The award-winning writer turned the Jack the Ripper case on its head. Now she is giving Dr Crippen the same treatment – and questioning how we tell stories about murderous men

It was called “the crime of the century” and “the north London cellar murder”, and more than 100 years after it happened, the name of the murderer is still widely known. Dr Crippen has been the subject of multiple books, movies and TV shows and had a waxwork made of him at Madame Tussauds. But the story of his crimes, writes Hallie Rubenhold in Story of a Murder, remains one “predominantly about women but told almost exclusively by men”. As such, Crippen’s victim is long forgotten. Her name was Belle Elmore, and in Rubenhold’s book she is brought back to life.

Rubenhold and I are in a cafe in Muswell Hill, north London, a 10 minute walk from where Elmore is buried, and where the 53-year-old author lives with her barrister husband, Frank. Writing Story of a Murder was nerve-racking, says Rubenhold, partly because of the usual dizzying challenge of converting huge volumes of research into a brisk narrative and partly because of the expectations raised by the success of Rubenhold’s 2019 blockbuster The Five, in which she told the story of five of Jack the Ripper’s victims. The Five won the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction and triggered huge interest and discussion for its radical refocusing of the story away from the murderer. The book triggered a bizarre hate campaign by so-called “Ripperologists,” while effectively re-inventing true crime. “I’m pleased to say it has quietened down,” says Rubenhold of the backlash. “But they have been on my back for the better part of five to six years.”