In the late 1940s, every Londoner knew this name. John George Haig is a maniac who killed for profit, and his victims most often became close people - neighbors, friends or colleagues.
No one knows why one unhappy child grows into a law-abiding citizen, and from another into a paranoid like John Hague, who, according to psychiatrist Henry Halloways, was distinguished by "absolute heartlessness, cheerfulness and a gentle, almost friendly indifference to victims."
Perhaps it's all about the family, or maybe it’s a sin-damaged human nature that wants to live at the expense of others, eat and drink at the expense of others, and have fun at the expense of others.
"No body, no crime"?
John Haig was born near London in a family of Protestants - members of the sect "Plymouth Brothers", and later lamented to reporters that his childhood "was limited to a three-meter fence around the house." However, he studied well, played the piano and even received a scholarship to the Royal High School in Wakefield, where he sang in addition to the church choir of the local cathedral.
However, the Christian upbringing did not have any influence on the character of the future murderer - immediately after leaving school, he went all out.
Nine people became victims of the offender, but not a single body was found. However, it was this "trick" that was supposed to distinguish Haig from other maniacs. The idea to carry out "ideal" murders came to him in prison, where he was serving time for opening a fake law office. Here he learned about the legal incident of British justice - "no body, so there is no crime." This discovery made him wonder - how to make the victim's body disappear? The idea came quickly - he decided to dissolve the corpses in sulfuric acid, and right there, in prison, he began to experiment on mice. Released, he set about fulfilling his far-reaching plans.
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Disappearance of an old lady
Haig came to police attention on February 20, 1949, at the age of 39, when a certain Constance Lane came to the police station with him to report the disappearance of a neighbor at the Onslow Court Hotel in South Kensington, 69-year-old Olivia Durand-Decon.
A lonely old lady who had been living in a hotel for two years went to a meeting with a man and disappeared. Constance Lane assumed something had happened to her. Haig confirmed everything the woman said, was polite in manners and kind in speeches, introduced himself as the director of a technology firm.
However, it was he who attracted the attention of the police in the first place.
It all started with a detail: he owed the hotel 50 pounds - a considerable amount at that time! Suspicion was also caused by the fact that an elderly, outwardly interesting man lived in a hotel in the company of elderly and wealthy women.
But the inspectors were even more struck by the dossier of the neighbor of the missing.
At the age of 21, he was fired from the firm on suspicion of theft, in 1934 he sat down for a fraud with the sale of other people's garages, left, but soon got hooked for four years for a larger fraud, again left and again received 21 months in prison for theft.
It turned out that John Haig's business partner in dry cleaning died in an accident due to a faulty motorcycle, and in 1948, in Haig's car, which had fallen from a cliff, a charred corpse of an unknown person was found. No charges were brought against Haig, as he told police that his car had been stolen.
Lair of the beast
The police launched an investigation, searched the missing lady's room, Haig's car and his workshop, which they found in Crowley, West Sussex.
In the car they found a knife with traces of blood and a receipt for dry cleaning of a female astrakhan coat, and in the gloomy "workshop" - bottles with acid, a rubber apron, a gas mask, gloves and a barrel with a grayish substance on the walls. In addition, documents were found for people with the names Maxven and Henderson, an Enfield revolver with cartridges from which they recently fired, and a hat with Haig's initials.
- At this time, the unsuspecting Haig flaunted in front of journalists and told them his version of the disappearance of Durand-Decon.
From a photograph in the newspaper, he was identified by the jeweler Bull of Horsham, who told the police that Haig had pawned him women's trinkets. The jewelry was identified as belonging to Durand-Decon. The police found the old lady's coat at the dry-cleaner's.
There was evidence, but circumstantial! Will there be enough of them to be charged?
Haig, brought to the police station, while awaiting interrogation, behaved carelessly - he read the newspaper, slept. During interrogation, he began to tell that Durand-Decon was blackmailed, and he helped the old woman, and then suddenly confessed everything.
“Mrs. Durand-Decon is gone,” Haig said with a haughty smile. - I dissolved it in acid. "No body, no crime!"
Since Haig never received a good education, he could not imagine the amount of circumstantial evidence that testified against him, and did not imagine what level of scientific forensics he would have to deal with.
The British police did everything to prove that there was a murder!
Forensics and pathologists reviewed the evidence and ransacked the "workshop" at Crowley. It turned out that the blood on the knife belongs to Durand-Decon, in the yard of the "workshop" they found a place where the killer had poured the dissolved body of the victim. After sifting through the soil, forensic scientists found crowns that were identified by the old lady's personal dentist, kidney stones and several small bones of the foot, the reconstruction of which again led to a victim - Durand-Decon suffered from polyarthritis, and her foot was bent. But the main thing - behind the fence they found her bag, in the inner pocket of which was Haig's print!
While experts were gathering evidence, Haig admitted that for several years he had been killing people for his own profit. First, "for trial" he killed his friend, William Maxven, who gave him a job after another release, and then made him a partner.
Haig visited Maxven's house, made sure that the family was well off, and then lured his friend into the basement on Gloucester Street and killed him with a blow to the head, stuffed the body into a barrel and doused it with acid, and after a few days he simply poured the “friend” down the drain.
After that, he took Maxven's house, lying to his parents that his son was hiding from the draft, and later killed them in the same basement, forged documents and sold the property.
The next victims of the maniac were the Henderson couple - Archibald and Rosalyn, with whom he "made friends" and whom he shot in the "workshop" in Crowley. The scheme was the same - to announce the departure, forge a power of attorney, sell real estate and withdraw money from the account. Haig said he killed three more people, but the police were unable to find these victims.
But how is that? Where did the killer do the money? Why did he run into debt even for a room at the Onslow Court?
This is the nature of criminals - they are smart enough to kill, but not smart enough to succeed in ordinary life: all Haig's business ventures ended in failure, he drank and lost.
The murder of the old lady Durand-Decon (he lured her into the workshop and shot her in the back of the head) did not bring wealth - just over 100 pounds sterling became his booty.
Everything for the glory
When Haig realized that he could not get out, he declared himself insane and began to tell that from childhood he had nightmares about bloody crucifixes, and a voice in his head ordered to drink the blood of people, and that all the murders were made with one goal - to drink blood. However, there was no evidence of this, except for a knife in the car - he himself destroyed everything.
He was examined by 12 psychiatrists, seven found Haig sane, four thought he was unwell, but understood what he was doing, and only one, Halloways, admitted that Haig was paranoid.
While the trial was underway, Haig's behavior changed. The carefree infantilism was replaced by a gloomy silence. In the end, he refused to testify against himself, claiming his innocence, but under the weight of evidence, by a jury, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.
Haig got everything he could from his fame - he sold the rights to the book, gave paid interviews, concluded an agreement according to which the death mask was to be removed from him for the wax museum, and his hair and clothes were to be transferred to the same museum after the execution - for making dolls.
On August 10, 1949, Haig was hanged at Wandsworth Prison in front of many people. Neither his mother nor his father came to visit him in prison, and he told his fiancée Barbara that he would “return” to “complete the mission”.
Psychiatrists and police officers never found out if he drank human blood, and if not, then why the knife found in his car was in the blood of Mrs. Durand-Decon. Journalists still call John Haig "The sulfuric acid bath killer."
Alexander LAVRENTYEV