In the aftermath of the Second World War, Britain faced a new breed of criminal: educated, methodical and confident in the limitations of forensic science. Few embodied this more than the man later dubbed the “Acid Bath Murderer.” Between 1944 and 1949 he killed at least six people, dissolving their bodies in sulphuric acid in the belief that without a body, murder could not be proved.

His crimes exposed weaknesses in mid-twentieth-century forensic practice and forced detectives to adapt, innovate and challenge long-held assumptions. Nowhere is this story more closely tied than Sussex, where the murders and investigations unfolded.

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