[6] After his first wife, Charlotte Jane (née Bell), died of a stroke in 1892, Crippen entrusted his parents, living in San Jose, California, with the care of his son, Hawley Otto (1889–1974).

In 1894 he married his second wife, Corrine "Cora" Turner (born Kunigunde Mackamotski), a music hall singer who performed under the stage name Belle Elmore.

[8] He initially continued working as a distributor of patent medicines,[9] while Cora embarked on an ultimately failed stage career and socialised with a number of variety players of the time.

[10] After Crippen was sacked by Munyon in 1899 he worked for other patent medicine companies, ultimately being hired as the manager for the Drouet Institute for the Deaf.

Meanwhile, Le Neve moved into Hilldrop Crescent and began openly wearing Cora's clothes and jewelry.

Under questioning by Chief Inspector Walter Dew, Crippen admitted that he had fabricated the story about his wife having died, claiming that he did so to avoid personal embarrassment because she had in fact left him and fled to the US with one of her lovers, a music hall actor named Bruce Miller.

Captain Henry George Kendall recognised the fugitives and, just before steaming beyond the range of his ship-board transmitter, had telegraphist Lawrence Ernest Hughes send a wireless telegram to the British authorities: "Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers.

Dew boarded a faster White Star liner, SS Laurentic, from Liverpool, arrived in Quebec ahead of Crippen, and contacted the Canadian authorities.

[8][15] Large quantities of scopalamine were found in the remains, and Crippen had purchased the drug before the murder from a local chemist.

[8] Other evidence presented by the prosecution included a piece of a man's pyjama top, supposedly from a pair Cora had given Crippen a year earlier.

One was by the late Victorian and Edwardian barrister Edward Marshall Hall, who believed that Crippen was using scopolamine on his wife as a depressant or anaphrodisiac but accidentally gave her an overdose and then panicked when she died.

[20] In 1981, several British newspapers reported that Sir Hugh Rhys Rankin claimed to have encountered Le Neve in Australia, where she told him that Crippen murdered his wife because she had syphilis.

[citation needed] Although Crippen's grave in Pentonville's grounds is not marked by a stone, tradition has it that soon after his burial, a rose bush was planted over it.

In the early 2000s, an investigation into Crippen’s case began with DNA expert David R. Foran, Ph.D., and forensic toxicologist John H. Trestrail III, BS Pharm, leading a team looking into the evidence presented by the prosecution.

Dornford Yates, a junior barrister at the original trial, wrote in his memoirs As Berry and I Were Saying, that Lord Alverstone took the very unusual step, at the request of the prosecution, of refusing to give a copy of the sworn affidavit used to issue the arrest warrant to Crippen's defence counsel.

The American-British crime novelist Raymond Chandler thought it unbelievable that Crippen could be so stupid as to bury his wife's torso under the cellar floor of his home while successfully disposing of her head and limbs.

[citation needed] In October 2007, Michigan State University forensic scientist David Foran claimed that mitochondrial DNA evidence showed the remains found in Crippen's cellar were not those of his wife.

[30][31] The original remains were also tested using a highly sensitive assay of the Y chromosome that found the flesh sample on the slide was male.

The scientists found hair follicles in the tissue which should not be present in scars, a medical fact which Crippen's defence used at his trial.

"[18] Researchers hypothesized that the police planted the body parts and particularly the fragment of the pajama top at the scene to incriminate Crippen.

suggests that Scotland Yard was under tremendous public pressure to find and bring to trial a suspect for this heinous crime.