Hallie Rubenhold

This poor little man, he couldn't possibly have done anything terrible.

If you are looking in the right places, you find evidence of the things that really should be brought to the fore, such as Crippen was a very accomplished frogster.

He was not a nice man.

And the fact that people believed him was a testimony to his ability as a con artist.

He was a con artist.

He was up to his neck in fraud.

All of the men who he surrounded himself with were fraudsters who spent time in prison, who went on the run, some of whom were violent.

It's incredible.

And somehow this man, everybody just sees him for who he is because nobody has ever bothered to really look at this story.

This is the problem.

You just skim over the top.

You tell the legend.

You fall back on the legend.

And also, you know, that legend was very deliberately constructed in 1920 by Alexander Belfilson Young, who wrote the introductory essay to, there's this Great British Trials series where they printed the transcripts and they had an author write the introductory essay.

Alexander Belfilson Young had decided very early on, and he had written an article very early on in 1910,

where he was just in love with this romantic story of Ethel and Crippen on the run.

And so in his mind, he constructed this story of star-crossed lovers.

But the problem with the story of star-crossed lovers is that there needs to be an obstacle that makes them star-crossed.

That obstacle was Belle.

He had to turn her into a monster, which he did.