A convicted double murderer sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting dead two gangland enforcers at a farm near St Austell in Cornwall has died while serving his sentence at Strangeways prison in Manchester.
An investigation has been launched into the death of 40 year old Thomas Haigh following his passing at the Category A prison.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, which investigates all deaths in prison custody, has published details of the case on its website.
Haigh — a former cage fighter originally from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire — was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 35 years in February 2012, for the brutal murders of David Griffiths and Brett Flournoy in June 2011.
The bodies of Flournoy, a 31 year old boxer and pub landlord with two children from Bebington on the Wirral, Merseyside, and father-of-three David Griffiths, 35, from Bracknell, Berkshire — but originally from Plymouth — were discovered after co-defendant Ross Stone confessed to disposing of their corpses, reports <a href="https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/killer-who-slaughtered-pair-remote-10901886">Devon Live</a>.
Stone was acquitted of the men's murders, but was handed a five-year sentence after admitting burning the bodies before burying them in their own van following the shooting at his home, Sunny Corner Farm, Trenance Down, St Austell.
During a four-week trial at Truro Crown Court, it emerged that Stone and Haigh owed the victims approximately £40,000 in drug debts. The court heard that Mr Flournoy and Mr Griffiths had been putting pressure on Haigh to make another journey to collect drugs in Brazil when he carried out the murders.
Mr Justice Mackay, the presiding judge at sentencing, told Haigh he was an "arrogant young man" who had got out of his depth in the criminal underworld.
"These were bad men, but they were bad men with the right not to be killed because trading in drugs does not carry the death penalty, " he said.
"You were attracted to the gangster way of life, you convinced yourself you were a big boy playing in the big league.
"But I found your erratic behaviour made you unsuited to this elusive trade. This was no more than a result of your chosen lifestyle. You knew the rules of the criminal club you joined and you broke them."
Haigh's trial uncovered that the victims were underworld enforcers operating for an 'IRA gang' that controlled Liverpool's illegal drugs trade.
Haigh displayed no emotion as the judge stated that the pressure he faced from Griffiths and his "role model" Flournoy was "no mitigation" for the offences he had committed.
"You shot these men dead, acting alone and not in concert with Stone," said Mr Justice Mackay.
"You left him to cover up the carnage you left behind you. Why you did this is, to my mind, perfectly clear. How you went about it is less clear.
"But you aimed and fired the shots that killed these two men." Haigh, who fled back to West Yorkshire in the wake of the killings, voluntarily handed himself in to officers in Huddersfield ahead of his arrest and charge.
Stone informed the trial that Haigh had spoken about murdering the two men in the days preceding their deaths.
Mr Griffiths was originally from Plymouth and the court heard that he ran a drugs operation from a property there, predominantly dealing in cocaine.
Following the men's failure to return home, their families reported them missing and a missing persons investigation was launched.
A fortnight after their deaths, on July 1, police carried out an unrelated drugs raid on Sunny Corner and arrested Stone for cultivating cannabis in two shipping containers he had fitted with hydroponics equipment and buried underground to avoid detection by infra-red heat-sensing cameras.
Several days later, Stone admitted during a police interview that the two men had been buried on the property and directed officers to the precise location.
Stone told the jury he had driven with his mother to Newquay to report the crime to police but had been too frightened of the deceased men's associates and resolved to make them disappear instead. Giving evidence, he stated he had returned to the farm to discover the drug dealers' lifeless bodies on the ground. Haigh, he said, had appeared topless and dishevelled. In July 2013, Haigh sought to have his conviction overturned. A report in the Western Morning News highlighted how, following his convictions at Truro Crown Court, new evidence emerged which he claimed implicated his acquitted co-accused, Stone, in the killings.
At the hearing, serving prisoner David Johnson — who was serving a 22-year stretch for attempted murder — alleged that Stone laughed while confessing to the murders.
However, in November 2013, when delivering their judgment, Lord Justice Aikens, Mr Justice Irwin and Mr Justice Cranston declared Johnson's evidence was "not credible".
"He is a habitual and gratuitous fabricator of stories, he is a convicted liar," said Lord Justice Aikens.
"We have concluded that this evidence about the conversation with Ross Stone is not even arguably credible."
The judges ruled that Haigh's appeals against conviction were "unarguable" and dismissed them, yet reduced the minimum tariff he was required to serve before being eligible for parole from 35 to 32 years.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman confirmed that an investigation is now underway. Haigh's date of birth and the date of his death — 15 March — has been published on its website, alongside confirmation that he died while an inmate at HMP Manchester. The ombudsman stated an investigation was 'in progress', though no further details surrounding the circumstances of his death have been made public. A Prison Service spokesperson said: "HMP Manchester prisoner Thomas Haigh died on 15 March 2026. As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate."
