Narrator (10:56)
In February 1949, 69 year old Olive Duran Deakin went missing. Her friends at the Onslow Court Hotel were desperately searching for her, and one of them had realized John Hay was the last person who'd seen her before she disappeared. Typically, John didn't wait long to forge his way into his victim's assets. But with all the talk about where Olive may have gone, he didn't want to take the risk just yet. However, the hotel's management was threatening to kick John out if he didn't pay his bills. And so he decided to find somewhere to sell off the jewelry Olive had been wearing the night he killed her. The morning after Olive's murder, John made his way to a pawn shop and used a fake name to sell her diamond watch. Money in hand, he drove back to his workshop in Crawley to check on Olive's body. He peeked into the barrel of acid and saw that she still hadn't dissolved. So he headed back to London, where he dropped Olive's Persian lamb coat off at the dry cleaners. He probably planned on selling it later on down the road. Afterward, John returned to the hotel for the evening. As far as he knew, he'd fooled everyone, including Olive's best friend, Constance. All he had to do now was wait for Olive's body to dissolve. Then there wouldn't be any evidence tying him to the murder. The next morning, February 20, the residents of the Onslow Court Hotel were in the dining room for breakfast. Once again, they noticed that Olive didn't show up. If her absence the day before was a curiosity, it had now become a full on concern all of a sudden, it wasn't just her friend Constance who was worried. When John walked in, he could hear everyone exchanging theories about where Olive had gone. Trying to maintain the same composure from the day before, John went to Constance and asked if she had any news about Olive. She told him she didn't, which is why she would be going to the police about it today. John hadn't anticipated the police getting involved so quickly, if at all. But he wasn't ready to run. Instead, he continued to play the part of a worried friend and told Constance that he would go to the police station with her. Once they got there, John and Constance spoke with a policewoman named Sergeant Lamborn. Constance told her about Olive's disappearance and gave a detailed description of her friend. Meanwhile, John was quick to repeat his cover story. He had planned on meeting Olive after her shopping outing, but she never showed. Sergeant Lamborn wasn't as trusting as Constance, though she correctly realized that his story seemed suspicious. Once John and Constance left the station, Sergeant Lamborn decided to look more into Olive's disappearance. She went down to the Onslow Court Hotel and talked to the manager about Olive and John. When the manager told her John was late on rent, Lamborn knew she'd been right to suspect him. His financial troubles weren't proof of guilt, but they were notable. Anyone with money issues would want to clear their debt. Was it possible that John was more involved with Olive's disappearance than he was letting on? Lamborn couldn't shake the feeling that John was hiding something. So she made a call to Scotland Yard and asked if they had any files on a man named John Hay. The detective told her that, yes, they did. John had gone to prison multiple times for fraud. Once again, this wasn't clear proof that he'd murdered Olive, but it showed that John was a criminal. If he'd committed fraud before, it was entirely possible he'd do it again. And maybe this time he took it a step further. Maybe he had killed Olive Duran Deacon for her money. While Lamborn was honing in on John, he had no idea he was being investigated. But that didn't mean he wasn't worried about getting caught. After talking with Lamborn at the station, he headed back to his workshop to check on Olive's body. He was frustrated to find the dissolving process was taking longer than usual, so he added more acid to the barrel, hoping to speed things along. Then John returned to the Onslow Court Hotel and found two detectives waiting for him. When they asked him about Olive, he gave them the same practice Response he'd been rattling off for the past two days. He'd gone to pick her up from her shopping, but she never showed. Once again, he figured that would be enough to satisfy them. And for the next few days, it seemed to work because John didn't hear anything from them. So he decided to sell the rest of Olive's jewelry. He got £100 for all of it, which would be plenty to keep him afloat for a while. From there, he returned to his workshop to check on the body, which had finally dissolved. At his old space. John could simply pour his victim's remains down a drain in the floor. But this one didn't have that option. So John went to the yard and poured the barrel out over a pile of rubble. And although Olive's body had dissolved, her handbag hadn't. Apparently, the plastic was stronger than the acid. Instead of finding a more permanent solution, John just hid it under some loose bricks in the yard. Ultimately, John was going by a timeless saying. No body, no crime. But evidence comes in all forms. And John had just left Sergeant Lamborn a smoking gun. After killing Olive Duran Deacon In February 1949, John Hay believed he'd gotten away with yet another murder. But this time, a police officer named Sergeant Lamborn was hot on his tail. She'd already sent two detectives to the Onslow Court Hotel to speak with him. After a few days went by without any follow up, John believed he was in the clear. But on February 28, 1949, 10 days after Olive's murder, the detectives came back. They wanted John to come down to the station for another round of questioning. Meanwhile, the police had also learned about his workshop, and a few other detectives decided to go take a look. The first thing they found there was John's briefcase. When they opened it, they found the receipt from the dry cleaners where he dropped off Olive's coat. That was already suspicious. But the evidence didn't stop there. As the detectives examined the rest of the briefcase's contents, they found papers that referenced his earlier victims, the hendersons and the McSwanns. If that wasn't incriminating enough, John also had a diary in his briefcase with notes about the many murders he'd committed. But before they could arrest John, they had to make sure everything lined up. The detectives went to the dry cleaners to collect Olive's coat. They showed it to her friends, who confirmed it had belonged to Olive. While all of this was happening, John's name somehow got leaked to journalists. It didn't take long for them to track him Down. One crime reporter named Harry Proctor managed to find John's room at the Onzo Court Hotel and knocked on his door. Eventually, they started talking. John didn't admit to killing Olive, but he couldn't help but brag to Proctor that the police were idiots who had nothing on him. Of course, he was wrong, and Proctor knew it. If you remember, Olive's friend Constance Lane told authorities that Olive had planned on meeting John the day she disappeared. John's cover story was that he'd planned to meet Olive after she was done shopping, but she never showed up. He'd also given one other detail to the police. He told them he had parked his car in a garage on Victoria street while he'd waited for Olive to meet him. But Proctor had actually gone down to the parking garage and looked through the ticket records. John's name wasn't on the list. When Proctor told John what he'd uncovered, John apparently went white. And for good reason. Proctor had already passed this information to the police for verification. Combined with the information they'd gotten from his workshop, it was enough to place John under arrest. The police weren't quite ready to officially charge John with Olive's murder, though now that he was in their custody, they wanted to see if he would confess. They brought him into an interrogation room where three detectives were waiting. They presented him with the mountain of evidence they had on him. But John refused to say much at all. So the detectives decided to switch tactics. Rather than press John, they let him sit in silence. Eventually, he said, tell me frankly, what are the chances of anyone being released from Broadmoor now? John wasn't asking about a prison. Broadmoor was an asylum for the criminally insane. And the only reason he would end up there was if he was found guilty by reason of insanity. For the next several hours, John told the detectives everything. He explained how he'd killed Olive and dissolved her body with acid. John admitted that he'd done the same thing to the McSwans and the Hendersons, too. But there was one other little detail John added. He said he drunk all of his victims blood too. That last detail definitely took the authorities by surprise. But they had no idea if it was true or not. If John wanted to avoid the death penalty by claiming he was criminally insane, drinking his victim's blood would certainly help his case. But before anything proceeded further, the detectives needed evidence that was more concrete. So they went back to John's workshop and searched the yard. John said there would be nothing left to find. But that wasn't exactly true. Near the rubble pile in the yard. There was a woman's handbag. It looked like it was partially dissolved. They also found part of a denture. At some point, the detective showed the denture to Olive's dentist, who confirmed it was hers. Finally, the police had everything they needed. On March 2, 1949, John Hay was formally charged with the murder of Olive Duran. Deacon John was sent to Lewis Prison in East Sussex, England, to await trial. During that time, he continued to claim he'd drunk his victim's blood. And when the trial started, John pleaded insanity. As expected, along with a story about drinking blood, John testified that he'd been plagued by terrifying religious dreams as a child, which heavily featured blood and crucifixes. John's lawyer brought 33 witnesses to the stand to attest to John's unsound mental state. One of them was Dr. Henry Yellowlees, who would go on to become the chief medical officer of the United Kingdom. As to John's mental condition, Yellowlees said he had a paranoid constitution. On the other side, the prosecution argued that John's defense simply didn't hold up. He wasn't insane and unable to understand the consequences of his actions. He was evil and his crimes were premeditated. Ultimately, John's fate was up to the jury, and they took all of 17 minutes to come to a decision. When they returned to the courtroom, the judge read off their decision. John was guilty and sane. The judge sentenced him to death with no possibility of an appeal. Less than a month later, on the morning of August 10, 1949, a crowd of about 500 people watched as John Hay was hanged by an executioner. Before killing Olive Duran, Deacon John had committed multiple murders without getting caught. And when he targeted Olive, he assumed this one would go the same way. He saw an easy opportunity, but he hadn't thought about all the people who loved Olive, family or not. Ultimately, it was the friend she had made at the hotel who ensured Olive's disappearance didn't go unnoticed. While John manipulated his victims into trusting him, it was the true bonds of friendship that finally brought him to justice. Foreign thanks so much for listening.
