Was Crippen Innocent? ; He Was One of Britain's Most Infamous Murderers - Hanged for Poisoning and Dismembering His Unfaithful Wife. But This Week Dna Tests Proved the Body Buried in His Cellar Wasn't Hersinnocent? He Was One of Britain's Most Infamous Murderers - Hanged for Poisoning and Dismembering His Unfaithful Wife. But This Week Dna Tests Proved the Body Buried in His Cellar Wasn't Hers

Summary

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AMONG the many grim historical characters in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds, one small, innocuous-looking man, peering through the bars of a cell, evokes a chilling image.

Set in the context of the grisly crime for which he was hanged, it is the very ordinariness of Dr Hawley Crippen that sends a shiver through anyone who lingers beside his waxwork model.

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Extract

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Was Crippen Innocent? ; He Was One of Britain's Most Infamous Murderers - Hanged for Poisoning and Dismembering His Unfaithful Wife. But This Week Dna Tests Proved the Body Buried in His Cellar Wasn't Hersinnocent? He Was One of Britain's Most Infamous Murderers - Hanged for Poisoning and Dismembering His Unfaithful Wife. But This Week Dna Tests Proved the Body Buried in His Cellar Wasn't Hers

Slightly built and barely 5ft 3in tall, he is dressed soberly in an Edwardian three-piece suit and starched wing-collar. Thin gold- rimmed WAS CRIPPEN spectacles suggest a sense of cruelty in his ice- blue eyes; his walrus moustache cannot disguise a little smirk.

To many, the mere mention of Crippen's name induces nightmares, and if 20th-century villains were ranked by notoriety, this infamous wife-killer would be bracketed with the Yorkshire Ripper, the Moors Murderers and Fred West.

Or at least that was Crippen's reputation until

But they were recognised by the this week. Now, in an extraordinary turnabout that may force Tussauds to melt down one of its most infamous exhibits, the original 'Dr Death' has apparently b...

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