Before being dubbed the vampiric “Acid Bath Murderer”, his birth name was John George Haigh. John was born Saturday, July 24, 1909 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England to parents John and Emily Haigh. Even though he was born in Stamford, he grew up in a nearby village called Outwood in West Yorkshire. His parents were part of a local religious group called Plymouth Brethren. His parents believed that the outside world was evil so John’s father built a 10 ft (3m) high fence to keep the ‘evil’ out. So the only friends John had growing up were the few pets that he had growing up and the neighbour’s dog when he would have to take care of it for them.
As a child his parents were very religious and strict so they would pound it into his head that there was a higher spiritual figure watching him at all times with a disapproving watch. Because his parents were so religious and strict with him he would have recurring nightmares of trees turning into crucifixes and weeping blood.
John’s father had a bluish blemish on his head and he was always told he got it because he sinned when he was young and it was his way of being punished, to be marked a sinner. He believed because his mom had not received a ‘mark’ that she was an angel, and pure. He realized as he was growing up that he might be special, invincible almost because he would commit little sins like lying or having a questionable behaviour and never received a mark.
In 1934, at the age of 25...John left his parents church and got married to a 21 year old woman by the name of Beatrice Hamer. They hadn’t known each other very long, and she was unsure of his character, but he was always charming, well dressed and had manners (which counted for a lot then). They were married on Friday, July 6, 1934 and then moved in with John’s parents.
4 months after they were married, John was arrested for fraud. Beatrice, while John was in prison, gave birth to a baby girl which she put up for adoption. Beatrice saw John one more time before their marriage ended. On this meeting he told her that their marriage was not official because he was still married to another woman, this was untrue.
John was released after a few months and wound up committing small time scams to live day to day. In 1936 he decided to move to London. He became a chauffeur for William McSwan owner of an amusement park. He would also do secretarial work for William.
In 1937 after he left the chauffeur job, John was again arrested and charged for fraud. He had been taking money from people and promising products and services in return of advanced payment. He received 4 years and was released in 1940 because the war caused authorities to allow early release of non violent offenders for a chance to get drafted.
By 1943, John had manage to swindle enough money from small time schemes to move to room 404 in a high end hotel called the Onslow Court Hotel in South Kensington (London).
In 1944 John met up with his old boss William McSwan. By now he had rented a basement workshop at 79 Gloucester Road in Kensington. He turned it into his death room.
He conceived ideas about disposing of bodies in Acid when he worked using sulphuric acid in the jails tin shop. He would test the effects of acid on mice and studied the outcome.
It was Saturday, September 9, 1944 when John had managed to lure William’s son Donald to his ‘workshop’ where he hit him over the head with a blunt object and then proceeded to slit his throat. In his diary, regarding Donald’s death, he wrote “I got a mug and took some blood, from his neck, in the mug, and drank it”. He found a 40 gallon drum and put Donald’s body in it. He then poured sulphuric acid over the body, covered it and left it over night to dissolve. After he left he went home to bed. He later claimed that after he had realized he actually killed someone, he started to have the same nightmares that plagued him as a child. He came back to his workshop the next day and dumped the liquid sludge that used to be Donald McSwan into a drain out back of his workshop. He felt overwhelmed with happiness when he dumped the sludge down the drain because he strongly felt that him doing this would make it so he never got caught.
Donald’s parents had started to get worried when there son hadn’t been seen in a few days so they asked John if he knew anything. He told them that Donald had fled to Ireland to escape being drafted into the army and would send fake post cards to Donald’s parents. John knew that would only hold them off for a while. They became worried when they heard the end of the war was near and they hadn’t seen Donald since he ‘left’ for Ireland so abruptly, so they asked John again if he knew anything. He then knew they had to go. He managed to get their trust enough to get them to come to his workshop and that is where he hit them in the head with a blunt object and dissolved their bodies in acid. He claimed that he again drank their blood before he killed them.
He disposed of their remains the next day and started work on forging transfer deeds for property that the McSwan’s owned.
He was able to obtain the properties the McSwan’s owned but spent all the money he made on a betting system he devised for the dog track. He decided to go back to murdering the rich and taking their money after he dissolved the bodies.
In August 1947 a house went on the market owned by Dr. Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie. John, who was broke, started to work a deal on a price for the house. He would tell them that he had a business deal fall through and he would not be able to buy the house right away, that he would buy it with payment installations…all apart of his big master plan to rob and kill these people who had no idea what they were about to get themselves into.
After a few meetings they became friends. John had a charm about him that he was able to make people feel safe or sit easy when he was around. Thursday, February 12, 1948...John drove Archibald to his workshop under the pretence that he wanted to show Mr. Henderson something he had been working on. Once in the workshop John took a different approach in killing his next victim. He shot the doctor in the back of the head and dumped his body in a vat of sulphuric acid. He left to get the doctors wife. He got back to the Henderson house and told Rosalie that her husband has fallen ill and asked for her to go to him. Off they went to John’s workshop. Again as they got inside he shot her in the back of the head and disposed of her body the same way that her husbands body was. He then forged documents and letters to the servants, family and friends saying that they had moved to another country and “Mr. Haigh” would take care of all their stuff. Once he made enough money from selling off all the Henderson’s stuff, he lost it all to quite a few bookies.
In 1949 it was getting rough for John. He owed money to the bank, he owed back rent at the hotel he stayed at, and the management was getting tired of waiting for their money. So he was getting really desperate to get a hold of some money when he was sitting down to dinner in the hotels dining room and sitting across from him was a widowed woman by the name of Olivia Durand-Deacon.
The two of them had talked a bit about how he rents and leases high end cars to wealthy people, and how that she knew he was a businessman and might be able to help her promote an idea she had for manufacturing plastic fingernails to sell in stores. John liked the set up for his next victim and asked her to go to his workshop to further discuss plans to get this idea of hers onto paper.
John got the widow to his workshop, and yet again once inside he shot her in the back of the head, stripped her body as he did with the other victims, and put her body into a 40 gallon vat of sulphuric acid. Once it was fully dissolved he disposed of the liquids down the sewer drain and poured the solid waste, which was nothing more than sludge, onto the dirt in the back yard. In later questioning he told police that during the process of draining the vats, and scraping out the sludge he took a break and went to a restaurant nearby called ‘Ye Olde Ancient Prior’s Restaurant’ where he had an egg on toast.
He didn’t make much off of this killing but managed to sell off enough stuff to pay his back rent to the hotel, and other bills that needed to get payed. He then went to look for another victim.
A little while after he killed Mrs. Durand-Deacon he felt he should make inquiries into her not being around much to avoid any one questioning him. He was one of the last ones seen talking to her. He went to talk to one of the widows closest friends Mrs. Constance Lane. He had asked her if she had talked to Olivia and Mrs. Lane mentioned that Olivia had told her that she was supposed to go to his workshop, and this kind of shocked John. He told her that he never took Olivia to his workshop and she mentioned about talking to someone to help look into where she might be. She could have gotten suspicious at any point so John said that he would go to the police station with her to file a report.
They walked into the police station and one of the cops recognized John and checked out his background. He raised some suspicion with the officers so they brought him in for questioning on Monday, February 28, 1949.
John first denied having any ties to Mrs. Durand-Deacon’s disappearance but when he was told about what the investigators found at his workshop he shouted “Mrs. Durand-Deacon no longer exists! I’ve destroyed her with acid…you can’t prove murder without a body”. He misunderstood the term ‘Corpus Delecti’ thinking it meant that without a body there is no proof of murder, but there was still a body of murder.
When John had denied his involvement in Mrs. Durand-Deacon’s disappearance the officers that had John Haigh’s record felt something was fishy, so they went to John’s workshop and hotel room to search around to see if they could find any kind of smoking gun.
When they were at John’s workshop they found Mrs. Durand-Deacon’s gruesome remains, with just enough to make a proper identification. They found most of her remains hardened in the backyard into a sludgy compound. They also found 28 pounds of human fat that had been displaced over the backyard, partially corroded bones of a human foot, the widows plastic handbag that had not succumb to the acid, a plastic lip stick container cap, a full upper denture, 3 human gall stones and certain bones that were visible enough to realize it was female bones.
When the investigators searched John’s hotel room, they found a diary with abbreviated descriptions of his other murders, some personal items of the McSwan and Henderson families.
Monday, July 18, 1949 John Haigh was charged with Mrs. Durand-Deacon’s murder on went on trial. He would try and make it his big goal to make everyone think he was insane. When he was originally arrested on murder charges he had asked what would happen to him in the long run if he were to plead or make it look like he was insane.
While incarcerated in prison he kept the charade up of his insanity by drinking his own urine, and various other questionable acts that would make him seem insane.
When it came time for his trial, a psychiatrist was put on the stand to testify that he had given John an evaluation and had tested him and he had found that because of John’s childhood experiences he felt that John had become ‘paranoiac’ and that he had probably drank the blood from his victims. When the prosecutor was questioning the psychiatrist regarding John’s plea of insanity the doctor said John knew that his crimes were wrong…throwing Johns chances of pleading insanity right out the window. It took the jury 15 minutes to come to the verdict of guilty and with that John was sentenced to death.
Saturday, August 6, 1949 at Wandsworth Prison, John was hanged for his crimes and this ended the “Acid Bath Murderer’s” reign of terror.
In the end of it all the only real thing people still have a hard time understanding is how much he John really got from each murder. No real researched amount has been found, but it is still a big dispute as to how much he really made off of each victim.
Donald McSwan - Age 37 ---- Killed - Saturday, September 9, 1944
William McSwan - Age 70 ---- Killed - Monday, July 2, 1945
Amy McSwan - Age 65 ---- Killed - Monday, July 2, 1945
Dr. Archibald Henderson - Age 52 ---- Killed - Thursday, February 12, 1948
Rosalie Henderson - Age 41 ---- Killed - Thursday, February 12, 1948
Olive Durand-Deacon - Age 69 ---- Killed - Friday, February 18, 1949
"When I discovered there were easier ways of making a living than to work long hours in an office, I did not ask myself whether I was doing right or wrong. That seemed to me to be irrelevant. I merely said, 'That is what I wish to do.' And as the means lay within my power, that was what I decided." - He explains his reason for choosing a life of crime
"If I told you the truth, you would not believe me. It sounds too fantastic for belief." - what he said during interrogation about Mrs. Durand-Deacon.
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