Belle Elmore

Belle Elmore was the professional name used by Kunigunde Mackamotski, usually known after marriage as Cora Crippen. She pursued a music-hall career and was active in theatrical social circles in London. In 1910 her husband claimed that she had returned to the United States and later said that she had died there.

Elmore disappeared in early 1910 after telling friends that she intended to leave her husband. Crippen first claimed that she had returned to the United States and then that she had died there, but police investigation uncovered human remains beneath the couple's London home. The discovery triggered Crippen's flight with Ethel Le Neve and turned Elmore's disappearance into one of the most sensational British murder cases of the Edwardian period.

In Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck, in a parallel narrative, London doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen lives unhappily with his wife, music-hall performer Belle Elmore, while beginning a relationship with his secretary Ethel Le Neve. In John Boyne’s Crippen, London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American doctor practising dubious patent medicine, lives unhappily with his wife Cora, a music-hall performer known as Belle Elmore.