Sometimes I forget the horrors of modern life aren’t all just products of our current time. People have been doing horrible things for a long time, and although that is depressing, it is oddly comforting. If horrors have existed this long and life has persisted, I find a lot of hope in that. But it is important we don’t forget the atrocities that happened in the past so we can look out for suspicious warning signs of history repeating itself. And that doesn’t just go for politics; it goes for past crimes as well. Even though some look at people who are interested in historical true crime as perverse, the truth is that studying historical cases is essential so we can effectively trace patterns to hinder criminal actions in the future.
That is partially why places like the True Crime Museum in Sussex, England exist. Currently on display are vats that belonged to 1940s serial killer John George Haigh, who dissolved his victims in acid and later claimed to be a “vampire” in an attempt to avoid being hanged.
Haigh was infamously known as the “Acid Bath Murderer” because he used sulfuric acid to dissolve the bodies of his victims, according to SWNS. Haigh’s murderous rampage began after he was let out of prison in 1943 after serving time for selling fraudulent stock shares. Motivated by greed, he targeted elderly rich folks as a way to steal their means after their deaths.
Joel Griggs, 57, the museum’s curator, who shared the story with Talk to the Press, said, “He was a gambler and he lost hundreds of thousands on roulette wheels and poker tables. He thought he was a real Jack The Lad – he liked expensive suits and cars, and lived in hotels. He wasn’t bright, but he had two qualities that served him well – charm and patience. He would listen to his victims tell him about their sob stories and ailments.”
Haigh would murder them before dissolving their bodies in acid, then dispose of the leftover sludge nearby. He was so arrogantly confident after killing his final known victim, Olive, 69, that he encourage her friends to report her missing to the police.
“Fortunately the police saw his long criminal record, and then asked if he’d take them down to his factory,” Griggs recalled, per SWNS. “It was a foolish move because he had left Olive’s furs, jewelry and pawn shop tickets on display there. Then he infamously told them ‘I have destroyed her with acid, reduced her to sludge. How can you prove a murder with no body?’ He mistakenly believed the Latin legal term ‘corpus delicti’ (body of the crime’) implied that without a body, a crime couldn’t be proven.”
Ironically enough, investigators found the victim’s dentures and gallstones in the sludge and positively identified her. In a desperate plea to avoid being executed, Haigh claimed he was a “vampire” attempting to suck his victims’ blood, hoping the wild claims would get him sent to the high-security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor instead. It didn’t work; a jury convicted him in a matter of 10 minutes.
If you cannot get to the museum in Sussex, plenty of equally interesting (and admittedly disturbing) exhibits can be seen at crime museums across the US.
- Alcatraz East Crime Museum (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee)
- The Mob Museum (Las Vegas, Nevada)
- Museum of Death (Los Angeles, California)
- Crime Museum of Passion (Los Angeles, California)
