Serial Killer Quarterly
Vol.1 No.4 Cruel Britannia
Grinning Man Press
Serial Killer Quarterly Vol.1 No.4 Cruel Britannia
© 2014 Grinning Man Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9938232-3-7
First eBook Edition *December 2014
Published by Grinning Man Press
Editor-in-Chief: Lee Mellor
Editors: Lee Mellor, Aaron Elliott
Art Direction: Jonathan Whitehead, Northbound Creations
Cover Image: William Cook
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The views expressed by the editor-in-chief of Serial Killer Quarterly do not necessarily represent those of its contributing authors, illustrators, or designers. Similarly, the views expressed by individual authors do not necessarily represent those of Grinning Man Press, or any of the other authors. Duplication and/or distribution of any portion of the ‘Cruel Britannia’ e-magazine is prohibited by law, and may result in legal action by Grinning Man Press.
In this Issue Vol.1 No.4 Cruel Britannia
Introduction to Cruel Britannia
A Quick Note on Style
Letters to the Editor
John George Haigh: Acid and Blood
Aaron Elliott
Dapper con artist lures friends and business associates to their deaths in his London basement warehouse, rendering their bodies into goo in acid baths.
John Christie: Skeletons in the Alcove
Robert J. Hoshowsky
Sexually inadequate hypochondriac murders his wife, neighbours, and five women in his bedbug-ridden Notting Hill apartment, having necrophilic sex with four of the latter.
London Murder Travel Diary, Part 1
Lee Mellor
Ian Brady & Myra Hindley: Switching on the Dark
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Five Manchester children and teens are raped and murdered as an existential exercise
by Scottish nihilist Ian Brady and his English disciple/lover, Myra Hindley.
London Murder Travel Diary, Part 2
Lee Mellor
George Chapman (Seweryn Klosowski): The Borough Poisoner
Kim Cresswell
Polish-born barber and Ripper-suspect poisons three wives
with Tartar-Emetic in turn-of-the-century England.
The Jack the Ripper Tour: A Review
Lee Mellor
Peter Sutcliffe: Yorkshire Ripper or Yorkshire Rip-Off?
Burl Barer
Is Bradford trucker Peter Sutcliffe, Engand's most notorious serial killer, really responsible for 13 deaths attributed to him, or is he a nobody among nobodies?
An Interview with Johnny Chambers—Whitechapel Tour Guide Extraordinaire
Fred & Rosemary West: Garden of Bones
Kim Cresswell
What happens when an incestuous brain-damaged butcher and paraphile marries an evil bisexual nymphomaniac? The answers lie in the garden of 25 Cromwell Street.
Killer Flicks: Grinning Man Reviews Serial Murder Films, Past to Present
Robert Napper: The Destroyer
Carol Anne Davis
Abhorrent police ethics leads to the prosecution of an innocent man for murder, while the true killer—a schizophrenic necromutilophile—languishes in a mental institution.
A Preview of the Next Issue: Fatal Fetishists
Sources
Other Issues
Introduction to Cruel Britannia
A colleague in England once told me that she found British serial killers boring.
I couldn't disagree more. Granted, with the exception of Harold Shipman—one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history—the rain-sodden slayers of Albion have yet to wrack up the kind of astronomical body counts that their American cousins have. Considering that with a population of 64,000,000, the entire United Kingdom is smaller than the state of Oregon, this may simply be the result of having less space in which to dump corpses and move around unseen. Firsthand experience has shown me that the Brits generally lack America's highway culture
—that capacity for transience that has enabled such high-tallying serial murderers as Ted Bundy and Randy Kraft (both of whom will be featured in our upcoming special Christmas issue). Yet there is something about the British landscape that lends a certain brooding ambiance to the murders that occur on those foggy isles. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Ian Brady & Myra Hindley, who raped, killed, and buried five children on a bleak and blustery moor outside Manchester.
Peter Sutcliffe claimed at least three of his victims in this same Cottonopolis, along with 17 more (or did he?) in the industrial cities of Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, and Halifax to the east. It was from here, in the rugged cliffs of Yorkshire, that the puritanical Acid Bath Vampire
John George Haigh and prudish Monster of Rillington Place
John Christie would emerge to later wreak havoc to the south, in London.
West of the capital, the verdant orchards of Much Marcle gave birth to perhaps the most depraved killer couple of all time, Fred & Rosemary West, who would commit repeated acts of rape, torture, murder, necrophilia, and dismemberment in their Gloucester House of Horrors.
Finally, there is Plumstead Ripper
Robert Napper whose lust murdering legacy will forever stain the green and friendly image of Wimbledon Common with his high-profile 1992 slaying of mother Rachel Nickell.
Boring? Far from it. Indeed, with all of the fascinating murders in Cruel Britannia
we didn't even have enough space to tell the tale of the most infamous serial killer of all time: Jack the Ripper.
Hopefully the time I spent in the company of Ripperologist and tour guide Johnny Chambers will more than compensate. We've also included a superbly succinct article on George Chapman (Seweryn Klosowski)—the only convicted British serial killer to arise as a plausible Ripper suspect.
Enjoy it (but not too much...),
Lee Mellor
Editor-in-Chief, Serial Killer Quarterly
lee@grinningmanpress.com
A Quick Note on Style
For those of you who are new to Serial Killer Quarterly, I wish to explain Grinning Man’s unique stance regarding format and tone. Though our company is based in Montreal, Canada, the online nature of our business model allows us to publish for an international audience. For this reason, we have chosen not to select one style of English over another. American authors are free to lose the u’s
and extra l’s,
while Canadians and Brits can keep them. Thus, our magazines may contain alternate spellings of words such as behavior/behaviour
or travelling/traveling
in different articles. Let’s face it, we inhabit a globalized world, and bickering about correct language at this level is a futile and pedantic pursuit.
Any names followed by a * are pseudonyms, and are typically employed to protect the identities of surviving victims.
You will also observe that the tone of the individual articles in Serial Killer Quarterly range in degrees from the impressionistic/subjective to more traditional journalistic approaches. Though some readers will likely prefer one style over another, we have tried to incorporate a multitude of voices into Serial Killer Quarterly in order to keep the material varied, and to provide numerous lenses through which to view the topic. Charles Manson—incidentally, a psychopathic cult leader, NOT a serial killer—has been quoted as saying: Look down at me and you see a fool; look up at me and you see a god; look straight at me and you see yourself.
In this spirit, we will look from whatever angle our contributors see fit, and maybe, one day, glimpse the full picture.
Letters to the Editor
Are you enjoying this issue of Serial Killer Quarterly? Hating it? Do you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the magazine or the cases in ‘Unsolved in North America’? Well, dear reader, we’d love nothing more than to hear from you. In the coming issues, this section shall be your soapbox. However, unlike some fiery-eyed street preacher, we do get to respond to you. Sound like fun?
Please send any communications through email to lee@grinningmanpress.com. Enter "Serial Killer Quarterly—Letters to the Editor" into the subject line of your email, and we promise to publish and respond to as many emails as possible in our next issue, ‘Partners in Pain.’ We also welcome suggestions for new stories, issue themes, films to review etc.
Grinning Man Press also accepts manuscripts for full length books, short stories and articles in the genres of true crime, science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, the paranormal, erotica and generally anything that pushes the boundaries of human thought, imagination, convention and comfort. Please send queries to lee@grinningmanpress.com or befriend Grinning Man Press on Facebook, and shoot us a message.
John George Haigh: Acid and Blood
VAMPIRE HORROR IN LONDON, cried the front page of the Daily Mirror, VAMPIRE - A MAN HELD. On the 1st of March 1949, John George Haigh was arrested in connection with the disappearance of retiree Olive Durand-Deacon and six months later he would be hanged for her premeditated murder. In the meantime, Britain's tabloids would be awash with gore as Haigh spun stories of his own bloodlust: sanguine dreams infused with religious mania. Haigh was on trial for his life, and the evidence seemed to paint him as a desperate, spivvy conman with a long criminal record of fraud who had crossed the line into murder. His only chance to save his life was to convince the court that he was insane.
***
John George Haigh was born in Lincolnshire and raised in Yorkshire by Robert Haigh, an engineer, and Emily Haigh. The family were members of a conservative Protestant group called the Plymouth Brethren. Robert's extreme religious views led him to keep his family separate from the world as much as possible. This took the form of a 10-foot fence around the family home and a strict prohibition on John taking part in most activities that were normal for a youth. Instead, young John spent his days in relative isolation, playing or reading in his father's walled-off garden, learning piano with his mother (which whom he remained close his whole life), and in religious activities. At his trial, Haigh's defense would claim that this extreme religious upbringing and isolation caused him to develop what was called a paranoid disposition
in the parlance of the time. Unusual religious views aside, there is no evidence that Haigh's parents subjected him to abuse.
In spite of his isolation, Haigh grew up to be bright, and earned himself scholarships to attend public school (for non-British readers, that's private school). He excelled in his studies and was a choirboy at Wakefield Cathedral. When he graduated, Haigh went to work as a motor apprentice. His life seemed set on a steady course, right down the middle. Yet Haigh found the day-to-day grind of working life dull and couldn't face the monotony. Quitting the engineering firm, the 21-year-old Haigh began bouncing around from job to job, quitting, being fired, and moving, until he eventually found his true calling as a conman. Haigh sold cars that he didn't own and shares in companies that didn't exist. Though modestly prosperous, his schemes always broke down and landed him in prison: 14 months in 1934, four years from 1936, and another two years from 1940. He just couldn't make a good go of it. His jail time did serve him one function, though: if his failed conman career was his elementary education in crime, then prison would be his university.
John George Haigh's intellect occupied a dangerous place: he was a bit more refined than the average Joe, but not nearly as smart as he thought he was. Coupled with a decent work ethic, Haigh would have made a fine middle manager—handsome, stylish, clever, and psychopathic—he might have risen high in the world of London's corporate elite, if only he could bare the idea of going to work every day. That is the crux of Haigh's motivations: he felt that a talented and unique soul such as his was entitled to a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. In prison for the second to last time, he decided to educate himself on legal and scientific matters from the prison library. It was in this way that he learned of the legal concept of corpus delicti: the body of a crime. Haigh took this to mean that if someone were to be convicted of murder there would have to literally be a body. The book he read this in very likely went on to explain this 'body' actually referred to a body of evidence, such as what police would later gather on Haigh, but John had already moved on to chemistry class before reading that far.
Sulphuric acid was what Haigh thought was the key to performing the perfect murder. He had managed to charm his way into a work detail that allowed him to steal small amounts of the substance from the prison storeroom. He then paid prisoners to bring him the bodies of small animals—mice and birds and such—to conduct his experiments on. The little bodies were reduced to slime which Haigh could pour down the drain. Some basic calculations determined that it would take about 40 gallons of acid to dissolve the average human body. It was almost too easy. Did he wonder why no one had thought of it before?
John George Haigh walked out of a prison for the last time in 1943 with a brand new plan. Prior to his last stint behind bars, Haigh had worked as a chauffeur and secretary for the McSwans, a propertied and well-to-do family of Scots who operated a number of amusement arcades. In that time, Haigh became friends with their son, William, who was of an age with John. Though they had lost touch when Haigh had moved on to different schemes (which would, unbeknownst to the McSwans, land him in prison), he was never forgotten. When, in the summer of 1944, Haigh managed a chance run-in with William at the Goat pub in Kensington, the friendship was instantly rekindled.
William had a small problem and after two weeks of intense camaraderie with Haigh he thought his newly re-met friend could help him. Just across the channel, war raged three months after the Normandy invasion. The Allied forces were hungry for men to fight the Wehrmacht, and it was looking like William McSwan stood to be conscripted. His friend John told him he had a plan to keep him from the draft board, and after a few drinks at The Goat, took him to a workshop he rented on Gloucester Road (today it's the KFC across the street from Glouchester Rd tube station). From here, Haigh said he would spirit him away to where the army couldn't reach him—this wasn't a lie as it turned out. The only thing in the workshop though was a large drum of acid. Perhaps a bit confused, William didn't see it coming when Haigh clobbered him with a hammer.
Haigh stripped William of his cash and valuables before depositing him in the 40-gallon drum and filling it with acid. Two days later he returned to find that the man had turned into sludge. Haigh poured this gunk into the sewer to be carried away forever. Having forged letters granting him power of attorney over William's property, Haigh was able to help himself to William's worldly belongings.
Haigh had told William's parents that he had fled to Scotland to avoid the war—a reasonable story given William's anxiety about the draft—and acted as a liaison between son and parents for almost a year. By July 1945, with Hitler dead and WWII winding down, the McSwans became worried that their son had not returned to London. Haigh still had their confidence though, and under the pretext of showing him a new invention, he lured Donald McSwan to his workshop. There, he was disposed of, just as his son was. Returning for Amy McSwan with a story that her husband was ill at the workshop and that she had to come quickly (to meet the same fate) Haigh literally obliterated the McSwan family, pouring them into the sewers never to be reconstituted. Seizing their assets through fraud, Haigh now had in his
