Hallie Rubenhold

This is because in 1920, Alexander Bell Filson Young wrote an introductory essay to the trial transcripts of the Crippen trial.

And he made Bell Elmore into this monster.

And he turned Crippen and Ethel into these kind of poor, pathetic characters and suggests that Crippen was driven to kill his wife because he was such a nice man and a nice man couldn't have done this.

Alexander Belfieldson Young was an extraordinary misogynist.

And stated before he even wrote this, and this was, I mean, in 1910, when they were fleeing on the Montrose, that no matter what Crippen and Ethel had done, their love was the most important thing and should be respected.

Killing another human being was less important than romantic love.

This is the position that he's coming from.

So he invents love.

this absurd notion that Crippen was bullied by his wife, which he wasn't, every single thing that was written from that point on referenced Filson Young's story and built a fiction on top of this that he was somehow this little harmless man

And his wife was this terrible, shrewish, unfaithful alcoholic.

I have done four years of research and I have had absolutely no evidence of any of this.

And to the contrary, I have found tons of evidence that Crippen was a fraudster, was a practiced conman and a criminal and highly capable of killing his wife.

Because people want to believe that women push men to kill them.

And really, that has been with us from the beginning of time.

People want to believe that Eve was the one who tempted Adam.

Women make men do terrible things.

Well, I don't think so.

I think we're all human beings and men are completely capable of making their own decisions.

They don't need women to tempt them into things.

And so this is just something that plays out really well.