JURY REJECTS INSANITY PLEA

Chronicle (Levin), 20 July 1949, Page 5

JURY REJECTS INSANITY PLEA

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Vampire Killer Sentenced To Death Sensational Murder Hearing Ends

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Received Wfedriesdayj 10.15 a.m. LONDON,- July 19. John George Haigh, 39-year-old company director, Was found guilty at Lewes Assizes today of the murder of Mrs. Olivia Durand-Deacon, weaithy 69-year-old widow, and was sentenced to death.

Asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed, Haigh put his head slightly on one side, clasped his hahds behind his baek, smiled faintly and replied in a clear rather high-piu-hed voice: "None at all." While Britain's oldest and nm.l famous criminal judge, Sir Travers Humphreys, was passing the death sentence there was still a faint smile on Ilaigh's face. This broadened slightly as, after sentence had been completed, he turned around and went below to the ci'lls with two warders. The jury of 11 men and one woman had rejected one of

the hiost sensational pleas in British criminal history. The British AttorneyGeneral, Sir Hartley Shawcross, who prosecuted, called the case "a nauseating story of premeditated murder for gain." 1 Sir Hartley submitted that Haigh Was sane at the time he committed the crime and capable of. distinguishing riglit from wrong. Defence counsel, led by Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, K.C., produced evidence that Haigh was a paranoic, elever, insane and vain, who lived two lives at once.