In March of 1949, the London Mirror ran a series of stories entitled Hunt for the Vampire that detailed the disappearance of several area residents and the arrest of the man believed responsible for their deaths. That man was John George Haigh, and shortly after his arrest, he confessed to killing six people and dissolving their remains in acid to hide the evidence. He claimed that his motive for the murders was a compulsion for blood, and the story he told portrayed him as a mentally ill individual who'd simply acted on his impulses. Authorities were inclined to believe otherwise, leaving the matter to be settled in court in a sensational, if not gruesome, trial that earned Haigh the title of “The Vampire of London.”

Fenced In

John Haigh was born in 1909 in Wakefield, England, and raised by parents who were members of the Plymouth Brethren, which practiced extreme isolationism from society. Haigh's fundamentalist parents instilled in him an overwhelming impression of Christ bleeding on the cross and the saving grace of that very blood — an image that would haunt his nightmares, and which in turn would become the nightmares of his victims. During his childhood, Haigh's life was stifled and largely confined to the family home, surrounded by a ten-foot-tall fence to keep him from the outside world.

For years Haigh's life seemed uneventful until he reached the age of forty and lived in South Kensington. One day, he told a close female friend of sixty-nine-year-old Olive Durand-Deacon that Olive had missed a business meeting with him and hadn't been seen for a day. Haigh took the friend to the police to file a report, and once Scotland Yard received the report they quickly learned that Haigh had a lengthy record for fraud, forgery, and theft. While the mannerly Haigh calmly expressed his concern for Olive's well-being, the police launched an investigation into his business where he conducted so-called “experimental work.” When searching the business, they found containers of sulphuric acid, a chemical-stained apron, rubber gloves and boots, a gas mask, and vats full of “sludge.”

Ticket to Ride

Haigh was finally arrested after pawning jewelry to a suspicious dealer, who took it to the police where it was identified as belonging to Olive Durand-Deacon. During his interrogation, Haigh surprised detectives by asking what the odds were of being relegated to the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Assuming he'd discovered a loophole in the legal system, Haigh, utterly convinced that he couldn't be prosecuted without a corpse for evidence, confessed to murdering Durand-Deacon and dissolving her body in acid. As he dictated the gruesome details of Olive's death and the dissolving, Haigh was so self-assured, he confessed to the murders and disposals of eight more people using the same technique. By his own admission, he claimed that he had to kill to survive and slit the throats of all of his victims so that he could drink their blood.

The media sensation prior to Haigh's trial was one of pure hysteria, and the killer reveled in descriptions of his being a blood-crazed vampire. In his mind, he was untouchable and above the law, and he was certain he would be acquitted without bodily evidence, or at the very least, placed into a mental institution from which he would eventually be released. Haigh was wrong on both counts. Forensic examinations of the “sludge” found at Haigh's workplace provided intact dentures belonging to Olive Durand-Deacon. Olive's lipstick container and her bloodstained coat were also discovered, along with blood on knives, walls, and Haigh's own shirtsleeve. A team of psychiatrists — including those for the defense — established that Haigh was most certainly paranoid but faking his insanity, although there was little dispute that the monster's fascination with blood began during his youth with visions of a bloodied Christ. The jury found him guilty of murder in twelve minutes, leaving the “vampire” John Haigh to be hanged at the gallows on August 6, 1949.