THE ACID BATH MURDERER part 2

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime video part two of the acid bath murderer kiss that's right this is a part two so if you haven't seen part one where i talked about john george higg the acid bath murderer from the uk make sure you're clicking up here i'll link it make sure you've watched part one before you watch this one because this one won't make any sense and make sure you do watch this series because this is genuinely one of the most insane cases i've covered on my channel in in a while so yeah make sure you're watching part one and then come back to this video but before we get into the rest of this case i just want to thank our sponsors for making this video possible word farm skips word farmscapes is a super cool five-star word game app they have things like crossword puzzles scrabble missions find the weird challenges and so much more and the storyline alongside all these word games is that you get to restore and build and paint and customize your own 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it's actually ad free so you can play without getting interrupted so if you want to challenge your brain and have a fun game to play it word farmscapes is free to download using the link down below in my description and if you go through my link down there then you'll receive a special welcome bonus from word farmscapes thanks again to word farmscapes for sponsoring this video now let's get into part two before we do i'll just give you a quick little summary recap of part one and then we'll get straight into it so john george higg is a serial criminal and con artist originally from yorkshire now living in east london to commit the ultimate money-making crime yet murdering rich people and stealing their fortune john higg was brought up very strict protestant christian and he hated his religion he rebelled against his religion and dropped out the second he could when he was an adult however the way that his parents raised him on this religion had left him with lasting psychological issues he would have recurring nightmares where he was forced to drink the blood of christ like a full cup of blood that was raining down from the skies and this childhood nightmare was actually mirrored in his first ever murder that he committed at the end of part one he murdered his best friend his rich best friend william mcswan and when he did he drank a full cup of his blood once he'd murdered his best friend he then had to explain to his mother and father donald and amy mcswan where he was and why he wasn't going to be coming back for a while and john higg was a trusted family friend he was pretty close with the mcswan family as a whole even william's parents and william had a fear of being drafted for the army because this was during world war ii and william was terrified of going to fight in the war and so john higg used this to his advantage john hague went back and told william mcswan's parents that he had actually fled to scotland until the end of the war so they wouldn't be seeing him for a couple of years however he would be back at the end of the war he was just doing it so that he wouldn't get drafted when in reality john higg had murdered his best friend william mcswan he dumped his body in a vat of acid waited for it all to dissolve and then poured what was left of his body down the drain after william's passing john higg got a lot closer with williams mother and father donald and amy mcswan and as he did he realized that the bulk of the family fortune was with these two was with william's parents not with william they earned all the properties they earned all the businesses they owned a bunch of theme parks that they ran and brought in a lot of money through and john higg decided that they were going to be next but this time higg was gonna be a lot smarter with the aftermath of the murders and so he made a few upgrades to his workshop he knew that he couldn't be inhaling all the fumes of the sulfuric acid like he was last time and so he bought himself a gas mask along with all of his other protective gear that he would wear and this wasn't unusual this was in the middle of world war ii so it made sense that someone would buy a gas mask he also bought a large steel bathtub and a pump to help him pump the sulfuric acid into the bathtub to avoid it splashing on him he felt that the process of dissolving a human body would be a lot easier in a bathtub because you know if there were any chunks that weren't quite dissolving as quickly as he would have heard he could fish them out and put them in some fresh acid which is very gruesome so now that all of this was sorted out he'd made all these upgrades he was ready to commit his next murder but now he just had to think of a way to get the mcswans down to his basement workshop one by one and he thought of the perfect plan he told donald and amy mcswan that their son that they hadn't seen in however long that left without telling them william mcswan was back in london for one night and one night only higgs said that william had sent him as a messenger to tell his parents that he really wanted to see them but if he was to see them they had to abide by a lot of rules the first rule was that they had to meet him in john higgs basement workshop it was out of the way and no one really knew that john earned it and you know it's the least suspicious place it's the last place someone would look for william mcswan two they had to do it in the dead of night so that no one would see them no one would hear them no one would be awake to notice third they couldn't tell anyone where they were going what they were doing who they were seeing they couldn't tell anyone that william was back they couldn't tell anyone that william had fled in the first place and the final rule was that they actually had to come one by one to avoid drawing any attention to this basement room it was perfect john had come up with a reason to put all these rules in place which made it you know the perfect way to murder one person after another without anyone suspecting anything and of course the mcswans wanted to see their son really badly they didn't even know that he was going to flee to scotland and now they're hearing that he's back for one night of course they want to see it and so they agreed to john higgs terms so in july of 1945 in the middle of the night donald is led to the basement room by john hick so donald walks in and before he can even get chance to look around and look for william notice that william isn't actually there john hague attacks he left a very heavy lead pipe by the doorway for easy access so as soon as they walked in here grabbed this lead pipe and began beating donald mcswan over the head with it until he was sure that he was dead after killing him he robbed everything that he had on him that was worth anything he robbed his wallet he took any you know watch or anything he had and higg then dragged donald mcswan's body over to where he was keeping this steel bathtub he didn't do anything at that moment he didn't put his body in there or anything he just left him close by it he made sure to wash all the blood off his hands made sure he didn't have anything on his clothing and then john higg left the basement to go and get his second victim amy mcswan and the exact same sequence of events happened again higg led amy down into the basement she went first and as soon as she walked in higg reached for this lead pipe that he'd put back over by the door and beat amy to death as well no one knows for sure whether amy mcswan actually saw the body of her husband in that basement we don't know what the layout of the room was like so it's possible that she could have walked in and seen him straight away and realized what was about to happen to her but it's also equally as possible that she might not have seen that but now higg had two bodies to disperse of and he claims that at this point he felt a lot less anxiety than he did the first time when he murdered william mcswan this time it was just pure excitement for him knowing what he was about to gain in terms of income and money and assets and i think the fact that he'd already done it before he knew what to expect this time around there was just a lot less nerves involved again he took all of amy's belongings this time anything she had on her jewelry everything and then he began the process of dispersing the bodies he picked up donald mcswan's body and carried it all the way to his wooden work bench now this time john higg had decided that he wasn't just gonna dump the body's hull into a vat of acid he was gonna do it slightly differently he'd taken notes from his first murder of william mcswan and noticed that not 100 of what he put in the drum had dissolved there were certain parts of the human body that just didn't you know sulfuric acid can't fully dissolve them certain tissues certain bones i'm not sure and this made it kind of tricky for john hague to dispose of the black sludge that became of william's body last time because it had a load of lumps in that wasn't gonna fly this time he had to poke all these lumps down the drain he said and it just it made the aftermath of the murder so much more messy so much more time consuming and he didn't want that so this time he decided that he was going to dissect and dismember the bodies before putting them into the sulfuric acid so john hague got changed out of his nice expensive clothes he didn't want to get blood on them and he put some shorts on for the dissection he then got to work on donald mcswan's body and bear in mind that higg is not a surgeon he has no qualifications he has he's never studied biology a day in his life so he has no idea what he's doing he has no idea where to make incisions where's easiest to cut down you know it was a very messy dissection he was just going in and just hacking bits off and throwing them in the bathtub literally just anything he could cut from the body to make it a bit easier he did it he was breaking bones soaring through tissue and ligament just breaking this body down into as small pieces as they possibly could so that the acid could dissolve them quicker first donald and then amy mixed one and finally when both bodies were were hacked up and broken and put into this bath john higg began the acid portion of the aftermath so like i said the sulfuric acid hadn't been 100 effective on william mcswan's body the first time and sir higg came back knowing that he had to do something differently something stronger this time he decided to mix in a little bit of hydrochloric acid into the sulfuric acid to give it twice the corrosive power that it had the first time so haig then got changed into all of his protective gear his apron his gas mask and then he grabbed the new pump that he'd installed into the workshop and began slowly emptying out this acid mix over the mcswan's body watching them sizzle watching them bubble and he kept going until both the mcswan's bodies were submerged in this asset higg then cleaned up the workshop as as good as he possibly could he was scrubbing the blood from the floor he cleaned all of his tools put them all back in his workshop he then put his normal clothes back on made sure that all the blood was washed off him and then he left the basement as if nothing had ever happened he left donald and amy mcswan's bodies to dissolve in the bathtub for a few days while he went about collecting their assets that's exactly why he'd done this because he wanted their money he wanted their businesses their properties and he wasted no time doing it he went and spoke with the mcswan's landlady and told them that donald and amy had gone on a long trip to america they weren't going to be back for a while and they'd put him in charge of their finances in the meantime now this was an incredibly good excuse for haig everyone in the mcswan's life knew hague they knew of him they knew that the couple were close with him so when he gets put in charge of their finances it makes sense he's a close family friend no one really questioned it it wasn't strange to anyone and he got away with it you know he was now in charge of their finances he then walked into their lawyer's office the mcswan's lawyer's office and pursed as their son william mcswan the lawyers obviously believing that he was william they'd never seen william before they'd only seen his name in writing so you know john could easily lie about that as william mcswan he then signed over all pretty much all of his family's assets properties businesses everything over to john higgs which was of course him but the lawyers went to know that they thought that this was their son and their son was doing it on their behalf because they were in america and they just wanted everything over with their friend john hague until they got back so now everything was in john hague's name all their properties their businesses and john sold everything straight away and got a lot of money for it he made just short of 200 000 pounds in today's money which is a hell of a lot and he did this for a couple of reasons sold everything straight away one of course he wanted immediate money that's exactly why he did this he wasn't interested in properties and long-term money he wanted that big sum right away so that he could start spending it on his own lifestyle and the second reason he did this was because he obviously didn't want this coming back to him if anyone was to suspect anything about the mcswans and john hague still earned all of their assets it was gonna quickly come back to him so he wanted to get rid of all of that evidence all of those ties as quickly as he could so he's got this 200 000 pounds and he is spending it like it's nothing he starts gambling he's living this luxurious lifestyle he starts a permanent rent at the onslaught hotel in kensington which is a hotel that people kind of live in but it's for super super rich people like the only people that really live in that hotel are people that have like generational wealth like they have a lot of money a lot of money to burn john hague didn't really have that he had a lot of money but that could have set him for life but instead he decided to spend it all really quickly he's going to the races every day he's going to the bar every night and drinking his life away and over the next three years he was spending the money well and it was getting lower and lower until eventually three years later he knew that he was going to have to do something he had to you know find more money somehow but knowing john higg it was never going to be an honest job it was never going to be a proper legal job he decided to go back to that formula that worked for him all those years ago where he would set up a shop take all these customers take all their entrance fees and then close the shop down move somewhere else open up another shop before people got suspicious so john sets up all of these scam businesses once again however it didn't take long for police to come sniffing around him and he thought man it's just not worth it like he didn't want to go back to prison again he didn't even earn that much money from these scam businesses to warrant go into prison again like it wasn't worth it in his mind so he thought why not go back to his most lucrative criminal money-making scheme yet murdering rich people however this time he ran into a few issues not only did he run out of victims he had no rich friends left but he also sold his workshop basement room a few months prior when he was struggling for money so he didn't have a victim and he didn't have a place to carry out his next murder so he was gonna have to do a lot of planning now so he went looking for cheap little unfurnished spaces just outside of london because they're a lot cheaper outside of london and then eventually john higg finds a ramshacked little workshop quite a way out of london in crawley in east sussex and the rent is brilliant and so he buys it so now he's got his second workshop he's moved all of his murderous equipment and furniture into his new place now all he needed was a victim and it didn't take him long to find his next 49 year old doctor archibald henderson and his younger wife roz were selling a rather expensive plot of land in london and john hague inquired about purchasing this plot of land he applied to purchase it and things ended up falling through were they ever going to go through anywhere maybe this was all part of his plan but anyway now he had the hendersons as a contact and the hendersons were very very rich however as this sale was in progress he was around the hendersons long enough to make friends with them and he actually managed to drop into conversation that he was good at playing the piano he was a keen pianist and rose henderson said oh well we're buying a new house we're gonna want a housewarming party we'd love it if you could come and play the piano for us at this party and it was then that john higg knew that he was in the bag this rich couple now trusted him they were inviting him into their home this was an opportunity to get to know them better and to form a genuine friendship and relationship so that he could eventually take advantage of that and we all know how john haig's relationships with his rich friends end up in his mind he was never gonna be friends with the hendersons they were just gonna end up like the mcswans had so higg began preparing for his next murder he bought two of those big 40 gallon watertight oil drums once again because he'd gotten rid of his last ones he began ordering the sulfuric acid in those small quantities again to eventually build up enough to dissolve a whole human body and now he began thinking about how he was actually gonna go about this murder how he was gonna get the henderson to learn and murder them higg remembered that when he'd played the piano at this housewarming party he'd noticed that archibald henderson actually earned a few guns and he thought well if one of those guns was to go missing charlie is not going to miss it he's not even going to notice because he earned so many and because higg had gained their trust at this point the next time that he was round at the henderson's home he stole a revolver and a lord of ammunition and this was his new murder method he felt that his previous method of bludgeoning the way that he'd killed all three of the mcswans it was just a little bit messy it was never fully guaranteed whereas a gunshot wound to the head that's an instant kill he doesn't have to put much more energy into it so now pretty much everything was planned and ready to go forward higg was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise in the meantime he went about strengthening his relationship with the hendersons he would go to their house for dinner and drinks he would go to the races with them he would invite them out he would talk business with dr archibald henderson he was gaining their trust he was becoming a genuine friend of theirs or what they thought was a genuine friend of theirs and bear in mind now his new workshop is all the way in crawley which is quite a far away distance from london so he needed a reason to get both of them to his crawly workshop but not at the same time he couldn't kill them both at once this was gonna take a lot of thinking and he was gonna have to snatch the perfect opportunity when it came up and it did in february of 1948. the group went on a trip to brighton which is actually quite close to crawley it's about 30 minute drive away which is closer than the distance from london to crawley and while they were in brighton john higg mentions to archibald henderson that he had been working on this new invention and he thought it could be quite a good business venture for both of the men to go into together you know they're friends now why not make some money together and haig managed to gas up this invention so much that archibald henderson wanted to leave brighton early to go to his workshop and see what this invention was all about and this is exactly what haig wanted he wanted to be able to get archibald henderson away from his wife in crawley so the two men left brighton and went to crawley just for the day they were going to return to brighton in the evening to continue this trip that they were all on and when they got to the workshop higg got out all of this paperwork he pretended like he'd been planning this for a while but as soon as archibald henderson's head was turned looking at this paperwork higg grabbed the revolver and shot him in the back of the head killing him instantly he then rushed to recover any of archibald henderson's expensive belongings on him he took his wallet he took his gold cigarette case any expensive clothing that he had on him his blazer everything like that and then he carried archibald henderson's body into one of these new barrels this time he decided to skip out on the dismemberment because he knew that this was a race against time today rose was waiting for them back in brighton he didn't want her to get suspicious he couldn't spend too long on this higg then poured all of the sulfuric acid into this barrel tightened the lid and then got changed out of his protective gear back into his normal clothes got in his car and then drove back to brighton to go and collect his fifth murder victim rose henderson when he got back to the brighton hotel he rushed up to where rose was staying and told her in a very panicked manner that her husband had been taken ill in crawley and he needed rose to come and see him immediately of course she was very worried about her husband and so she did everything that higgs said she very obediently and quietly got into the car and drove all the way to crawley back to higgs workshop again the exact same method as soon as rose walked into the workshop higgs shut the door behind them picked up the revolver and shot her in the back of the head killing her instantly as well again he took any expensive jewelry or belongings or clothing that she had on her picked up her body and lowered it into the barrel right next to where her husband's body was dissolving once her body was in there he filled this second drum with sulfuric acid tightened the lid and then went off for the weekend as the henderson couple's bodies remained in his workshop to dissolve side by side when he finally returned to the workshop a few days later he decided it was time to empty out these barrels empty out the black sludge that had become of the henderson's bodies but now he had to figure out where he was gonna do that around the new workshop he realized that he couldn't really do it out front because there were too many people there too many houses or whatever so he had to do it round the back around the back was kind of like not so much a construction site but more like a builder's yard i don't know how to explain it but it wasn't properly developed no one was really gonna go back there so that was as ideal as it can get really so in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep on the street john hague took both barrels out to the back of his workshop and emptied them birth into this yard the following morning he grabbed all of the belongings that he'd gathered from the henderson's bodies all of their jewelry and expensive items clothing things like that he took them to the pawn shop and sold everything rather disappointedly however higg only made around 200 pounds from pawning off all of these things the things he'd stolen weren't quite as expensive as he thought they would be however he knew that that wasn't the only money he was going to make he was about to be in the big money once he could somehow get hold of all their assets he went back to the brighton hotel where they were staying he paid the bill of both of their rooms of course he had the money to do so now and then he stole all of the belongings that the henderson couple had taken on that trip so all of mrs henderson's jewelry all of archibald's expensive clothing again he pawned all of that off got the money for that but he still wasn't done there somehow john higg managed to forge a load of documents and hand over all of the henderson's assets their properties their businesses all over to him i have no idea how this man managed it but he did not many people came asking higg what had happened to the hendersons because of course he was just a friend however when they did come asking especially rosa's brother he was very concerned about where his sister was john hague told them that the hendersons had gone to south africa and they were there for an abortion and they were going to be there for a while just kind of hiding out until all of it had blown over because i believe the hendersons were quite a religious couple coming from religious families they didn't want to inform their families that they were going for an abortion but that's just what haig told rose's brother because he knew that rose's brother would want to stick up for us and he wouldn't go and tell rosa's parents that that was the reason that she was in south africa it was a big big web of just lies upon lies upon lies and excuses and reasons and if you properly sat and looked into it for two minutes you wouldn't believe it but higg was just very charming he was very convincing very persuasive and somehow he managed to persuade the henderson's whole family that they'd gone to south africa for no reason it was only rose's brother that knew that it was for an abortion which even then it wasn't but somehow they all just accepted it that was why they were over in south africa and everyone got on with it after selling all of the henderson's properties assets businesses everything like that higg pocketed just over 200 000 pounds in today's money he actually got their car and their dog as well which he was gonna sell but he liked the car and he bonded with the dog so now he just had he's had a dog that he stole and a car and but just like he had the first time with the money that he'd got from the mcswan murders john hague squandered it all very fast even faster this time actually while the money from the mcswans lasted him over three years this money lasted him just over a year so his spending habits have escalated through the roof by the beginning of the following year so these murders took place in february of 1948 and by the beginning of 1949 john higg was in debt with the hotel that he stayed at he lived at the onslaught court hotel a very fancy very expensive hotel to live at and he was behind on his rent he was in debt and he knew that he needed a lot of money fast and what is the most proven method that he's tried so far murder now a lot of the people that stayed at the onslow court hotel were very rich people that kind of had generational wealth and they were living off family trusts they were in their 50s 60s 70s there were people that had lived a long life and now they were going to retire and chill in this hotel for the rest of their life which meant that it was very unusual to see someone as young as john higg living there he was in his late 30s and he just didn't fit the kind of typical onslaught hotel resident and this made him very highly attractive to all of the widows and you know all the old women in this hotel both romantically attractive but also attractive in the way that they want to talk to him they want to know what what the situation is like how he's so young and so rich and how he can afford to live in a place like them at his young age you know they all wanted to know him they all wanted to speak to him and besides he was very charming very charismatic he was you know how everyone says about ted bundy that everyone was just so attracted to him and you look at him and you're like why he was the same kind of thing he was a very dapper gentleman you could tell that he was very classy very you know he was attractive to a lot of women at that time and that is exactly how he met 69 year old widow olive durand deacon she was very wealthy she was the widow of a very well-known solicitor in london named john durrant deacon he had a hell of a lot of money and that meant that olive had a hell of a lot of money and when her husband died it all went to her and so she decided to retire in the onslaught court hotel which is where she met john hick and she really liked him she would sit with him in the bar she would have tea with him quite a lot on the evenings and then one day she decided to drop into conversation a new business idea that she'd had because she was getting pretty bored in this hotel all day every day she didn't have anything else to do other than live you know she didn't have anything to work on she didn't have any goals at this point in her life so she wanted a bit of a business on the side she was looking for something to occupy her days now that she was retired and she told john higg that she'd had an idea for a false nail company like acrylic nails type thing and she knew that higg was a craftsman he had a workshop she knew all of this about him and that was why she went to him for advice and he said oh yeah i can help you with that and so on february 18th of 1949 john higg invites oliver and deacon to his workshop to go over some of his early plans of this false nail business that she was going to open so olive was super excited she put on a really fancy cut some really nice jewelry she was expecting like the biggest day of her retired life and so she went to this workshop with john higg and when she got there she was she was very surprised at what she saw i think she was expecting to go to this big factory because of how rich john haig seemed i don't know i think she thought that this was a bit more of a developed business than just a little workshop hutch type thing i think she was a little bit surprised to see such a ramshackled hut but nevertheless she went inside she was ready to see the plans so john haye came over to her laid out all of this paperwork all of these plans that he'd been making but before she even got chance to look down and read a single word on these plans john hague had lifted up his revolver and shot olive durand deacon in the back of the head killing her instantly as per his previous kills john higg removed anything of value from olive durant deacon her expensive fair cut all of her jewelry her purse however this time before he begun the disposal of the body so last time with the hendersons he literally just put their bodies in the oil drums filled it with acid and that was it however this time he was going back to what he did with his first murder of william mcswan he returned to the workshop and slit oliver and deacon's throat he then filled up this whole glass with blood and drank it all in one just as he'd done with his first murder he then dragged her body into one of his 40 gallon oil drums however before he put all of the acid inside john higg decided to take a lunch break he walked down to a little tea room just a few streets away from his workshop and he ordered perched eggs on toast a cup of tea and then he sat there and spoke with the woman that ran the cafe for about an hour and then when he was done he walked back down to his workshop and continued the gruesome disposal of this old poor woman's body when he arrived back at the workshop he donned all of his protective clothing his gas mask everything poured the acid into the oil drum tightened the lid and then left his workshop as the body glare dissolving in this oil drum haig then went and set about pawning off all of these items that he'd managed to steal from my sister and deacon he noticed that her cut had a few blood spots on it and so he took it to the dry cleaners so it could be cleaned and then pawned off meanwhile he just took all of the jewelry straight to the pawn shop and with all of this money john higg then went to the onslow court hotel and paid off all of his debt however that was all he could pay he didn't have enough money for his next month's rent so he knew that he was going to have to make more money already and he knew that with this murder especially it was gonna be hard to get any more money out of it it wasn't like he could sign over mr and deacon's assets over into his name because he didn't know her too well he wasn't family he wasn't even that close of a friend and it could very easily come back on him because he literally lives in the same hotel as her john higg was realizing at this point that he'd he'd messed up a little bit he couldn't get much more money out of this and now someone from the place that he lives is going to be missing police are going to be sniffing around there when they realize that she's missing he is going to have to somehow either pay olive during deacon's rent or cancel her rent for her otherwise the hotel are gonna report her missing to the police you know this was this wasn't gonna end how john higg wanted it to end so he decided to just give himself a couple of days to collect himself and figure out what the hell he was going to do how he was going to explain this and how he was going to move forward and in the meantime he went back to the workshop and emptied out this oil drum full of black sludge but as he did as he was pouring it out into the yard once again the yard outside his workshop he noticed that this particular instance the body hadn't quite dissolved the way he wanted it to and the way that they normally did i think because he was panicking so much he didn't quite give it as much time as he'd given the others and there were chunks in this black sludge of mr and deacon's body that hadn't properly dissolved there were full chunks of human fat there were burns there was a whole foot but here didn't really have time to mess around here he couldn't you know pull them out and put them in more acid you know he just had to hope for the best he thought that maybe emptying them out into the yard maybe they'll decompose by themselves maybe they'll carry on corroding with like the acid still on them he just hoped that maybe it had sort itself out in the next few days he had bigger issues to think about he had to explain where mrs derren deacon was now and in this time people at the onslaught hotel had realized that mr and deacon had gone missing higg forgot that she had a lot of friends and all of her friends knew who he was as well her best friend constance lane was very concerned because she actually knew about olive during deacon's plans that day to go to john hague's workshop she knew that her friend had gone out with john hague one day and not returned home she even went and confronted john hague about this and said you were the last person to see her where is she and john had actually thought about this and he gave a bit of an explanation he said yes they were meant to go to his workshop that day that was the plan but that never ended up happening he was supposed to go and pick mr and deacon up after a shopping trip and then they would go to the workshop from there however when he went to pick her up she didn't sure he thought that she'd just changed her mind or maybe she'd lost track of time she was still shopping and so he decided to get on with his day but now she was missing so now people were even more concerned thinking that she'd been missing for an even longer time maybe she'd gone missing when she was shopping which meant anyone could be responsible anything could have happened to her john higg acted equally as concerned and worried for his friend olive as constance lane was however constance was she was on to him when the next morning rolled round and olive der and deacon still hadn't turned up for breakfast or dinner at the hotel constance lynn went to john higgins said look i'm gonna have to go to the police station and report her missing i'm so concerned and john higgs said yeah i think you should i think that's the right idea he even offered to go with her to file this report because he was equally as concerned for his friend as constance was so the two of them went to the police station to go and file this missing person's report for olive der and deacon and this is a very narcissistic personality trait of john higgs like he wants to be in it he wants to be in everything he wants to be in control of everything you can see him panicking here he feels like he is losing control of the situation so if he is the one to file the missing person's report he's staying on top of things he is the one that police would report back to he is the one that they would talk with so he knows the latest developments in the case plus if he was there at the police station constance lynn would probably be less likely to say anything bad about him or tell police that she was suspicious of him because he'd be right next to her she wouldn't want to do that even though still at this point constance was accepting that jon was concerned but she was still a little bit suspicious of him so police began conducting enquiries at the onslaught court hotel they were speaking with staff they were speaking with everyone that was friends with oliver and deacon specifically constance and john haig since they seemed like her closest friends because they were the ones that reported her missing however one of the police officers that went to conduct these inquiries she got a pretty bad feeling about haig immediately not only did he seem overly involved in this investigation but she also just thought it was pretty weird that he was living there you know he was the youngest person there how had he stumbled across so much wealth at such a young age and no one was really aware of how he'd done that it didn't seem right so police began looking into john hague they began looking at his background his job things like that and that was when they pulled up his criminal record and found out that he had a very lengthy criminal past with all of his fraudulent behaviors scamming schemes all of this not only that but the onslow court hotel staff even told police that john hague was struggling to pay his rent he was in a lot of debt with them up until very recently when out of the blue he managed to pay off a few months rent all at once which was rather alarming to police this rich old lady has gone missing his best friend and suddenly he can afford to pay multiple months rent all at once and this guy is known for previous frauds games previous scams it was very very concerning and so police tried to speak with as many people at the hotel about john now as they possibly could and that was when they found out that he was running an engineering mechanics invention business it seemed that no one could really pinpoint exactly what john hague did they just knew that he had a workshop and that was where he spent a lot of his time and this workshop was in crawley someone was able to give the police the exact address of his workshop so police went straight to the workshop in crawley they knocked on the door got no answer and so they just kicked the door down they went straight inside and i think they were expecting to find something dark in there but i don't think they were quite expecting to find what they found in john higgs workshop inside they found every single element of john higgs murderous schemes they found the 40 gallon oil drums with the watertight lids they found the gas mask and all of the acid-proof protective clothing that he would wear every single time they found the massive steel bathtub that he used the pump that he used to get the acid from the container into the bath or into the oil drum most concerning of all they found his revolver or the henderson's revolver and a load of ammunition also in the workshop they found a briefcase or like a box like a like a locked box with a lot of documents in now we'll get back to this box in a second but right now they found a receipt for a dry cleaners appointment so they went down to this dry cleaners which was in town and they showed them the receipt and they said can you show us what was handed in on this day for it to be cleaned and the dry cleaners produced a very long very expensive fur cut olive durand deacon's fair cut and around this same time sir of course ever since olive duran deacon was reported missing police had been given out like missing persons posters she'd been in the newspapers things like that because this was a vulnerable old woman they knew that her disappearance was suspicious this couldn't have been explained normally and so they were really concerned and they were really trying to find her and the whole area knew to be on the lookout for her and so a few days later after all of these reports start going out and the posters start going out police had someone come into the station and say i think i know who did this this person that had come into the station was the owner of a pawn shop in crawley and john higg had recently been in that pawn shop and sold a bunch of women's jewelry and so this guy said i am pretty concerned that this is all olive der and deacon's jewellery that john hage had come in and sold and so police showed all of these jewelry pieces to her family and they confirmed that it was the jewelry of my sister and deacon so now there was overwhelming evidence to say that john hague had murdered oliver and deacon for her money and so on february 28th of 1948 he was arrested by police and brought to the police station for questioning and in a rather unexpected turn of events john higgs sat there in the police station and confessed not only to the murder of olive durham deacon but to his five other murders the mcswan murders and the henderson murders he actually even admitted to more than those five he admitted to nine in total however the last three victims that he confessed to murdering cannot be verified and so a lot of people think it's a load of rubbish he said that he killed a middle-aged woman after william mcswan so that was his second murder supposedly he said that this woman was from west london and that is literally all he could tell police that's all he knew about her she was a woman from west london who was middle aged he claimed that he killed a man named max after the murders of the mcswan couple so that would have been his what fifth murder and then he said he killed another welsh woman after the henderson murders which brings him up to nine again there's no serious evidence to back any of these three claims and that's what makes people believe that these three murders were fabricated because he can't tell all of the gory little details like he can with the mcswan murders the henderson murders and the murder of oliver and deacon he can't go into detail because there are no details because he's making them up psychologists believe that the reason that john higg lied about these further three murders was because he was just trying to sensationalize his own crimes you know for the sake of his reputation if he was going to be known as a mega serial killer that did all these brutal things in the aftermath of his killings he wanted to be the best serial killer there ever was and this is going back to his narcissistic personality i don't know if he was ever diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or if he just has narcissistic personality traits but a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder and this isn't me diagnosing him by the way but this is you know a narcissistic personality trait is that people tend to have a grandiose sense of self they think that they're better than everyone else more intelligent than everyone else they think they can do things better than anyone else could maybe he felt let down by his death toll if he was now gonna be known as a serial killer he wanted to be known as the best most successful most powerful serial killer he could but he only had six victims and he wanted ma this also goes back to if you can remember right at the beginning of the story his first ever criminal scheme was when he tried to fraudulently buy cars under fake names put them on finance and then sell them for more money he read in the newspaper that someone had been sent to prison for doing exactly that but he read that and thought i can do it better than him so i'm gonna try anywhere he just thinks that he can do things better than everyone else he's more intelligent than everyone else and he can get away with things that other people can't and that probably translates into well he's better than all the other serial killers he's a serial killer but he thinks he's better than the rest anyway i'm getting ahead of the story a little bit here going back to the timeline john higg has just been arrested he's in police custody and he has confessed to nine murders only six of which police actually can find evidence for but why why did he admit why did he confess to all of these murders going back to his incorrect research of the uk laws he believes that he is untouchable because he thinks from his research that he read wrong that if there's been a murder and police can't find the body then that means that no one can be arrested for that murder because you can't prove that they've been murdered if you don't have a dead body so john higg thinks he can kill as many people as he wants but just as long as police never find the bodies they can't charge him so he could sit there and confess but he thinks he can't be arrested it's it's so stupid he literally said to police and this is a quirk he said i've destroyed her meaning olive with acid you'll find the sludge that remains at leopold road which is his workshop every trace has gone how can you prove a murder if there's no body which you know is not true police don't need a body to charge someone with murder but police did actually have a body which is what john hare didn't know he didn't realize that while he'd been in police custody they had gone and searched his workshop and they actually came across that sludge in the back of the garden that still had a foot in it so they had a body john higg hadn't fully dissolved oliver and deacon's body and there were a lot of different body parts that police found in the yard of his workshop they found like 18 fragments of burn 28 pounds of human fat they found a gallstone they found dentures olives upper and lower dentures fully intact and they also found a whole human foot so even if john was correct in his thinking that if police don't have a body they can't charge him which he wasn't but even if he was correct they had a body anyway so they could charge him on top of that police also found a whole load of paperwork connecting john hague with every single one of the six murders that we've talked about in this video series they found a bag handle of mrs henderson's rose hendersons they also found a bunch of paperwork relating to the mcswans and their properties and their finances so they could connect john higg to all six of these murders so at some point during his arrest when he was in police custody i think john higg was now realizing that he probably was gonna go to prison and that his understanding was wrong and so he actually decided to go with plan b which was to fake insanity what else was it gonna be at one point during his questioning when everything had gone quiet he actually leaned over to a police officer and asked him tell me frankly what are the chances of anyone being released from broadmoor now i've talked about broadmoor before in some of my videos it is an infamous high security psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane in the uk it's full of serial killers murderers serial rapists people that are a genuine danger to society and commit such crimes because they are criminally insane they have a lot of severe mental illness that has driven them to do that not only do they need treating for their mental illness but they also need locking away from society in this hospital and many many people don't ever make it out of broadmoor once they're there they're there until they die don't get me wrong there are people that have been released but the mega mega serious ones like the serial killers like the murderers once you're in broadmoor you're probably not getting out so john higg knew that his two options were either fake insanity and being a psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life with no freedom or he could be found guilty and hung and this is where we backtrack on the story a little bit a lot of people believe that john hague never actually drank the blood of any of his victims they believed that he did it just to be able to fake insanity a little better the only person that knows whether that is true or not is john higg of course that can't be confirmed or verified because no one was there at the time and now there's no body to kind of prove that but the blood drinking part of his story had actually been in the story right from the beginning right from the first thing that he told the police that was before he decided to fake insanity so maybe he was just covering all bases making sure he threw that in there even though he didn't think he was gonna have to plead insanity maybe he was just covering all bases or maybe it was genuinely true a lot of people seem to be split half and half on that i've seen a lot of people that think it is true and a lot of people that think it's not so in his trial john hague pled not guilty to all of his murders despite a confession by reason of insanity he said that he was mentally unstable and you know didn't mean to commit the murders he cited that the reason for these murders goes way back to those recurring nightmares that he used to have when he was a child where he was forced to drink that full cup of blood that was raining from the sky he said that he'd stopped having these recurring nightmares when he was still very young however when he'd gotten into a car accident in the mid-1940s when he was like in his mid-30s he had began having these nightmares again every single night and he felt as though it was a message seems very convenient that he got into a car crash just as the murders started happening and now he's suddenly having these nightmares again you know but ultimately this insanity plea was believed by very few people a lot of people saw straight through it this was clearly for a money motive he stole all of these people's belongings assets businesses he sold all of their expensive jewelry to pay for this luxurious lifestyle that he wanted it wasn't because he was mentally unstable it was clearly for the money he targeted one particular victim profile and that was rich people and there was a reason for that you know if he was mentally unstable surely his kills would be a little bit less discriminatory in terms of what he went for you know at his trial the jury deliberated for just 15 minutes which is literally one of the shortest deliberation times i've ever heard of that jerry was so sure in their answer that john hague was guilty of all six of the murders that we've talked about in this case and he was to be executed he was to remain in prison until his execution date was set and he did a lot of odd things in prison before he was you know before he was hung first of all he asked if he could have a trial run of his execution just to make sure that everything went smoothly on the day you know make sure they got his weight right to make sure they snapped his neck he asked to meet with the executioner who i might actually do a video on because i find his life so interesting and the amount of people that he killed as a hangman he has to meet with him because he was quite a well-known hangman was the person that hung john hague he also asked if he could have a meeting with someone from madame tussauds i'm not 100 sure if this bit is correct but i read in a source that he asked if he could have a meeting with someone from madame tussauds because he felt like he should have been put in the museum it's a wax work museum and they have loads of wax figures of very famous people you know beyonce the queen um not john higgs anywhere all of his requests were denied to have a trial run of his execution to meet someone from madame tussauds all you know you're a criminal you're a serial killer on the day of his execution which was august 10th 1949 john higg was offered one final drink by one of his like prison guards or something he was offered a brandy and john higg replied make it a large one oh boy and i believe that was john george higgs last words when he was hung in the galas aged 40. and that is all i have on this case thank you so so much for watching this is literally being one of my favorite videos to make one of my favorite cases to cover this was so interesting and i hope you guys liked it too if you did make sure you leave a big thumbs up on this video comment down below any other cases you want me to cover thanks again to word farm skips for sponsoring this video remember you can download the game using the link down below in my description and if you do they will give you a welcome bonus huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed make sure you leave a thumbs up down below if you want to subscribe there's a link to do so right here if you want to subscribe to my brand new second channel there's a link to subscribe right here and if you want to watch another video of mine there is a 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,468,229

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, storytime, forensic files, 2020, dateline, interview, news, creepypasta, horror, john haigh, john george haigh, haigh, hague, acid, acid bath, acid bath murderer, uk true crime, uk serial killer, daily, true crime daily, london, real stories, uk, britain, england, british

Id: 9Gj8C2cgZs8

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020