Killers/The Killers.adf/Files/THE CONFESSION.TXT/THE CONFESSION.TXT

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 6.3 KB | 138 lines

P7The confession.P7

P1Detective Inspector Albert Webb formally warned Haigh that
he was not obliged to say anything, Haigh impatiently waved
the warning aside and carried on regardless,`If I told you
the truth,'he said,`you would not believe it, It is too fa-
ntastic for belief, I will tell you all about it,'he said,
Mrs Durand-Deacon no longer exists, She has disappeared co-
mpletely and no trace of her can ever be found again, I
have destroyed her with acid, you will find sludge that re-
mains at Leopold Road, Every trace has gone,`How can you
prove murder if there is no body?'Haigh asked, Suddenly,
Webb remembered the Sussex police report - the stirrup pump
the gas mask,the metal drums and the acid and sludge, Was
this a fictitious yarn? What was Haigh talking about? Webb
tried to imagine what else the acid might have been in the
storehouse for, then hurried off to tell his senior officer
Superintendent Barratt exploded, `He's been haveing you on,'
he told Webb, `Fairy tales .... nonsense,'All three detecti-
ves recoiled from the idea,If Mrs Durand-Deacon was dead as
seemed all but certain, then they wanted a simple open-and-
shut case of murder for greed, None of them had ever heard
of anything as grotesque as dissolving people in acid,
Moreover, Haigh had disclosed his line of defence: insanity
So selfassured had he been that he was more worried about
getting out of Broadmoor, than finding his way into it, In
1949, few detectives believed that a killer might be insane
unless he was visibly a ranting, incoherent lunatic beyond
any form of selfcontrol,Haigh was hardly this type, To the
Chelsea detectives, he was a glib, villain who held them in
contempt, They probably feared that Haigh might manipulate
the law, the psychiatrists and the courts and, finally,
cheat the hangman.P1

P7The truth revealed.P7

P1After Haigh had been formally cautioned, inspector Symes
impassively began writing down Haigh's statement, Apart fro-
m a brief interval for tea and cheese sandwiches, it took
two and a half hours, with Haigh still happily smoking as
he describeb how Mrs Durand-Deacon died, . . . Having taken
her into the storeroom at Leopold Road, I shot her in the
back of the head whilst she was examining some paper for use
as fingernails, he said, I then went out to the car and fet-
ched in a drinking glass and made an incision, I think with
a penknife, in the side of the throat, and collected a glass
of blood, which I then drank,' removed Mrs Durand-Deacon's
valuables - her Persian lamb coat, her rings, necklace,
ear-rings and crucifix - and then put her body into a tank,
The detectives listened and watched without comment, Mad or
sane, a true statement or pack of lies, they noticed how
Haigh expresed himself with utterly unfeeling care,His
grammar seemed to matter more to Haigh then his victim, the
statement had barely begun,I then filled the tank up with
sulphuric acid by means of a stirrup pump, from a carboy, I
then left it to react, This was Haighs way of saying he had
set out to remove all trace of Mrs Durand-Deacon, but he su-
ddenly seemed to remember something.P1

P7Break for tea.P7

P1I should have said that in between putting her in the tank
and pumping in the acid, I went round to the Ancient Priors
and had a cup of tea . . The restaurant Haigh had referred
to, fully named Ye Olde Ancient Priors, was nearby in Craw-
ley Square,inquiries showed that beside the cup of tea,
after he had killed Mrs Durand-Deacon, he ate a poached egg
on toast, The evidence was bewildering,Detectives Symes, Ba-
rratt and Webb all understood what was being claimed:
vampirism, At any rate thay were dealing with a man who co-
uld sit quite calmly, happily drinking tea in a public place
immediately after shooting an elderly lady, Haigh then desc-
ribed how he had taken the jewellery to the car, had dinner
at the George Hotel's restaurant, put the revolver in the
hat-box and driven back to the Onslow Court Hotel where, the
next morning, paused at Mrs Lane's breakfast table to expre-
ss his concern over Mrs Durand-Deacon, The account of events
inside the storehouse then resumed, On Monday, I returned to
Crawley to find the reaction almost complete, but a piece of
fat and bone was still floating on the sludge.P1

P7Coldly clinical.P7

P1I emptied off the sludge with a bucket, Haigh continued, and
tipped it on the ground opposite the shed, and pumped a fur-
ther quantity of acid into the tank to decompose the remain-
ing fat and bone . . . On Tuesday, I returned to Crawley,
and found decomposition complete, Altogether, Haigh received
£100 for Mrs Durand-Deacon's jewellery from Bull's jewellers
in Horsham, and £10 for her watch from a shop in putney High
Street, south London, He repaid £36 of a loan of £50 made to
him by Mr Jones of Hurstlea Products, owner of the storehou-
se, and reduced his overdraft of £83, Haigh had been speak-
ing for an hour or more in painfully exact detail, concern-
ed at all times to get everything in its right order, He
had told stories of vampirism and genteel cups of tea, of
greed and bankruptcy, of deceit and bad debts, and of for-
gery and fraud, But the story was not over.P1



P7The full horror.P7

P1Haigh continued talking, smoking with cat-like pleasure as
his revelations poured out, By the early hours of 1 March,
he had confessed to five more murders, The firt had taken
place on 9 september 1944, The victim was an old acquainta-
nce, William McSwan,in a basement flat at 79 Gloucester
Road, near the Onslow Court Hotel, A year later,Haigh lured
McSwan's trusting parents, Donald and Amy, to the same bas-
ement, and coshed both of them over the head, He forged
Donald's signature to gain power-of-attorney over their
estate, While selling one of their properties, Haigh met Dr
Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie,For their killings
he chose the Giles Yard storeroom, Haigh said that in each
case he had destroyed the bodies with acid after drinking a
cup of their blood.P1

P7Key dates Sept 44-Feb 49.P7

P19.9.44-----------William McSwan murdered
2.7.45-----------Donald and Amy McSwan murdered
18.7.45----------Haigh forges McSwan signature to gain power
of attorney over familys estate
??.9.47----------Haigh meets Mr and Mrs Henderson
12.2.48----------Archie and Rosie Henderson murdered
28.2.49----------Haigh taken for questioning and confesses
to murders.P1

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