life died in nineteen sixty seven.

Speaker 2: Okay, okay.

Speaker 3: Now, as we've talked about, there is some question as

to whether or not Krypin was actually guilty of this murder.

Some did not think that he would be dumb enough

to keep.

Speaker 2: The buried torso in the basement, but like successfully hide

the head and the limbs, Like why would you go

to that link to have them hidden and never be discovered,

but keep the torso that's true, seems kind of uh,

seems pretty stupid to me though, well he was a

doctor of yeah, dumb, dumb from them. There's also has

been speculation that Krippen was performing illegal abortions and that

the torso was that of one of his patients, right,

who died under his care, rather than Cora. But then

I'm like, why did he only keep the torso? Like

why is it just a torso in a basement?

Speaker 3: Yeah, even especially if it was a patient, that seems weird.

That seems more normal if it was somebody you know personally,

like your wife, because that is more of a like

the dismemberment I feel like is more of a personal attack.

A lot of times it's utility. But like you know,

I almost.

Speaker 2: Wonder if if he had, like assuming he killed her,

which I I I lean that way for sure, I

do too. It seems most likely, But I'm one if

maybe he like kept her body and was like getting

rid of it. Like, speaking as a British crime enthusiast,

I would bet that her hands and feet and legs

are at the bottom of the Thames, right, everything got

dumped in the river. Yes, So I wonder if it

was one of those things where it's like he would

go like under cover of night and like dump a leg. Yeah,

and then all of a sudden they found it. Right,

That almost seems like it was like, okay, we just

have these last pieces to do. Oh now the police

are here, you know, because otherwise why would you keep it.

I totally agree with you that it's weird. That's weird.

It's weird. In two thousand and seven, a forensic scientist

with Michigan State University claimed that the mitochondrial DNA from

the remains didn't belong to Cora. We actually that of

a man. What Using genealogy, researchers found three of Cora's

great nieces who provided mitochondrial DNA to compare, and they

claim These researchers at Michigan State claim that it does

not match. They also examined the scar tissue and discovered

hair follic holes, which should not be present in scar tissue. Oh,

so then that would pull it point to it be

that like folded skin you said earlier.

Speaker 3: Right, All of this put together prompted Cribben's closest relative

to request the British government pardoned crippen and send his

remains back to the United States. But these claims have

been disputed, with journalist David Iroanovich saying, quote as to

the body being male, while the American team was using

a special technique that is very new and done only

by this team, and working on a single century old

slide described by the team leader as a less than

optimal sample, I was.

Speaker 2: Gonna say, like, that's so long ago.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an old sample. It's not saying that it's

not legitimate. Right, Like DNA evidence and testing was new

at one point.

Speaker 2: But I knew how to store it.

Speaker 3: Well, I'm not even I'm not even talking about the sample,

I'm talking about the actual testing, right. DNA evidence was

new at one point into absolutely and had to be

tested and retested and proven to be accurate and to

be repeatable. And by having a specialized team in a

specialized location doing a test that literally only this team does, yeah,

seems fishy. Yeah, And I mean I'm sure it's done

in good faith. Like I don't think they were doing

it in bad faith, but like I need more than that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, Absolutely, one study is not enough for anything, right

on one sample? Right with what comparison, Why don't they

take that thing out of the museum that they have

and test that girl is a whole thing. It is

a whole thing. Wait yeah, yeah. So there have been

requests to test the hair found because they also still

have like the hair found for DNA samples. It's been

denied installed out a number of times.

Speaker 3: So there's like there's this whole back and forth right

with the people who have the evidence, like the museum

and stuff. I don't think and see that one I

think is still being housed by a branch of Scotland Yard.

I'm pretty okay. That's like the National But.

Speaker 2: Like other people have like other well.

Speaker 3: They they have this DNA right and people are like

test this, please test us, test this, please do test us.

And they have basically said, we'll retest it, but you

have to pay for it, to which the requesting body

has been like, well, we're not going to pay for it.

Like so it literally it got denied for a while

and then there was this hole back and forth. I

was like, well, we're not going to pay for it,

Well we're not going to and it just has sat.

Speaker 2: Wow, this is what I mean. It's like kind of

a whole thing, because there's like, you have it there,

why don't you test it? But these tests are expensive

and for.

Speaker 3: A decade's old case, it's like there's not a lot

of dry Why yeah, why why would we? And now

I get it from Crippen's descendants perspective, where he's like,

you know, if my great great great grandfather, a great

great great great uncle or whatever is innocent, Like I

would like to prove that, but.

Speaker 2: I don't know, Like it's weird. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Some have suggested that the police at the time, under

immense pressure to bring someone to trial for the murder,

planted the hair and some of the other evidence, like

planted the scar tissue, planted like some of this other evidence,

just like planted it.

Speaker 2: You know, they do that sometimes sometimes they be doing.

Speaker 3: That, I guess, But the case didn't become public until

after they found the.

Speaker 2: Tors in this case. I don't I don't think so. Yeah.

Speaker 3: In two thousand and nine, the UK's Criminal Cases Review

Commission denied hearing the case to pardon Crippen posthumously, and

he still remains a convicted murderer and a dead guy.

Speaker 2: And I mean they are but yes, that is crazy.

All the red tape pisses me. Ah, was that crazy?

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the story of the doctor of homeopathy, doctor Crippen.

Speaker 2: That's a good one. Murder of his wife and running

away with his mistress Korra. She sounded like a cool

fucking girl. Yeah, I mean, I don't it's hard to say.

I don't know. She sounds kind of funny because she was,

like I said, described as this sort of like really

wanted to be famous and this she said, what answer?

And was just not very good. It was like a Cardashian,

no talent, he wanted to be famous. Yeah. And when

I was gonna let me show you a picture of

this is Oh my god, she hot. Do you okay? Yeah,

you tell you, tell me you come over here. See.

Oh my god, she's so fancy. Get a big hat

with big feathers. Oh my god. She would definitely be

like an OG influencer. She would have loved Instagram. So

that's the story of doctor Crippen.

Speaker 1: Oh my god, I don't have to tell you things

are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression.

Speaker 2: Everybody losing their job. Well, Rachel, that has been our show.

It sure has it, sure has any final thoughts before

we forces like objectively way easier than like now killing

your spouse.

Speaker 3: Now you're right and the eighteen hundreds. Honestly it was

easier to kill your spouse.

Speaker 2: Well I know, but like I wish he hadn't done that.

Yeah he did that, I mean, yes, he did do that.

He did it. I don't care what any of that says,

even if he did have a man's body in his basement.

He also killed his wife. He did also because nobody

ever heard from her again, No, and why would you?

And there's no Bruce Miller, like get out of here anyway?

Uh okay, Well, on that note, our sound in editing

is by Tiffulman. Our music is by Jason Zakshawski. Do

your name Ma. This has been the Bad Taste Crime Podcast.

We will see you in two weeks. Goodbye bye. One

rides along the Highway.

Speaker 1: I have to science to word it. I think it

was as if the way that people washed over with

Speaker 2: Tern all you were wor it in some form or

another