The close of the Crippen trial leaves unsolved the problem of the kind of criminal the man is, and of the motives which led him to commit a violent and dangerous crime. Morally, perhaps, there is not a great deal to choose between the trade by which he lived and the act which brought him to destruction. We hear much of the cleverness of criminals, we have heard much of the cleverness of this criminal; but the development of the story has shown him to be, like most criminals, lacking in all but the most primitive kind of cunning. In the last extremity, as a captured fugitive, he has shown himself a sanguine child. It was clear that no one could ever believe that the body found was that of anyone but his wife. Had he chosen boldly to have accepted that inevitable conviction, and to profess that he had killed her in some quarrel without murderous intent, he might have escaped on the capital charge. For the case against him then would have rested on the hyosein, testimony too frail to have put him in danger of his life. The moral of the case is not so much that murder will out, as that wickedness will out in the most cautious villain and at last destroy him. To those who value the high traditions of English journalism – the traditions of truthfulness and responsibility and fairness – the case from beginning to end has been a nightmare. Regardless of decency and even of law, certain newspapers have emulated the worst type of American sensationalism. The mint of the hunted man has been taken for granted, his chances of a fair trial have been prejudiced in every possible way, even to the publication of bogus confessions. Happily his guilt was well established; had it not been so the prejudice created might well have been fatal to an innocent man.

Manchester Guardian, 24 October 2010. Read the full article here and here

On 22 October 1910, the jury returned a verdict of guilty after only 27 minutes of consideration. The presiding judge, Lord Alverstone, sentenced Crippen to death by hanging and he was executed at Pentonville Prison on 23 November 1910. Ethel Le Neve was found not guilty.