Crimes of Passion

Summary

For the second time, celebrated crime-fiction writer Howard Engel turns his hand to non-fiction. This time he leads us on a riveting and spectacular journey through the murky passages of criminal law to the places where love and murder intersect.Setting out in the nineteenth century, Engel travels from France and England to Canada and the United States, with engaging detours along the way. As he discovers, le crime passionnel, a concept originating in France, has a special place in many legal codes around the world. Someone who has suddenly or unexpectedly been betrayed by a loved and trusted partner, even in an illicit relationship, is rarely treated as a common murder.In Crimes of Passion, Engel explores more than twenty-five classic, infamous and still unresolved cases. With the elegant flair and penetrating insight of a novelist, he brings the victims and perpetrators to life in remarkable detail. Ruth Ellis (the last woman hanged in England), OJ Simpson (the football star), Juliet Hulme (the writer Anne Perry), Jean Liger ("the hungry lover") and Jean Harris (the headmistress) are just a few of the intriguing characters you'll meet along the way.The result is a wonderfully eclectic investigation -- complemented by more than forty illustrations and photographs -- into the strange, tragic, world of passion and murder. Love, lovers, loss, and lingering malice combine in this emotional volume, sure to thrill any crime fan or historian.Praise for Howard Engel and his earlier book Lord High Executioner"...a born writer, a natural stylist...a writer who can bring acharacter to life in a few lines." - Ruth Rendell"...morbidly fascinating (and strangely lively)..." - The Washington Post"Engel writes compassionately and well, with a novelist's eye fordetail." - The Spectator (U.K.)

Author Biography

Howard Engel is the author of the best-selling Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at the Hangman, Headsmen and Their Kind and the celebrated Benny Cooperman mysteries. He has received the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada Derrick Murdoch Award. As well as being an accomplished author, Engel is a regular contributor to the book pages of several journals. He lives in Toronto.

Acknowledgments

(1)

Foreword

(4)

Introduction

(12)

The French Have a Word for it: Crime passionnel:

(14)

Yvonne Chevallier

When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly:

(14)

Ruth Ellis

Jean Harris

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster...:

(20)

Alan Norman

John Sweeney

O.J. Simpson

Those Old Love Letters:

(34)

Edith Thompson

Frederick Bywaters

The Media:

The Mannings; Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray

(19)

When Newspaper Editors Were in Season:

109

(41)

Henriette Caillaux

Unhappy Valley and the Red Armchair: Noblesse Oblige:

Lord Broughton; The Marquis de Bernardy de Sigoyer

130

(20)

Disguises and Disappearances:

150

(11)

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen

Cyril Belshaw

Peter Hogg

The Hunger of Love and a Slice of America:

161

(10)

Jean Liger

Lorena Bobbitt

By Love Obsessed Hell Hath No Fury...:

171

(11)

Pauline Dubuisson

Mary Eleanor Pearcey

Families, I Hate You!:

182

(23)

Alpna Patel

Pauline Parker

Juliet Hulme

Anne Perry

Nathan Leopold

Richard Loeb

Lizzie Borden

Susan Smith

Provocation and Responsibility:

205

(14)

Elizabeth Martha Brown

Elizabeth Workman

Violet Watkins

Ralph Klassen

Kenneth Peacock

Patricia Ann Hawkins

Epilogue

219

(2)

Notes

221

(8)

Bibliography

229

(6)

Index

235

Supplemental Materials

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Excerpts

Introduction In all of the annals of criminal law, there is no record more fascinating, more intriguing, than that of crimes of passion. They are interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that crimes of passion are offenses not normally committed by criminals, but by ordinary people, who are criminalized only by these acts. Both sexes and all classes and races commit these crimes. Their perpetrators are nonentities and celebrities, laborers and socialites, school-dropouts and Ph.D.'s. By ordinary people, I mean not some political abstraction, but rather all the rich and wide variety that people come in. The full diapason of mankind. The study of crime offers a special tool to the social historian. Through a study of the offenses that societies, throughout history, have chosen to criminalize, prosecute and, at the end of the process, punish, we get some notion of how people behave in extremis. When the heat is on. Here is society caught at a disadvantage, with its hair in curlers, still in its bathrobe at eleven o'clock in the morning. The study of crime cuts a trench into the tumulus of human existence. While interesting enough in its own right, such a study allows a unique look at changing behavior. Here we can learn about the structure of the society, the classes, the power base and the mentality of not only the offenders, but also of those who judge them. just as the archaeologist digs a trench into a mound to turn up a slice of an ancient civilization, the study of a particular crime allows the criminologist and anyone else interested in looking to see a slice of a micro-civilization that existed surrounding a peculiar group of circumstances. It's like lifting up a single rock and studying the insect life beneath it. Such an investigation interrupts a series of events and exposes a drama that would otherwise be hidden from us. Further, such a study crosses the barriers between disciplines. Crimes of passion have inspired not only legends and literature, including the plays of great playwrights, but also novels, symphonic works, operas and the graphic arts. Think of the murder of the king that fuels the action in Hamlet. Think of Carmen. Remember Agamemnon. In fact, it is difficult to imagine art, literature or music without the violent outpouring of passion and the stories of human struggles that gave them birth. Without crimes of passion, grand opera would be impossible, and the great art galleries of the world impoverished. Anna Freud said "a crime of passion is an action committed without the benefit of ego activity. The term means that the passion, the impulse, is of such magnitude that every other consideration apart from its fulfillment is disregarded." In other words, a large part of what is regarded as normal mental functioning shuts down, becoming unavailable to the perpetrator. The very term "crimes of passion" evokes deep-seated, atavistic responses in every reader's heart. These are the crimes that are born in the emotional core of men and women pushed to do the unthinkable. They are at the end of their tether, au bout de souffle. There is hardly ever any crass consideration of financial gain here, no taint of the marketplace, of reward: only release. These crimes are direct responses to unbearable betrayal, broken hearts, destroyed characters, ruined lives and injured pride. Jealousy, envy and the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins enter through this door, and, like as not, if you are looking at older records, end on the scaffold. The passionate love of Francesca da Rimini and her tragic end have inspired artists as great as Dante, Leigh Hunt, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Ingres, George Frederick Watts, Riccardo Zandonai and Tchaikovsky to new creative heights. Shed of its thirteenth-century trapping, its aristocratic setting and well-born characters, it is story for the law courts: a