1949: The Acid Bath Murderer: John Haigh Hanged for Six Killings
John George Haigh was an English serial killer who battered or shot his victims, then dissolved their bodies in sulphuric acid to erase all evidence. He forged his victims’ signatures to sell their possessions and collect large sums of money, a scheme he had refined through years of fraud and multiple prison terms. Though convicted of six murders, Haigh claimed to have killed nine.
Born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and raised in Yorkshire by strict Plymouth Brethren parents, Haigh drifted from fraud into murder after becoming fascinated by French killer Georges-Alexandre Sarret, who had used acid to dispose of bodies. He was arrested in 1949 after police connected him to the disappearance of a widow whose remains, including gallstones and false teeth, survived the acid and were found at his workshop in Crawley, Sussex. Haigh was convicted at Lewes Assizes and hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 10 August 1949.
