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Haigh immediately began to lie about his
visits to Horsham. He arrogantly assumed that the police could not touch him, so
he talked freely. From
the nature of the questions, Haigh realized that the police had
evidence against him. After
first pretending the coat had belonged to a Mrs. Henderson, he
admitted that he had indeed sold Mrs. Durand-Deacon's jewelry and
that he knew the coat was hers.
The detectives asked how he had acquired her property and
what he knew of her whereabouts.
He began to invent a story about blackmail, which quickly
fell through. However, when left alone with one detective, Inspector Webb,
he asked what the chances were of anyone being released from the
institution for the criminally insane at Broadmoor.
It betrayed his involvement as well as his strategy—to pass
himself off as insane. Inspector
Webb declined to answer the question.
At that point, Haigh laid his cards on the
table, still believing himself to be immune to prosecution.
"If I told you the truth," he said, "you would
not believe me; it sounds too fantastic for belief."
Apparently thinking that he would be shipped right off to
Broadmoor, he waived away Webb's cautioning words and said, "I
will tell you about it. 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, which remains at Leopold Road.
Every trace has gone."
He then showed his naïve arrogance with, "How can you
prove murder without a body?"
This admission seemed rather inexplicable at
first, but as Haigh's history was uncovered, it became clear what
his intentions had been.
While in prison years before, Haigh had
discussed this point of law with fellow prisoners.
He had convinced himself that if there is no corpse (which is
what he understood the term corpus
delicti to mean), there can be no conviction.
In fact, he had talked about this legal issue so often, he
had acquired the nickname, "Ol' Corpus Delicti." He was
convinced that the police had to have a physical body to actually
prosecute someone for murder, and there were ways to make sure that
did not happen. It was
in prison where he had experimented with acid on mice to see how
well their corpses dissolved. He
had also mentioned that to get real money, one had to prey on older
wealthy women.
However, Haigh had not taken into account the
weight of circumstantial evidence, even without a body, that can be
used to prove the overwhelming probability of guilt.
He had already offered a confession, which in itself went a
long way toward helping the police prove their case.
They only needed some corroborating evidence. They had Mrs. Durand-Deacon's coat and jewelry.
It was time to find out if they could recover any evidence
from the "sludge."
Haigh was once again cautioned not to speak,
but he went on to offer a full description of what he had done to
Mrs. Durand-Deacon. He
dictated a statement that took two and a half hours to write down.
He claimed that as she was examining some paper to use for
artificial fingernails, he had shot her in the back of the head.
He then went to his car, fetched a penknife and a glass, and
used these items to drain blood from the victim so that he could
drink it. He put the
body into a 45-gallon oil drum with some acid and left it to go into
effect.
The crime had brought him about 111 pounds, 10
shillings. He went
further to state that he had killed five more people, dissolved them
in acid to dispose of them, and actually drank their blood.
He had filled a glass full of blood after each one and had
consumed it. He had an
overwhelming need for it, he claimed, and that was why he had killed
them. He described a
dream cycle that always preceded his compulsion that involved images
of blood. Since childhood, he'd been fascinated by the substance,
and in 1944 his car had overturned in an accident with a lorry;
after that he'd had recurring dreams of crucifixes that dripped
blood. What he did, he
implied, had had no control over.
Haigh was kept in custody, charged with the
murder of Mrs. Durand-Deacon, and remanded to Lewes prison.
From there, he admitted to the killing of three more
people—a woman from Hammersmith, a youth from Kensington, and a
girl from Eastbourne. Again, he said, it was to have their blood.
That made nine victims in all, according to
his count. He showed no
hint of remorse or of fear about what was to happen to him.
This new statement was also written down and signed.
However, there were no other charges leveled against him.
Because of his strange announcements, his
mental state became a significant issue to the courts and to the
press. That he claimed
to murder in order to drink the blood of his victims, unassociated
with any sexual perversion, became a point of great debate.
There were no other cases quite like it, and most of the
examining physicians did not believe him.
In addition, Haigh had hurt his own case.
Before launching into his bizarre account, he had asked what
the chances were of someone getting out of Broadmoor.
This indicated what he had in mind.
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| Inside Haigh's Crawley workshop. |
After his initial confession, the West Sussex
chief constable requested help from Scotland Yard in the form of a
chief inspector and a pathologist.
Chief-Inspector Mahon assumed charge of the case.
He went with Dr. Keith Simpson and Inspector Symes to the
storehouse in Crawley where Haigh had done his
"experiments."
It was their job to
see if anything could be salvaged as evidence.
It would be an arduous task, but hopefully they had arrived
before the acid had fully done its work.
Haigh's hasty confession proved to be his ultimate undoing.
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