John George Haigh was born on July 24, 1909, in Yorkshire, England. He was an only child and grew up in somewhat solitary conditions with parents who were members of The Plymouth Brethren, a puritanistic religious sect. He was forbidden from participating in secular recreational actvities. His parents instructed him that the world was evil, and the family needed to keep themselves separate.

On March 3, 1949, London's Daily Mirror began a series of gruesome stories about murder that began with the headline, "Hunt for the Vampire." What precipitated these stories was a missing person's report made by Haigh himself, two weeks earlier. On February 20, Haigh went to the police station in Chelsea, England, to report that Mrs. Olive Durand-Deacon, aged 69, seemed to have vanished. According to Haigh, this wealthy widow had made an appointment with him to visit his place of business in Sussex but failed to appear. He told police...