In 1910, Hawley Harvey Crippen led Scotland Yard Police halfway across the world when they tried to arrest him for the murder of his wife, whose body had been found under a coal cellar.

Dr Crippen had tried to escape to Canada on the SS Montrose, with his lover, Ethel le Neve, disguised as a boy. But the ship's Captain saw through their disguise, and Dr Crippen was captured and returned to Britain, where he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

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Fifty-five years later, Dr Carl Coppolino was accused of killing his wife and his ex-lover's husband. Coppolino had insured his wife's life for $65,000 shortly before she died, and he re-married six weeks after her death. His neighbour Marjorie Farber, a former lover, then told Police that Coppolino had also killed her husband.

They exhumed both bodies, and accused Coppolino of murder. A hotshot lawyer won him an acquittal for Mr Farber's death, but Coppolino served twelve years for his wife's murder before being released for exemplary behaviour. He continued to protest his innocence for years afterwards.

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In 1916, a New York dentist murdered his wife's wealthy parents. Dr Arthur Waite poisoned John and Hannah Peck with arsenic, even though they had bought him and his wife Clara a luxury apartment on Riverside Drive. Although Waite was having an affair with a married woman, there seemed no reason why he should kill the Pecks, who had been funding his extravagant lifestyle.

Waite pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He claimed he was the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian, who had murdered the Pecks. Nevertheless he was sentenced to death, and went to the electric chair seemingly unconcerned.