HOW FORMER CHOIRBOY JOHN GEORGE HAIGH BECAME A MURDERER
John George Haigh had a promising childhood. The son of religious and strict parents, he won scholarships to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield, and Wakefield Cathedral, where he became a choirboy. He was also a skilled pianist. But in his late teens, his life took a downward path, filled with lies and scams, that would eventually lead to murder.
EARLY CRIMES
After leaving school at 17, Haigh became a motor engineering apprentice. Seemingly unsettled, he left the job after a year, and took on work in insurance and advertising. When he was 21, he was fired after being suspected of stealing from a cash box. It was to be the start of his dishonest life.
In July 1934, Haigh, then 24, married Betty Hamer, 21, but it wasn’t the fairy-tale union that could have gotten his life back on track. Betty had doubts about his character from the start, reportedly saying, “Oh God, I wish it could be anyone else.” Indeed, the marriage hit the rocks four months later, when he was jailed for fraud. A pregnant Betty gave birth while Haigh was in prison, but she gave the baby up for adoption and left her husband. Soon after his release, he was jailed again for 15 months for car rental fraud and the forgery of vehicle documents. He then attempted to go straight with a dry-cleaning business, but that folded after his business partner was killed in a car crash.
Haigh moved to London in the pursuit of new opportunities, and in 1936, became a chauffeur to wealthy amusement park owner William McSwan and his family. The pair struck up a friendship, bonding over their love of fast cars, flashy fashion and going out drinking. But preferring to work for himself, Haigh found himself in jail yet again when he was convicted of fraud after setting up a business as a bogus solicitor who sold fake stocks and shares. As ever, the spell behind bars did him little good – he was back inside within a year, this time for stealing. But it was seemingly during this stint in prison that he thought up how to get away with murder – killing someone, then making the body disappear by dissolving it in acid. Inspired by French killer Georges-Alexandre Sarret, who disposed of his victims’ bodies with sulphuric acid, Haigh began experimenting with acid and mice.
THE MURDERS
Determined to get his career back on track, Haigh became an accountant with an engineering firm when he was freed in 1943. But it wasn’t long before his dishonest dreams returned – although this time, he graduated from fraud to murder. A chance meeting with his former employer and friend William McSwan at The Goat pub in Kensington tragically ended in the businessman becoming Haigh’s first victim. After introducing Haigh to his parents, Donald and Amy, William disappeared on 9 September 1944. Haigh later confessed to enticing William into the basement
