The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (46 page)

In the meantime, a massive forensic examination was being conducted at his home. In the yard outside the storehouse, the police found the acid sludge that Haigh had described. They also noted a lot of zig-zagging marks from where someone had rolled and dragged something heavy over towards that area. The ground was covered in debris and the sludge was mixed up with dirt and rubbish. Its depth was some 3–4in covering an area of 4–5ft. The doctor’s professional eye detected something unusual,
about the size of a cherry, which to anyone else might look like a stone lying around. However, it was a significant find: a
gallbladder
stone. The acid had not dissolved it. Also embedded in the greasy, undissolved fat were some good specimens of human bone. One of these appeared to be from a left foot. (Haigh would later say that he believed this was from Henderson, whom he had not fully dissolved, rather than Durand-Deacon.)

The forensic team gathered 474lb of grease and earth to cart back to a lab for closer examination. They also brought in a 33-gallon green drum that had the same greasy substance inside. At the bottom of this drum, a hairpin was stuck in the grease. Inside the building, a fine spatter of bloodstains was noted on the wall and carefully photographed. The wall was then scraped for analysis. The inspector thought the spray was consistent with someone getting shot while bent over the bench, possibly looking at paper, as Haigh had described killing Mrs Durand-Deacon. Tests indicated that the blood was human, but its group could not be identified.

For three days, the sludge was carefully sifted – the technicians had to wear rubber gloves and cover their arms in Vaseline to protect themselves from the acid. However, the painstaking search paid off. They found 28lb of human body fat; three faceted gallstones; part of a left foot, not quite eroded; 18 fragments of human bone; intact upper and lower dentures; the handle of a red plastic bag; and a lipstick container.

A further test on one of the gallstones proved that it was human. The bone fragments were identified as a left ankle pivot bone, centre of the right foot, right heel, right angle pivot bone, femur, pelvic bone, spinal column, and others too eroded for precise identification. They had been dissolved in sulphuric acid, just as Haigh had described. The investigators’ great stroke of luck was the fact that sulphuric acid did not work on plastic as it did on human tissue. It would take at least three weeks for the acid to finally eliminate it. Thus, if Haigh had been arrested later or had chosen to wait with his confession,
the forensic team would have had much less success in finding identifiable evidence.

The dentures were an important find. The team could now go to Mrs Durand-Deacon’s dentist to see if they had a match. Mrs Durand-Deacon’s gum shrinkage problems had sent her to her dentist, Helen Mayo, on many occasions. Mayo kept a cast of her patients’ upper and lower jaws. She knew that she had supplied Mrs Durand-Deacon with the dentures found at Crawley.

Simpson took the bones to his laboratory and discovered evidence of osteoarthritis in the joints. He soon determined that Mrs Durand-Deacon had suffered from this bone ailment. The police made a plaster cast of the left foot and it proved to fit perfectly into one of her shoes. Bloodstains were also found on the Persian coat, which was traced back to Durand-Deacon from repairs made to it, and blood was found on the cuff of one of Haigh’s shirtsleeves. The handbag strap was identified as having belonged to a bag owned by Durand-Deacon, the one she had carried when she drove to Crawley with Haigh. Later, the rest of the bag was found in the yard, apparently thrown there casually by Haigh, and matched to the strap.

Dr Turfitt, the police scientist on the forensic team, decided to experiment with sulphuric acid to test Haigh’s theories. He used an amputated human foot, a sheep’s leg and other organic materials, finding that the acid worked at varying speeds, depending on how much water was present. Fat proved highly resistant, and it had been Mrs Durand-Deacon’s weight that had preserved those items found in the sludge.

Haigh’s trial opened on 18 July 1949 and he pleaded not guilty. His defence team was hoping for him to be found insane. However, after hearing all the evidence against him it took only 15 minutes for the jury to find him guilty of murder.

The judge asked if he had anything to say for himself. He cocked his head and said, ‘Nothing at all.’ The judge donned a black cap and sentenced Haigh to be hanged.

After Haigh’s trial, two more medical officials observed him in
Wandsworth Prison and they found no sign of insanity. To their mind, he was shamming. The Home Secretary, under the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1884, ordered a special medical inquiry, just to be sure. Three eminent psychiatrists examined Haigh’s case thoroughly. All believed that Haigh was malingering. He was not insane and did not suffer from a mental disease or defect that would free him of moral responsibility for his actions. There was no reason to interfere with the course of the law. Haigh insisted that he was not afraid to be hanged. Madame Tussaud’s requested a fitting for a death mask, which Haigh was more than happy to provide.

On 6 August 1949, at Wandsworth Prison, Haigh was executed. He bequeathed his clothing to Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, where a wax figure of him was erected. He sent instructions that it must always be kept in perfect condition, the trousers creased, the hair parted, his shirt cuffs showing. Among other murderers cast in wax, Haigh received his place in history.

Peter Sutcliffe was born in Bingley, West Yorkshire, in 1946, the son of a mill worker. He was described as being a loner throughout his school years. On leaving school at the age of 15, he moved from job to job over the next few years before meeting his wife Sonia Szurma in 1966. They married in 1974. Shortly after his marriage, he was made redundant from Anderton International, a spring manufacturer where he was working night shifts. He used the pay-off to buy a goods vehicle and obtained his HGV licence in June 1975. Shortly after this, his wife Sonia suffered a number of miscarriages, and eventually they were told that she would not be able to have children. After this, Sonia returned to a teacher-training course. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, they started to save the extra money to buy their first house.

Sutcliffe’s first known attack was in September 1969. Sutcliffe 
and his friend Trevor Birdsall were sitting in Trevor’s minivan in St Paul’s Road, near Manningham Park, Bradford. Sutcliffe had been looking for a prostitute he had a grievance with, but had not found her. He suddenly left the vehicle and began to walk up St Paul’s Road and out of sight. He came back about 10 minutes later, and was out of breath, as if he had been running. He told Trevor to drive off quickly. As they began heading towards Bingley, Sutcliffe claimed that he followed an ‘old cow’ to a house somewhere and said he had hit her on the back of the head with a stone in a sock. He removed a sock from his pocket and dumped its contents out of the window.

The next day, two police officers visited Peter Sutcliffe at his home at 57 Cornwall Road, Bingley. The woman whom Sutcliffe had attacked had noted the number of Trevor’s minivan. Sutcliffe readily admitted to the police that he had struck the woman, but claimed it was only with his hand. He was given a stern lecture by the police, but also was told that he was ‘very lucky’ as the woman, for her own reasons, did not want to press charges for assault. Besides being a known prostitute, her common-law husband was serving a sentence for assault. Apparently, she wanted nothing more to do with the incident.

The events that it was later suggested turned Sutcliffe against prostitutes went back to when he had first started dating Sonia Szurma. She had been his regular Saturday-night date and a serious girlfriend. However, Sutcliffe’s brother Mick had spotted her with an Italian boy who was a local ice-cream salesman. Sutcliffe, feeling betrayed and utterly devastated, decided to confront her, but Sonia refused to answer any of his questions about the situation, or comment on whether their relationship was over or not.

That night, Sutcliffe decided to take his revenge by going with a prostitute. Driving up Manningham Lane, he went past the Royal Standard pub and at a petrol station he saw a prostitute waiting for customers. Having confirmed that she was ‘doing business’, they agreed on a price of £5. He’d given her a £10 note
and she told him she would give his change later. They got to her house and went inside. She started going upstairs and he realised he just didn’t want to go through with it. He felt disgusted with her and himself. He went upstairs behind her and into the bedroom, and even unzipped her dress, but told her straight out that he didn’t want to do anything with her. She could keep the money, but he asked for his change. She told him they would have to go back to the garage where he’d picked her up, to get some change, so he drove her there. He felt worse than ever about Sonia. They went back to the garage by car and she went inside; there were two men in there. She didn’t come back out. One of the men came banging on his car roof when he refused to go away, then produced a wrench and threatened him. Then he saw the girl come out with another heavily built man. They walked off together laughing; the men were obviously her minders. Sutcliffe felt stupid. He drove home angrier than ever. He felt outraged, humiliated and embarrassed.

Three weeks later, Sutcliffe saw the same prostitute in the Lumb Lane pub, and approached her. He told her that he hadn’t forgotten about the incident and that she should put things right so there would be no hard feelings. He was giving her the opportunity to give back the money owed to him. She thought this was a huge joke and, as she knew everybody else in the pub, went round telling them all. Soon everyone was laughing at Sutcliffe. He left, but was now determined to seek out the woman again.

On 29 September 1969, Sutcliffe again went out looking for a prostitute to attack. This time he took a hammer and a
long-bladed
knife. He was arrested in the garden of a house in the Manningham area of Bradford after a policeman on patrol had spotted his car with its lights on and the engine running. The policeman discovered Sutcliffe hiding behind a hedge with a hammer. He claimed that a hubcap had flown off his front wheel and that he had been looking for it – the hammer was to help secure the hubcap again. Sutcliffe was charged and fined £25 for
‘going equipped for theft’, but his real reason for being out – to attack a prostitute – remained secret. Sutcliffe managed to slip the long-bladed knife down a gap between the side of the police vehicle and the mudguard cover inside the police van that came to collect him.

On 4 July 1975, in Keighley, 36-year-old Anna Patricia Rogulski decided to walk across town to her boyfrend’s house, after having an argument and parting with him earlier that night. As she fruitlessly banged on his front door, Sutcliffe stood in the shadows nearby, watching. Finally, in frustration, Rogulski removed one of her shoes and broke the glass of a downstairs window. As she knelt to put her shoe back on, Sutcliffe quickly emerged from the shadows and struck a savage blow to her head with a hammer. Rogulski had not seen or heard anything and was unconscious as he dealt her another two hammer blows. He paused momentarily to catch his breath as the blood from Rogulski’s wounds seeped across the cobblestones. He lifted her skirt and pulled down her knickers. As he returned the hammer to his pocket and took out a knife, his anger, under control until now, found expression with each slashing cut across her stomach. A neighbour who had heard the noises came out. As the neighbour stood peering out into the alley, trying to focus in the poor light, Sutcliffe pulled himself together and spoke calmly as he reassured the man that all was well and to go back inside. In a moment, Sutcliffe was gone as quickly as he had come. Miraculously, Rogulski survived, but her life would never be the same again. After her discharge from hospital she returned to her home, where she would live alone, barricaded behind a network of wires and alarms. She was terrified of strangers and rarely went out. When she did, she walked in the middle of the street, as she was afraid of the shadows and terrified of people approaching her from behind. There was no boyfriend now, and no prospects of marriage. The £15,000 she received from the Criminal Compensation Board could not buy back her life. She died on 17 April 2008 of natural causes.

Olive Smelt, a 46-year-old housewife, was to be Sutcliffe’s next victim. On Friday, 15 August 1975, Peter drove his friend Trevor Birdsall to Halifax where they drank in a number of pubs. It was in one of these pubs that Peter had first seen Smelt. She had followed her usual Friday-night pattern of meeting her girlfriends for a drink. Sutcliffe and Birdsall were known to her and her friends and gave them all a lift home. Smelt was dropped off in Boothtown Road, a short walk from her home, at about 11.45pm.

At the same time, Sutcliffe got out and left Trevor alone in his car. As Smelt took a short cut through an alleyway, Sutcliffe walked up behind her and overtook her, inflicting a heavy blow on the back of her head with a hammer. He hit her again as she fell to the ground then slashed at her back with his knife just above her buttocks. However, he was again prevented from completing his task. He saw a car approaching, so he left Smelt and returned to the car where Trevor was waiting and they drove off. All of this occurred in the space of 10 minutes. Like Sutcliffe’s first victim, Smelt also survived the horrifying attack.

The attack left a lasting impression on Smelt. She suffered from severe depression and memory loss. For months, she wished that she were dead. She took no interest in her life and lived in fear, especially of men, sometimes even of her husband. Their relationship was permanently altered and she rarely felt like having sex. Her past enjoyment of homemaking and cooking was lost and she now completed these tasks in a robotic fashion. Her oldest daughter suffered a nervous breakdown, which doctors were sure was a direct result of the attack, and, for many years, her son would continue to lock the door whenever he left his mother alone in the house. Despite the similarities between the two apparently motiveless attacks on Anna Rogulski and Olive Smelt, it would be three years before police would link them and be able to prove that they had both been committed by Sutcliffe. A similar attack was also committed by Sutcliffe that August: Tracy Browne, aged 14. She was struck from behind and hit on
the head five times while walking in a country lane. She, like the other two women, survived.