Under the Bricks
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On the night of January 31st, 1910, an American couple living in London named Belle and Dr. Harpy Crippen were hosting a small dinner party for two of their friends. The group had just finished their food and they were now in the middle of a game called Wist, which is a card game, when suddenly Belle put her cards down and she stood up to tell a story.

And Dr. Crippen saw his wife doing this and kind of knew what was going to happen. And he kind of gestured for her to not tell the story and please sit down and play this game. But she just kind of waved at him dismissively, like, please leave me alone. I'm going to do what I want to do. Dr. Crippen sighed and just kind of sat back and let this happen. Anywhere they went, he knew his wife had to be the center of attention and there was just nothing he could do.

Dr. Crippen was a pretty passive guy who kind of got walked all over, especially by his wife. He was kind of little, he had big bulging eyes and huge glasses he wore, and his job was he basically sat inside of a dentist's office and mixed medicines for the dentist. And so he was just kind of like this anonymous, forgotten-about guy that worked in a back office hidden from the world.

Meanwhile, his wife, Belle, is like this beautiful woman, huge personality. She's an aspiring actress and singer, and everywhere they went, everybody loved her and basically didn't notice Dr. Crippen. Also, Belle would basically spend all of Dr. Crippen's money on her very expensive wardrobe.

And so Dr. Crippen is just so annoyed, he's sitting on the couch and he's watching as Belle has now stood up in her big flowing pink evening dress and she's regaling the guests with this big story of hers. And at some point she just kind of transitions from telling the story to performing this bizarre song and dance routine that was the story. It's like she came up with a play in real time and performed it for the guests.

And the dinner guests who were watching this performance, their names were Paul and Clara, they were totally entranced by what Bell was doing. They thought it was incredible. Paul and Clara were both theater people like Bell was. Paul was a former comedian, and Clara worked with Bell at their charity, which was called the Music Hall Ladies Guild.

And so Dr. Crippen just kind of scowled as the two dinner guests applauded really loudly for Belle's big performance. And Belle, you know, she smiled and kind of giggled and then sat down and said, thank you so much. And then, you know, Dr. Crippen, he's thinking, okay, now that she's done with this performance, we can finally play the card game that I really want to play. But Dr. Crippen, after grabbing his cards, looked around and could tell that they were not going to play cards. The big performance by his wife had eaten up all the rest of their time.

And now it was too late and the guests had to leave. Before Dr. Crippen could even stand up to begin picking up in the room to get ready for this visit to end, Bell, his wife, was demanding he go outside and get their guests a horse and carriage to bring them back home. And so Dr. Crippen just kind of put his head down and said, OK. And as he was walking towards the front door to get the horse and carriage, Bell yelled after him and don't get one of those cheap ones. Get an expensive one, a nice one.

Dr. Crippen just kind of rolled his eyes but said, "Okay," and then he walked outside. But despite looking all over the place, there were no nice horse and carriages. It was just the kind of loud, rickety, bad ones that his wife did not want him to get.

But after looking all over the place for a full hour and not finding a nice one, Dr. Crippen finally just had to hail one of the bad horse and carriages. He called them over and then he went back inside and he told the guests, okay, I got your horse and carriage. And so they came outside and so did Belle. And Belle's looking at this carriage after this long delay and it's this terrible carriage. And she

and she just stares at Dr. Crippen, furious. The guests don't seem to mind. They just walk down the stairs, they get in their carriage, they say goodbye, and they take off. But the second Dr. Crippen had turned back around, Belle was already back inside their home. And so he knows, you know, as soon as he goes in there, he's going to get yelled at.

And so he went inside the home and in the living room was Belle, arms folded, just staring at him, absolutely furious. And she began laying into him about not only how ridiculous it was that it took him a whole hour to find the carriage, and it was a terrible carriage, something she said not to do,

And she told him that he was the reason their whole dinner party had been a total disaster. Even though Dr. Crippen was like, I think it went pretty well. But in Belle's mind, you know, her husband was the reason this party had totally failed. He was boring. He didn't contribute anything. And she told him that she caught that he did not applaud nearly as loudly as Paul and Clara had for her big performance. And that really hurt her feelings.

When Dr. Crippen just didn't say anything, he just kind of knew to keep his head down and let his wife talk, you know, when that happened, Belle got so frustrated she kind of huffed and then turned around and walked over to the mantelpiece and she took this framed photo that she shamelessly left up in their house that was of her former lover who she openly had had an affair with. It was this beautifully handsome square-jawed prizefighter who

who again, Dr. Crippen knew his wife had cheated on him with. And so Belle, she takes this photo and she holds it up and she points right at him and she looks at her husband and says, you know, I can get any man I want. Look right here. I can get him if I want to. I don't need you.

But Dr. Crippen was not affected by this. He was completely used to being treated this way by Belle. And so again, he just stayed silent and took what she was throwing at him. And so again, Belle gets even more frustrated because she's not getting a reaction from Dr. Crippen. She finally just goes, you know what? I'm going to leave you tomorrow. I'm done with you. I can't be with you. It's over.

And again, Dr. Crippen just didn't react. I mean, this really was typical behavior for his wife, even this threat of leaving him tomorrow. You know, she had done this before, but never followed through on it. It was just kind of like Dr. Crippen was her punching bag, basically 24-7.

And so for now, all Dr. Crippen really wanted was for his wife to just stop ranting and raving so he could just go to bed. He didn't really care what she was saying. Frankly, he wouldn't even care if she did leave him the next day. He was totally unhappy in this marriage, as obviously she was, but he was so scared of scandal, he couldn't bring himself to divorce his wife. But if she actually followed through and left him, he'd be free. The marriage would be over and it would be her fault.

And so Dr. Crippen just stood there waiting for his wife to finish. But it was clear she had a lot to say. Even after threatening to leave him, she just kept on laying into him about all his faults. And then at some point, Dr. Crippen just totally caught her off guard by interjecting and saying, hey, Belle, do you want some whiskey? And Belle just kind of stopped and stared at her husband inquisitively. And then it was like her whole mood changed. And she was like, actually, yeah, I'll take some whiskey.

So Dr. Crippen said, "Great, I'll go make it." And he walked over to the liquor cabinet and he poured both of them a drink. Two days later, the members of the charity that Belle and Clara, the dinner guests, were a part of, the Music Hall Ladies Guild, they were all sitting in their office in London waiting to start their meeting. But there was a problem. Belle, who was their treasurer and therefore needed to be at this meeting, was not at this meeting. She was late and nobody knew where she was.

And so after they sat in this office for a while, just waiting, they finally heard a knock on the door. And so one of the women got up, they opened up the door, and standing outside is Dr. Crippen's assistant, this young woman named Ethel. And she looked kind of frazzled and maybe a little bit out of breath, and she was carrying a letter and a package in her hands.

and so ethel would tell the woman who opened the door that she was here on behalf of dr crippen and also bell and so the woman who opened the door said okay come on in and so ethel walked into the office and she placed the letter in the package on the table and then she quickly turned around and left after she was gone the guild members kind of looked at each other confused and then just reached out and they grabbed the letter they opened it up and they read it

And the letter was written by Dr. Crippen, and he was telling the members of this guild that unfortunately, one of Belle's family members back in America had fallen ill, and so Belle had to go back to America and take care of this person, and she'd be gone for at least several months. And then when they opened up the package that Ethel had dropped off, that contained the guild's checkbook and also their ledger. That way, they'd be able to go out and find a new treasurer to replace Belle.

And so when they had finished reading this letter and seeing the contents of this package, the members of this guild just kind of looked at each other, not really sure what to do. You know, it seemed odd that Belle had not told them she was doing this, that she had left without saying goodbye. But at the same time, it seemed like whatever she was dealing with in America was very serious. And so they decided the only thing they could do was to just hire a temporary treasurer and wait for Belle to come back.

About three weeks later, Clara and the rest of the Ladies Guild members hosted their annual ball. And like always, they invited Belle as well as her husband, Dr. Crippen, even though they knew, you know, this invitation was kind of a formality because Belle was still in America. But Dr. Crippen would show up to this ball and he would not show up alone. And it caused a bit of an outrage.

On Dr. Crippen's arm was very obviously his date, Ethel, his assistant, the young woman who had dropped off that letter in the package to the members of the Guild about Belle's sudden departure.

Clara stared incredulously at Dr. Crippen and Ethel as they kind of swayed around the room dancing. I mean, Clara just could not understand what was going through Dr. Crippen's head. How could he possibly think it was appropriate to so openly cheat on his wife around all of his wife's friends and in such a public place? It just seemed unfathomable that anybody would do what Dr. Crippen was doing.

And so that night, Clara and the other members of the Ladies Guild, they got together and they decided that, you know, because of Dr. Crippen's obvious infidelity, they could not invite him to be a part of anything to do with the Ladies Guild, at least not until they talked to Belle again when she got back. But Belle didn't come back, and she never wrote to any of the members of the Guild or any of her friends. She just disappeared.

And on March 20th, 1910, so roughly two months after Bell supposedly fled to America, Dr. Crippen came out and said he had just gotten some terrible news. It would turn out his wife, Bell, had fallen ill while in America, and she had died. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the

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When Clara and the rest of the Ladies Guild members heard about this, their disgust at Dr. Crippen's cheating quickly turned into suspicion that maybe he had something to do with Belle's early demise. You know, he played a role in her disappearance. He had to. So one of the members of this guild went to the police and reported Belle missing.

However, at first, the police were not inclined to pursue this case because from their perspective, there was no evidence of a crime committed here.

All they knew was this woman, Belle, had died in America, supposedly from natural causes. And so the only thing that was contrary to that were Belle's friends who basically were saying, well, you know, maybe she was murdered by her husband because her husband was cheating on her. And the police were like, that doesn't line up. Just because he was cheating on her does not mean he killed her.

But Bell's friends continued to keep the pressure on police, and finally, after three months, the police would assign a detective. His name was Walter Dew, and Inspector Dew had been a detective for more than 20 years, and he had even worked on the very famous serial killer case, Jack the Ripper, and had been one of the people who actually found the last body, although the Jack the Ripper case had gone unsolved.

But coming out of that investigation, Walter Dew had really developed a great reputation as a really good detective. And so to have him lead this case was a big deal. And so on the afternoon of July 6th, 1910, so roughly five months after Bell had gone missing, Inspector Dew, as one of his first things he would do for this case, went to Dr. Crippen's house to ask him about his wife.

Now, Inspector Dew expected that Dr. Crippen would tell him the same story he had told everybody else about Belle. Which is, you know, she had to go to America to take care of this sick relative, and while she was over there, unfortunately, Belle passed away. But what Dr. Crippen ultimately told Inspector Dew was not that.

Now, at first, Inspector Dew just asked Dr. Crippen a lot of basic questions about his wife. But Dr. Crippen seemed really awkward as he answered these questions. He actually almost seemed really embarrassed. And Inspector Dew clearly noticed this, but just kept on asking these routine questions and just allowed Dr. Crippen to act however he was going to act.

But at some point, Dr. Crippen just stopped answering the questions altogether, and he paused for a minute with his head in his hands, and then he took off his glasses, he put them on the table, and then he looked up at Inspector Dew, and he said, you know, I should just tell you the truth. Bell isn't dead.

Dr. Crippen told the inspector that the day following that dinner party they hosted with Paul and Clara, that that morning when Dr. Crippen woke up, his wife was gone and all her things were gone too. She had packed up in the middle of the night and left without telling him where she was going. And so Dr. Crippen realized his wife had finally made good on the threat to leave him. Dr. Crippen said he lied about what happened to Belle because he was trying to avoid a scandal.

He said that, you know, while Belle was horrible to him personally and really mistreated him, she was really kind of amazing with everybody else and everybody else loved her. And so Dr. Crippen really believed that lying about this would ultimately save her reputation and his own. So it was a win-win.

And once Dr. Crippen was relatively sure Belle was not going to be coming back, that she really had left him for good, that was when he began openly dating Ethel. Because he had actually been in love with his assistant, Ethel, for a long time. And he felt like now, with his wife out of the picture, he could finally love her out in the open, even though he admitted, you know, nobody would actually understand the dynamic here because everybody else thinks Belle is over in America and here I am cheating on her.

But, you know, Dr. Crippen insisted to the inspector that this was the truth. He was not cheating on Belle. He didn't have anything to do with her disappearance. She left of her own accord, and here he was.

And so after Dr. Crippen explained all this to the inspector, Dr. Crippen just put his face in his hands and just looked so ashamed and embarrassed to the point where Inspector Dew really believed Dr. Crippen. I mean, this is a guy who has just poured his soul out about some of the most embarrassing things of his entire life, so he's got to be telling the truth.

Also, Inspector Dew couldn't help but think to himself that Dr. Crippen was this little kind of passive-seeming guy who did not really seem capable of killing somebody else. But at the same time, Inspector Dew could definitely see a woman like Belle leaving Dr. Crippen the way that she did.

Still, just to be thorough, Inspector Dew asked Dr. Crippen if he wouldn't mind allowing the inspector to search the property because after all, this is a missing person case and so we got to check everything. Dr. Crippen said, absolutely, search my house, do whatever you got to do. And Inspector Dew would do just that. He went all over the house, looked everywhere and he would find nothing.

So the inspector told Dr. Crippen that as of now, he believed his story and that basically the case was closed. But Inspector Dew really needed to talk to Bell in order to officially close the case because right now, everybody thought she was dead, no one had heard from her, and so that was the one missing piece.

And so Dr. Crippen said that was totally fine, and he and the inspector actually worked together to draft up this little advertisement that would go in newspapers in America that basically would say, "Hey, Bell, if you see this, you need to contact police in London because we're looking for you." And so after the two men had come up with the language they wanted for this advertisement, Inspector Dew thanked Dr. Crippen, said he'd be in touch, and then he left.

But, five days later, when Inspector Dew went to follow up with Dr. Crippen, he discovered that Dr. Crippen and his new lover, Ethel, his assistant, were both gone, and nobody knew where they were. And this changed everything about the Bell case. Inspector Dew couldn't help but think, you know, Dr. Crippen and Ethel look like they're running from something, so probably they lied to me about their involvement with Bell's disappearance.

And so, Inspector Dew sent physical descriptions to all the newspapers and police stations all across Europe, and also he made a note to check all the ships that were bound for America in case Dr. Crippen and Ethel had decided to flee Europe that way. And while this big manhunt was just getting underway, Inspector Dew and his team went back to Dr. Crippen's house to do a much more thorough search.

So, police descended on Dr. Crippen's beautiful three-story home on a quiet street, and they went inside and they tore apart everything. They flipped over mattresses, they opened up drawers and closets, they threw everything out, but they found nothing suspicious.

But, at some point, Inspector Dew, who was feeling really annoyed that he'd been totally duped by this doctor, you know, he was walking down the basement steps in Dr. Crippen's house, and as he went down, he saw there were other investigators already in the basement, conducting yet another fruitless search. But, as he was walking down the basement steps,

As Inspector Dew kind of turned the corner at the base of the basement stairs, he noticed the bricks that were laying in front of the fireplace that was in the basement just looked a little bit off, like they were maybe too new or something. And so just kind of acting on a hunch, he walked over to these bricks that were laid out right in front of this fireplace. And he's looking at them and he grabs a poker, one of the pokers you use to move the logs around in a fire. And he just began tapping on each of the individual bricks right in front of them.

And with every tap, he would hear the solid thump sound that you're hitting something hard that is beneath this brick. But as he went along hitting each of these bricks, he eventually reached the kind of center of these bricks. And when he brought that poker down on one of those bricks, it made a hollow sound. Clearly there was something underneath these bricks.

And so Inspector Dew is super excited. He calls for his team to come over and one by one, they begin pulling up all these bricks. And after they're all gone, they see there's this perfectly smooth layer of clay that these bricks were sitting on top of.

And so Inspector Dew called for a shovel, a guy brought one over, and Dew, he took one scoop with the shovel, and immediately this horrible smell began coming out of the ground that was so gross that the guys around Inspector Dew began retching and vomiting. And before long, the entire group of investigators had basically fled the basement to get away from this horrible smell.

But after composing themselves, Inspector Dew and the rest of his team put handkerchiefs over their nose and their mouths, and they went back into the house, down into the basement. They grabbed that shovel and they continued to dig. And after just a couple of scoops, they saw what was causing this terrible smell. In this clay pit, this hole in the basement underneath the bricks, were all these human body parts in the ground.

but there were no arms, there were no legs, there was no head. All you had were just the internal organs of somebody. And then also there was like a blanket of skin that looked like it had been extracted from somebody's body with near surgical precision.

Now, the police could not, based on these limited remains, make an actual positive identification of who exactly this was, but they did find in this pit, along with the organs and the skin, were several strands of hair that matched Bell's. There were several pieces of pajamas that belonged to Dr. Crippen, and then also on that skin fillet they found, there was a distinctive birthmark on it that matched the one that Bell had.

Also, investigators were able to determine that inside of the intestines that were found in this hole were traces of a particular kind of tranquilizer that in the weeks leading up to Bell's disappearance, Dr. Crippen was making that particular tranquilizer at his work. He mixed medicines for dentist offices. That was the tranquilizer he was working with right before Bell disappeared.

Shortly after these shocking discoveries were made, Dr. Crippen and Ethel were found on a boat trying to flee the country that way. And so they would be arrested. And so ultimately, Dr. Crippen would be found guilty of murdering his wife and he would be sentenced to death. As for Ethel, she would be acquitted of any participation in the crime. However, this was not the end of the story. Far from it.

100 years later, in 2010, a forensic scientist from Michigan State University fished out a piece of tissue from the remains found in Dr. Crippen's basement that had been preserved inside of a London museum. Now, this murder case had been officially closed since 1910, but the bizarre details of this case had never really fully made sense to a lot of people.

Like, they didn't understand how or why Dr. Crippen had successfully disposed of his wife's head, her arms, her legs, all her bones. Those are all gone. Nobody ever found those. But he decided to keep her organs and her skin buried in his basement under loose bricks? That doesn't make any sense.

Also, if Dr. Crippen killed his wife by poisoning her, which is what is suggested from all that tranquilizer that was found in her intestines, that basically he overdosed her, then why did he dismember her afterwards? The reason killers often kill with poison is because it makes the victim's death look a bit more natural. Whereas if you mutilate someone's body, then obviously someone did it and you're calling suspicion on yourself.

And so did Dr. Crippen poison his wife and then just throw that out the window and mutilated her body anyways? It just didn't make sense. So this forensic scientist from Michigan State University decided he was finally going to get some answers to this case. And so what he did is he compared the DNA from the tissue he dug out to the DNA of one of Bell's grand nieces. And when he compared the two, he saw they didn't match.

Which meant the body that was found in Dr. Crippen's basement was not Belle's. But that wasn't even the weirdest part. It was determined following this test by this forensic scientist that the body in Dr. Crippen's basement wasn't even female. It was a male. But to this day, no one has ever been able to identify who that body was and Belle was never found.

All we know is an innocent man, Dr. Crippen, was put to death for something he didn't do. A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. This podcast, the Mr. Ballin Podcast, and also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Full, and Redacted. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts to find all of these shows.

To watch hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

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