The Acid Bath Murders


Book Description

John George Haigh committed five perfect murders – by dissolving his wealthy victims in sulphuric acid. Then he tipped away the resultant soup to avoid detection on a ‘no body, no murder’ principle and used his victims’ property to fund his luxury lifestyle of silk ties and flashy cars.Murder number six was less than perfect. When a guest in Haigh’s hotel disappeared, the police found half-dissolved body parts carelessly thrown into the yard outside his secluded workshop. But was the urbane Mr Haigh, the man brought up by strict Plymouth Brethren parents in Yorkshire and dressed like a city stockbroker, really the monster he said he was? Did he really kill six innocent people just so he could drink their blood? Using unpublished archive papers, including recently released letters Haigh wrote from prison while awaiting execution, author Gordon Lowe sheds light on whether Haigh’s claims were a cynical ploy for a ticket into Broadmoor Hospital, or if he was a psychopathic vampire with a penchant for disposing of his victims in acid.




John George Haigh, the Acid-Bath Murderer


Book Description

What motivated John George Haigh to murder at least six people, then dissolve their corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid? How did this intelligent, well-educated man from a loving, strongly religious family of Plymouth Brethren become a fraudster, a thief, then a serial killer? In the latest of his best-selling studies of criminal history, Jonathan Oates reinvestigates this sensational case of the late 1940s. He delves into Haigh's Yorkshire background, his reputation as a loner, a bully and a forger during his years at Wakefield Grammar School, and his growing appetite for the good life which his modest employment in insurance and advertising could not sustain. Then came his move to London and a rapid, apparently remorseless descent into the depths of crime, from deceit and theft to cold-blooded killing. As he follows the course of Haigh's crimes in graphic, forensic detail, Jonathan Oates gives a fascinating inside view of Haigh's attempt to carry through a series of perfect murders. For Haigh intended not only cut off his victims' lives but, by destroying their bodies with acid, literally to remove all traces that they had ever existed.
















John George Haigh, the Acid-Bath Murderer


Book Description

What motivated John George Haigh to murder at least six people, then dissolve their corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid? How did this intelligent, well-educated man from a loving, strongly religious family of Plymouth Brethren become a fraudster, a thief, then a serial killer? In the latest of his best-selling studies of criminal history, Jonathan Oates reinvestigates this sensational case of the late 1940s. He delves into Haigh's Yorkshire background, his reputation as a loner, a bully and a forger during his years at Wakefield Grammar School, and his growing appetite for the good life which his modest employment in insurance and advertising could not sustain. Then came his move to London and a rapid, apparently remorseless descent into the depths of crime, from deceit and theft to cold-blooded killing. As he follows the course of Haigh's crimes in graphic, forensic detail, Jonathan Oates gives a fascinating inside view of Haigh's attempt to carry through a series of perfect murders. For Haigh intended not only cut off his victims' lives but, by destroying their bodies with acid, literally to remove all traces that they had ever existed.




John Christie of Rillington Place


Book Description

Sixty years ago, the discovery of bodies at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London, led to one of the most sensational, shocking and controversial serial murder cases in British criminal history the case of John Christie. Much has been written about the Christie killings and the fate of Timothy Evans who was executed for murders Christie later confessed to the story still provokes strong feeling and speculation. However, most the books on the case have been compiled without the benefit of all the sources that are open to researchers, and they tend to focus on Evans in an attempt to clear him of guilt. In addition, many simply repeat what has been said before. Therefore, a painstaking, scholarly reassessment of the evidence - and of Christies life - is overdue, and that is what Jonathan Oates provides in this gripping biography of a serial killer.




Forty Years of Murder


Book Description

Christie, Hanratty, The Krays ... murderers haunt the mind. We read about them in the press with horrified curiosity and, if we're lucky, this is as close as we get. But Home Office Pathologise Keith Simpson spent forty years in the very midst of murder. This is his autobiography.




The Trial of John George Haigh


Book Description