|
|
WPS Lambourne had nothing to back up this gut
feeling, but she felt strongly enough about it to mention it in her report to
her Divisional Detective Inspector, Shelley Symes. "Apart from the fact I do not
like this man Haigh and his mannerisms," she wrote, "I have a sense that he is
'wrong', and there maybe a case behind the whole business."
Symes had enough respect for Sergeant Lambourne's judgment to ask the Criminal
Record Division at Scotland Yard to run a check on Haigh. Within a matter of
hours, they came back with a file that showed that John George Haigh had been
jailed three times, twice for obtaining money by fraud and once for theft.
Further enquiries in London and Essex showed that he owed substantial sums of
money, and that he was in arrears with his bill at the Onslow Court Hotel.
On Saturday 26 February, Sergeant Pat Heslin and Police Sergeant Appleton of the
Sussex Constabulary went to see Mr Edward Jones, owner of Hurstlea Products, a
small engineering company located in Giles Yard off Leopold Road in Crawley.
Jones told the police that he had known John Haigh for some years and over the
past few months he had let him have the use of a storeroom at the back of the
factory for a peppercorn rent. Haigh had been using the premises for some sort
of 'experimental work', but had never said precisely what this entailed.
The police were anxious to look around the shed, but Jones told them that Haigh
had the only set of keys. So Heslin prised the padlock off the door of the small
brick built shed. At first glance the whitewashed interior looked ordinary
enough. There was the usual clutter - paint pots, old bits of wood, a couple of
work benches, carboys of chemicals, protective clothing - but there was
something that caught the Sergeants eye. On one of the workbenches there was a
small hat box and an expensive leather briefcase. They simply didn't belong. |
 |
[
John Haigh ]
Haigh at the wheel of the Avis car in which he drove to report Mrs
Durand-Deacon's 'mysterious' disappearance. |
|
|
Heslin looked through the case and found a variety
of papers and documents, including ration books and clothing coupons. The
contents of the hat box included several passports, driving licenses and
diaries, a cheques book and a marriage certificate, none of which bore the name
of Haigh. At the bottom of the box was the most alarming finding of all, a .38
Enfield revolver and a small white envelope containing eight bullets. |
|
|
[
Murder Weapon ]
The gun used to kill Mrs Durand-Deacon belonged to Mr Henderson, a
former army doctor and one of Haigh's earlier victims. |
|
|
The following evening, 27 February, John Haigh was
invited back to Chelsea police station to answer further questions.
Haigh appeared to be totally unconcerned as he was installed in the Divisional
Detective's office with a cup of tea. He had actually dozed off by the time
Detective Inspector Symes, Inspector Albert Webb and Superintendent Barratt
arrived to interview him at 7.30pm.
They came at him well armed with evidence. Not only did they have the obviously
stolen documents from the Crawley workshop, they had also traced Mrs
Durand-Deacon's jewellery to a dealer in Horsham, Sussex. The dealer's
description of the seller matched John Haigh precisely, as did that of a dry
cleaner to whom he had apparently taken Mrs Durand-Deacon's Persian lamb coat.
Confronted with this evidence, Haigh puffed on a cigarette, and said calmly: "I
can see you know what you're talking about. I admit the coat belonged to Mrs
Durand-Deacon and that I sold her jewellery."
"How did you come by this property," asked Symes, "and where is Mrs
Durand-Deacon?"
Haigh thought for a while before replying. "It's a long story," he confided.
"It's one of blackmail and I shall have to implicate many others."
Just then the telephone rang and Symes and Barratt were summoned from the room.
Left alone with Inspector Webb, the most junior of his interrogators, Haigh
switched tack. "Tell me frankly," he asked, "what are the chances of anyone
being released from Broadmoor?"
Webb's immediate reaction to Haigh's extraordinary question was to caution him
and advise him of his rights. Haigh dismissed the warning with a wave of the
hand. "If I told you the truth," he continued, "you would not believe it. It is
too fantastic for belief. I will tell you all about it. Mrs Durand-Deacon no
longer exists. She has disappeared completely and no trace of her can ever be
found. I have destroyed her with acid. You will find the sludge that remains at
Leopold Road. Every trace has gone.
"How can you prove a murder if there is no body?" Haigh added, obviously pleased
with himself. |
|
|
[
Haigh's Death Factory ]
Haigh shot dead sixty nine year old Olive Durand-Deacon on Friday 18 February
1949. Then he rolled her body into an empty 45-gallon drum lying on the floor of
the workshop. To fortify himself for the task ahead, Haigh then popped over the
road to the 'Ye Olde Ancient Priors' for a cup of tea and a poached egg on
toast. On his return he donned his sinister set of protective clothing. He
pumped in enough acid to cover the body, and then, after he had dinner, he drove
back to London. Haigh returned to the workshop over the weekend to monitor the
process, and emptied the sludge into the yard on Monday. After another few days,
little evidence would have remained. |
|
|
Webb's first reaction to Haigh's confession was to
disbelieve it. It was simply too fantastic, too grotesque. Haigh was obviously
setting himself up for an insanity plea. After all, he had already mentioned
Broadmoor.
When Symes and Barratt returned to the interview room, Webb asked Haigh to
repeat what he had said. Haigh did so. Symes cautioned him again, but there was
no stopping Haigh now. He talked for two and a half hours, as Inspector Symes
wrote.
He described the events of Friday 18 February in meticulous detail. He told how
he had picked up Mrs Durand-Deacon in his Alvis and driven her down to Crawley.
He described how she had bent over her handbag to extract fingernail designs and
how, as she turned away from him, he had pulled a .38 Enfield revolver from his
jacket pocket and shot her through the nape of the neck, killing her instantly.
Haigh went on to describe how he had then knelt by his victim's body, made an
incision in her neck, gathered a few inches of her still coursing blood in a
glass, and drunk it.
Having slaked his thirst, Haigh claimed he had gathered together Mrs
Durand-Deacon's valuables - the Persian lamb coat, rings, a necklace, earrings
and a gold crucifix - and stowed them in his car.
He had then proceeded to get rid of the body. The clutter which the police found
in the workshop was in fact the paraphernalia of Mrs Durand-Deacon's material
destruction - carboys of sulphuric acid, a specially lined metal drum, rubber
gloves and apron, a gas mask and a stirrup pump. Haigh had needed all these
things in order to dissolve the body. He had know precisely what to do. He had
done it before. |
|
|
[
The Acid Bath Factory ]
The dismal interior became know as The Acid Bath Factory when the gruesome
details of the story were revealed. |
|
|
He had laid the 45-gallon drum on its side and
pushed Mrs Durand-Deacon's head and shoulders inside, and then righted the drum
so that the whole body slumped down to the bottom. He had then gone to the "Ye
Olde Ancient Priors" restaurant in Crawley and ordered a poached egg on toast
and a cup of tea. On his return he had donned his rubber apron, gloves,
wellington boots and gas mask, and poured concentrated sulphuric acid into the
drum. "The question of getting the right amount was only learned by experience,"
he boasted.
Haigh said he had adjusted the acid level to cover the entire body by using a
stirrup pump. Once satisfied, all he had to do was wait for the flesh and bone
to dissolve. He knew this would take at least two days, and so he then went for
dinner at The George Hotel's restaurant, before driving back to the Onslow Court
Hotel.
Haigh went on to describe how, on the following Monday, he had disposed of his
victim's jewellery for £110, and then returned to Crawley to empty the sludge -
Mrs Durand-Deacon's decomposed body - out of the drum with a bucket, and poured
it on to some waste ground at the back of the shed. |
|
|
[
Gathering Evidence ]
Pathologist Dr Keith Simpson studies the wasteland where he found enough
bodily remains to identify Mrs Durand-Deacon. Four hundred and seventy pounds of
topsoil and acid sludge were packed into boxes and taken away for examination |
|
|
The police said nothing as Haigh told his terrible
story of murder and theft, vampirism and genteel cups of tea. When he had
finished with his version of the demise of Mrs Durand-Deacon, Haigh moved back
in time and, by the early hours of 1 March, he had also confessed to five other
murders. |
|
|
[
Amy & Donald McSwan & their son William McSwan ]
After John Haigh's release from a jail sentence for fraud in 1943 he returned
to London. He got in contact with old friends, including William McSwan,
(pictured below right) who had once hired him to run an amusement arcade. Haigh
arranged to meet McSwan in a Kensington pub and took him back to a basement flat
in Gloucester Road. There he coshed him to death and dissolved his body in a
tank of acid. Later that year he lured William McSwan's parents to the same flat
and murdered them in the same cold-blooded fashion. |
|
|
The first, he claimed, had been committed on 9
September 1944. The victim had been an old acquaintance, William McSwan. He had
killed him in a basement flat in Gloucester Road. A year later, he had lured
William's parents, Donald and Amy McSwan, to the same flat, and had beaten them
to death. He then forged Donald's signature to gain power of attorney over their
estate.
While selling one of their properties some time in February 1948, he had met Dr
Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie. He had killed them in the storeroom in
Giles Yard. |
|
|
[
Dr Henderson & his wife Rosalie ]
Police estimated that Haigh made about
£4,000 by killing the
McSwan family. He faked papers giving him power of attorney and sold off their
property. This kept him going until February 1948, when he killed again.
The victims this time were Dr Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie, whom he
had met when looking around the house they were selling in Ladbroke Square.
Haigh lured them to the workshop at Crawley and killed them both on the spot. By
forging various documents he sold off property worth £8,000 during that year. He
even took their red setter dog, which lived with him at Onslow Court. |
|
|
In each case, he had acquired money or other
property belonging to his victims by skilful forgery and deception. Years after
he had disposed of their remains, he had written forged personal and business
letters, "successfully staving off enquiries from relatives, friends and
associates".
Haigh added that he had destroyed all the bodies by means of his acid bath
method after drinking a glass of their blood.
The arrest of John Haigh caused an immediate public sensation. Stories of acid
baths, vampirism and murder are the stuff of which tabloid newspapers are made.
Haigh's remand at Horsham magistrates' court drew huge crowds, predominantly
composed of jeering women.
On 4 March, after being transferred from the Chelsea prison cells to Lewes
Prison, Haigh sprang more surprises. He asked to see Inspector Webb, with whom
he clearly felt some sort of affinity. He confided in the young detective that
he had committed three murders which he hadn't mentioned earlier - a woman and a
youth in west London, and a girl in Eastbourne. This brought his total up to
nine.
The police, however, were having their time cut out establishing a case against
Haigh for the murder of Mrs Durand-Deacon. Even though he had admitted to the
crime, to be certain of a conviction the prosecution needed proof that she was
in fact dead, and that Haigh had indeed killed her.
The Home Office pathologist Dr Keith Simpson first carried out routine blood
tests at the workshop in Crawley and established that they were of the same
group as Mrs Durand-Deacon. Then he turned his attention to the wasteland where
Haigh claimed to have deposited the 'sludge' from his acid bath. Soon he found a
stone 'the size of a cherry'. It was a gallstone. Simpson handed it to Detective
Sergeant Heslin saying, "There you are, Sergeant, that's the first trace of a
human body." Heslin congratulated the doctor on his good luck.
"It wasn't luck," Simpson snapped, "I was looking for it. Women of Mrs
Durand-Deacon's age and habits - 69 and fairly plump - are prone to gallstones."
Simpson soon found more human remains, fragments of a left foot which he managed
to reconstruct and cast in plaster. The cast fitted one of Mrs Durand-Deacon's
shoes perfectly. Then he found fragments of pelvic bones and two discs from a
lower spinal column. |
|
|
[
Mrs Durand-Deacon ]
Haigh's acid bath left behind enough evidence to hang him. Mrs
Durand-Deacon's dentures were found in the still-acid soil of the yard. Made
from acrylic resin, they were so well preserved that the dead woman's dentist
was able to identify them immediately. Mrs Durand-Deacon's plastic handbag was
also retrieved, inside was a notebook, metal pen, a lipstick holder and a
compact. |
|
|
He discovered other no-human remains - the handle
of a handbag, a lipstick container, a hairpin and a notebook, all of which could
be traced back to the victim. His most sensational find, however, and the
clincher for the case, was a set of dentures which were categorically identified
as having belonged to Mrs Durand-Deacon.
In Lewes Prison Haigh was well aware of the forensic evidence against him, but
he remained optimistic. He was certain that he would escape the gallows by
convincing a jury that he was insane, and on being told that Sir Maxwell Fyfe,
the eminent barrister, was to represent him, Haigh was delighted. He wrote: "I'm
very glad to see we have got old Maxy. He is no fool."
The trial of John Haigh for the murder of Mrs Durand-Deacon - that was the only
charge ever brought against him - opened at Lewes Assizes on 18 July 1949, and
lasted less than two days.
There was no real question as to whether Haigh killed Mrs Durand-Deacon. The
case rested on whether or not he was sane. The defense called Dr Henry
Yellowlees, a consultant psychiatrist at St Thomas's Hospital, as an expert
witness. Dr Yellowlees was no doubt an able man in his field, but he was a
rotten witness. "In the case of pure paranoia," Yellowlees explained, "it really
amounts, as it develops and gets a greater hold, to practically self-worship,
and that is commonly expressed by the conviction in the mind of the patient that
he is in some mysterious way under the control of a guiding spirit which means
infinitely more to him and is of infinitely greater authority than any human
laws or rules of society."
Dr Yellowlees rambled on in this vein for some considerable time. He was
frequently interrupted by both Sir Travers Humphreys, the judge and Sir Hartley
Shawcross, counsel for the prosecution, neither of whom had the faintest idea
what he was talking about. As for the jury, he had lost them after the first few
sentences and it took them only thirteen minutes to return a verdict of 'guilty'
on John George Haigh. Sir Travers Humphreys was equally speedy as he summoned
the Black Cap and condemned him to death. Haigh was taken to Wandsworth to await
execution. |
|
|
[
Old Corpus Delicti ]
Haigh chose his acid-bath method of disposing of his victims in the mistaken
belief that it would protect him from prosecution. Even after his arrest, he
boasted to fellow inmates at Dartmoor that he would never be convicted of the
murder because the police would never find her body.
Haigh was wrong on two counts, Dr Simpson did find several identifying traces of
the body, together with her false teeth and Haigh totally misunderstood the
expressed 'Corpus Delicti'. He assumed that corpus meant corpse when it is Latin
for 'body'. But in legal parlance, it does not refer literally to the body, but
rather to the body of evidence. A body of fact, proof that the crime has been
committed, must be substantiated by the prosecution before a case can be
established. It is not, however, essential for the victim's remains to be
recovered. |
|
|
As the day of his execution approached, Haigh's
apparently limitless poise began to crumble. He started to suffer from
depression and complained of recurrent nightmares about blood. But despite this
he maintained his sense of theatre. He bequeathed his favourite suit and tie to
Madame Tussauds, ensuring himself his rightful place in the Chamber of Horrors,
and he requested that the model of himself should show at least one inch of
shirt cuff.
Then Haigh became concerned about the hanging itself. He contacted the prison
governor, Major ACN Benke, and requested to rehearse his own execution. "My
weight is deceptive," Haigh insisted, "I have a light springy step and I would
not like there to be a hitch."
The governor turned down his request, assuring him that the executioner was
highly experienced and that there would be no problems.
At 9am on the morning of 10 August, John Haigh was executed. His depression had
left him and he was his old self, all swank and swagger, as he faced the
gallows. The same day he was buried, as is the custom in cases of execution,
inside the prison walls. |
|
|
BACK TO TOP |
