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A much
misunderstood term meaning simply 'the body of the offence'.
'If I tell you the truth you would not believe it, it is too fantastic for
belief. Mrs Durand-Deacon no longer exists. She has disappeared completely, and
no trace of her can ever be found again. I have destroyed her with acid. You
will find the sludge that remains at Leopold Road. Every trace has gone. How can
you prove murder if there is no body?' |
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The speaker is
John George Haigh, the notorious 'Acid Bath Murderer", and he is talking to
Inspector Albert Webb at the Chelsea police station. Haigh, not usually, is
boasting; boasting of his 'perfect' crime. In fact, he was wrong about there
being no trace of Olive Durand-Deacon; pathologist Keith Simpson found quite a
number of identifiable traces in the 'sludge'. Haigh was also wrong about not
being able to prove murder without a body.
It was while he was a guest of His Majesty King George the Sixth on Dartmoor
that Haigh first began to lay ground plans of his future career: 'Go after
women,' he would pompously advise his fellow-guests, 'Rich old women who like a
bit of flattery. There's your market if you're after big money.'
Arrogant little clever jack that he was, John Haigh repeated so often his
conviction that a murder could not be proved without a body that he was awarded
the nickname 'Old Corpus Delicti'. Had he known better, Haigh could have avoided
his collision course with disaster, and in the process saved his own life. For
John George was labouring under the by no means uncommon misunderstanding that
corpus meant, literally, a 'corpse'. In reality, this legal concept describes
the 'body' not of the victim, but simply of the crime itself - the essence of
the crime that has to be established by the Crown in order to bring a successful
prosecution. It is necessary only to prove that a person has been killed, and
that death was the consequence of unlawful violence.
Less than eighteen months before Haigh's arrest, ship's steward James Camb had
laboured under the same misapprehension. In October 1947, he raped and murdered
actress Gay Gibson aboard the Durban Castle out of South Africa. Although Camb
disposed of his luckless victim out of one of the liners portholes and the body
was never found, fresh scratches on the suspects arms and back indicated a
fierce struggle, and blood flecked saliva on the bed linen was consistent with
strangulation. Further more, in situations of object fear and panic such as
Gay Gibson must have felt at the hands of her maniac attacker, it is common for
the bladder to empty - which accounted for the extensive urine staining on the
bed. In March 1948 James Camb was sentenced to death. |
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There have
been a number of subsequent instances of successful prosecutions being brought
where no body was ever discovered: Michael Onufrejczyc, the Polish soldier
turned farmer who killed his business partner and fed him to the pigs on their
lonely Cefn Hendre Farm in Wales. And the kidnapping and murder of Mrs Muriel
McKay in 1968, for which the brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein were
eventually imprisoned. Mrs McKay is also believe to have provided a gruesome
meal for the pigs.
As recently as 1987, Kingsley Rotardier, a forty six year old model and composer
was committed for trial at the Old Bailey charged with the murder of David
Hamilton, his homosexual lover. It was claimed that Hamilton's body, which was
never found, had been cut into small pieces and incinerated. |
