The Acid Bath Murders: The Crimes of John George Haigh

The Acid Bath Murders are one of the most infamous cases in British criminal history, and the man behind them, John George Haigh, believed he had discovered the secret of the perfect crime. A charming, softly spoken fraudster who presented himself as a gentleman and an engineer, Haigh murdered at least six people in 1940s England for their money, and then dissolved their bodies in drums of concentrated sulphuric acid. He did it because he was convinced of one thing: that without a body, there could be no conviction for murder. He had misunderstood the law, catastrophically. And he had also overestimated his acid. When his final victim, a wealthy widow named Olive Durand-Deacon, vanished after a visit to his Sussex workshop, a brilliant Home Office pathologist named Keith Simpson was called in, bent down in the yard outside, and picked up what looked like an ordinary pebble. It was a human gallstone. In this episode of Crime at Bedtime, we tell the full story of the Acid Bath Murders: the six victims, the charming killer who thought he was untouchable, the fatal misunderstanding at the heart of his method, the gallstone and the set of dentures that the acid could not destroy, the transparent vampire performance he gave to try to escape the gallows, and the swift justice that followed. Settle in, get comfortable, and let us tell you the story of the pebble in the yard.

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