THE NOTORIOUS DOCTOR CRIPPEN AND DNA.

THE NOTORIOUS DOCTOR CRIPPEN AND DNA. Dr. Crippen has a claim to being the most notorious criminal of the last century. His name was used by a major publisher of detective stories, Crippen & Landru. Why was he so celebrated? Probably because of the circumstances of his capture. When police, led by the soon to be famous Inspector Dew, interviewed Crippen about his wife’s disappearance, he fled. He wound up on a ship headed for Canada with his mistress, who was disguised as a young man. In London, the police found the dismembered body of a woman in Crippen’s cellar. The ship that Crippen and his mistress was one of the first to have Marconi’s invention. The ship’s captain suspected that Crippen was a passenger and used the wireless telegraph to send a message to that effect. Inspector Dew took a faster ship and arrested Crippen when he landed, making Crippen the first person arrested as a result of wireless communication. Crippen was hanged. His mistress was acquitted. Now, DNA tests have established that the body in the cellar was not that of Crippen’s wife, leading to all kinds of questions: Could the DNA test be wrong because Crippen’s wife or another female relative was adopted? If not, did Crippen’s wife commit the perfect crime? And whose body was in the cellar?