John Christie (serial killer)

John Reginald Halliday Christie
Born	John Reginald Halliday Christie
Cause of death	Hanged
Other names	Reg
Criminal penalty	Death sentence
Details
Victims	6–8
Span of crimes	1943–1953
Country	England, United Kingdom
Date apprehended	31 March 1953

John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1898 – 15 July 1953), born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and 1950s. He murdered at least six women—including his wife, Ethel—by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. He was arrested, tried, and hanged in 1953 for his wife's murder, after his victims' bodies were found in the flat by a new tenant.

Christie had served in World War I, and was injured in a gas attack in 1918. After his return to civilian life he took to crime, and was convicted and imprisoned several times for offences including theft and assault. He moved to Rillington Place in 1938, and on the outbreak of war in 1939 was accepted for service as a Special Constable without revealing his criminal record. He committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, his general modus operandi being to strangle his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas. While they were unconscious, Christie also raped his victims and continued to do so as they died, ensuring his reputation as a necrophiliac.

Substantial controversy exists as to whether Christie was responsible for the murders of two additional victims, Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine. They, along with Beryl's husband Timothy, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948–49. Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, was found guilty of the murder of his daughter and was hanged in 1950. Christie gave evidence that helped secure Evans's conviction. When Christie's own crimes were uncovered three years later, serious doubts were raised over the safety of Evans's conviction, many people believing that Christie had been responsible for their deaths.

In an official inquiry conducted in 1965–66, Mr Justice Brabin stated that it was "more probable than not" that Evans killed his wife and that he did not kill his daughter Geraldine. This finding, challenged in subsequent legal processes, nevertheless enabled the then Home Secretary to grant Evans a posthumous pardon because it was for the murder of his daughter that Evans had been convicted in 1950. The question of Christie's involvement in the Evans murders, and the possible miscarriage of justice, contributed to the suspension of capital punishment for murder in the United Kingdom in 1965.

Early life

Christie was brought up in Halifax, West Yorkshire. He was abused by his father, a strict disciplinarian, and dominated by his mother and sisters. In 1907, at the age of eight, he was witness to the open coffin of his maternal grandfather; in later years, Christie spoke of how profound this experience was to him, seeing the dead body of a man who had previously frightened him.

Christie won a scholarship to Halifax Secondary School when he was 11. His favourite subject was mathematics, particularly algebra. It was later found he had an IQ of 128. Christie sang in the church choir and was a Boy Scout as a child; upon leaving school at the age of 15 he worked as an assistant film projectionist.

Christie had a lifelong problem with impotence; his first attempts at sex were failures, branding him throughout adolescence as "Reggie-No-Dick" and "Can't-Do-It-Christie". His difficulties with sex remained throughout his life, and most of the time he could only perform with prostitutes.

In September 1916, Christie enlisted as a signalman in World War I. In June 1918, he was hospitalised after a mustard gas attack while serving in France. He spent a month in a military hospital in Calais. Later on in his life, Christie claimed to have been both blinded and rendered mute for three and a half years from the attack. Christie's period of muteness was the alleged reason for his inability to talk much louder than a whisper for the rest of his life. Author Ludovic Kennedy points out that no record of his blindness has been traced and that while Christie may have lost his voice when he was admitted to hospital, he would not have been discharged as fit for duty had he remained a mute. His inability to talk much louder than a whisper, Kennedy argues, was a psychological reaction to the gassing rather than from any physiological effects of the gas itself. This reaction, together with Christie's exaggeration of the effects of the attack, stemmed from underlying hysteria in Christie; such a condition encouraged him to exaggerate or feign illness as a ploy to get attention and sympathy.

Christie married Ethel Waddington from Sheffield, on 10 May 1920 at Halifax Register Office. It was a dysfunctional union, as Christie was mostly impotent with her and frequented prostitutes. They separated after four years, when Christie moved to London and Ethel stayed to live with relatives in Sheffield, to where they had moved after Halifax.

Early criminal career

After his marriage to Ethel, Christie was convicted of many petty criminal offences over the course of more than a decade. His first conviction was for stealing postal orders while working as a postman, for which he received three months' imprisonment on 12 April 1921. In January 1923, Christie was convicted of both obtaining money on false pretenses and violent conduct, for which he was bound over and put on 12 months' probation respectively. He committed two further instances of larceny in 1924 and received consecutive sentences of three and six months' imprisonment from September 1924. In May 1929, he was convicted of assaulting a prostitute with whom he was living in Battersea and was sentenced to six months' hard labour; Christie had hit her over the head with a cricket bat, which the magistrate described as a "murderous attack". Finally, he was convicted of stealing a car from a priest who had befriended him, and received three months' imprisonment in late 1933.

Christie and Ethel reconciled after his release from prison in late 1933. While Christie was able to end his cycle of petty crime, he did not reform; he continued to seek out prostitutes in his wife's absence. In December 1938, Christie and his wife moved into the ground floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill. On the outbreak of World War II, he applied to join the Special Constabulary and was accepted in spite of having an extensive criminal record (the police did not check his background). He was assigned to Harrow Road police station. Christie began an affair with a woman working at the police station whose husband was a serving soldier. The relationship lasted until mid-1943, when the woman's husband returned from the war and found out about the affair. He went to the house where she was living, discovered Christie there and assaulted him.

Murders

First murders

The first person Christie admitted to killing was Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian-born munitions worker who also engaged part time in prostitution. Christie claimed to have met Fuerst either while she was on the beat or in a snack bar in Ladbroke Grove. Christie impulsively strangled her during sex at Rillington Place in August 1943, not long after he had been assaulted by the husband of the woman with whom he had been having the affair. Christie buried Fuerst's body in the building's communal garden, after having initially hidden it beneath the floorboards of the front living room.

Remaining in the police force after having committed a murder may have proved too much of a strain for Christie, and he resigned as a Special Constable at the end of 1943. In 1944 he found new employment, as a clerk at a radio factory. It was here that he met his second victim, Muriel Amelia Eady, a co-worker. In October 1944, he invited Eady back to his flat with the promise that he had concocted a "special mixture" that could cure her bronchitis. Eady was to inhale the mixture from a jar with a tube inserted in the top. The mixture in fact was Friar's Balsam, which Christie used to disguise the smell of domestic gas. Once Eady was seated breathing the mixture from the tube with her back turned, Christie inserted a second tube into the jar connected to a gas tap. As Eady continued breathing, she inhaled the domestic gas, which soon rendered her unconscious from the carbon monoxide. Once Eady was unconscious, Christie raped and then strangled her. He buried her alongside Fuerst's body in the back garden.

Later murders

In Easter 1948, Timothy Evans and his wife, Beryl, moved into the top floor flat at Rillington Place. Beryl gave birth to their daughter, Geraldine, in October 1948. In late 1949, Evans informed police that his wife was dead. A police search of 10 Rillington Place revealed the dead bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans, both of whom were wrapped in parcels and found in an outside wash-house. They had both been strangled. After initially alleging that Christie had killed his wife in a botched abortion operation, Evans then confessed to murdering his wife and daughter himself. After he was charged with their deaths, Evans recanted his confession and again accused Christie of being the murderer, this time of both his wife and daughter. On 11 January 1950, Evans was put on trial for the murder of his daughter, the prosecution declining to pursue a second charge of murdering his wife. Christie was a principal witness for the Crown and gave evidence denying Evans's accusations. Evans was found guilty of the murder by the jury and was hanged on 9 March.

Following Evans's trial, nearly three years passed without major incident for Christie. Christie lost his job at the Post Office Savings Bank because his criminal past had been disclosed in Evans's trial, and he later found new employment as a clerk with the British Road Services at their Shepherd's Bush depot. At the same time, both he and his wife became preoccupied with their new neighbours in 10 Rillington Place, black immigrants from the West Indies with whom the Christies despised living. On one occasion, Ethel Christie took one of her neighbours to court for assault. Christie successfully negotiated with the Poor Man's Lawyer Centre to continue to have exclusive use of the back garden, ostensibly to have space between him and his neighbours but more probably to prevent anyone from stumbling upon the buried remains.

On the morning of 14 December 1952, Christie strangled Ethel in bed. She had last been seen alive two days earlier. To prevent people from making inquiries into what had happened to her, Christie told a number of lies to explain her disappearance. He replied to a letter sent from relatives in Sheffield that Ethel had rheumatism and could not write herself; to one neighbour he explained that she was visiting her relatives in Sheffield; to another he said that she had gone to Birmingham. Christie had resigned from his job on 6 December and had been unemployed since then. To support himself, Christie sold Ethel's wedding ring and watch and then most of the furniture in his flat. Not long after he forged his wife's signature and emptied her bank account of its savings.

Between 19 January and 6 March 1953, Christie murdered three more women whom he had invited back to 10 Rillington Place: Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina Maclennan. Maloney was a prostitute from the Ladbroke Grove area; Nelson was from Belfast and was visiting her sister in Ladbroke Grove when she met Christie. Christie first met Maclennan, who was living in London with her boyfriend, Alex Baker, in a cafe. All three met on a number of occasions after this, and Christie let Maclennan and Baker stay at Rillington Place while they were looking for accommodation. On another occasion, Christie met Maclennan on her own and persuaded her to come back to his flat where he murdered her. He convinced Baker, who came to Rillington Place looking for her, that he had not seen Maclennan. Christie kept up this pretence for several days, meeting Baker regularly to see if he had news of her whereabouts and to help him search for her.

When Christie murdered his final three victims, he modified the gassing technique he had first used on Muriel Eady: he simply used a rubber tube connected to the gas pipe in the kitchen, which he kept closed off with a bulldog clip. He seated his victims in the kitchen, released the clip on the tube and let gas leak into the room. The gas made his victims drowsy and therefore vulnerable to assault. Christie then used a rope that he kept in the kitchen to strangle them. He hid the bodies in a small alcove behind the back kitchen wall, which was covered over with wallpaper.

Arrest

Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place on 20 March 1953. He defrauded a couple who took up residence by taking £7.13s.0d (£7.65p or about £270 in today's money) from them—he was not authorised by the landlord to sub-let the property. The landlord visited the property that same evening and, finding the couple there instead of Christie, stipulated they leave first thing next morning. Once they had left, the landlord allowed the tenant of the top floor flat, Beresford Brown, to use Christie's kitchen. On 24 March, Brown discovered the kitchen alcove when he attempted to insert brackets into the wall to hold a wireless set. Peeling back the wallpaper, Brown saw the bodies of Maloney, Nelson and Maclennan. After getting confirmation from another tenant in 10 Rillington Place that they were dead bodies, Brown informed the police and a citywide search for Christie began.

After he left Rillington Place, Christie had booked a room at the King's Cross Rowton Houses under his real name and address. He asked for seven nights, but stayed only for four, leaving on 24 March when news of the discoveries at 10 Rillington Place became widespread. After he left Rowton House, Christie wandered all over London, spending a lot of time in cafes. The search for him ended on the morning of 31 March when he was arrested on the Embankment by Putney Bridge after being challenged about his identity by a policeman. When arrested, all he had with him were some coins and an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans.

Conviction and execution

While in custody, Christie confessed to six murders: the three women found in the kitchen alcove, Ethel Christie, and the two women buried in the back garden. He also admitted to killing Beryl Evans, with which Timothy Evans had originally been charged during the police investigation in 1949. He never admitted to killing Geraldine Evans.

Christie's trial, solely for the murder of his wife, began on 22 June 1953 in the same court where Evans had been tried. Christie pleaded insanity and claimed to have a poor memory of the events. The jury rejected the plea and, after 85 minutes' deliberation, found him guilty. Christie did not appeal his conviction, and on 15 July 1953 he was hanged at Pentonville Prison by Albert Pierrepoint, who was the same man who had hanged Evans.

Controversy and the pardon of Timothy Evans

Main article: Timothy Evans

Timothy Evans's gravestone

After Christie's conviction, there was substantial controversy concerning the earlier trial of Evans. Not only had Evans been convicted mainly on the evidence of a serial killer, but the very fact that a serial killer had been living in the same property where Evans supposedly carried out his crimes raised doubts as to whether he was really responsible for the murders. Christie confessed to Beryl Evans's murder and although he neither confessed to, nor was charged with, Geraldine Evans's murder, he was held guilty of both by many at the time. This in turn cast doubt on the fairness of Evans's trial and raised the possibility that an innocent person had been hanged.

The controversy prompted the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, to commission an inquiry led by John Scott Henderson, QC, the Recorder of Portsmouth, to determine whether Evans had been innocent of his crimes and if a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Scott Henderson interviewed Christie prior to his execution, as well as another twenty witnesses who had been involved in either of the police investigations. He concluded that Evans was in fact guilty of both murders and that Christie's confessions to the murder of Beryl Evans were unreliable and made in the context of furthering his own defence that he was insane.

This did not end the matter, as questions continued to be raised in Parliament concerning Evans's innocence, along with newspaper campaigns and books being published making similar claims. The Scott Henderson Inquiry was criticised for being held over too short a time period (one week) and for being prejudiced against the possibility that Evans was innocent. This controversy, along with the unusual coincidence that two stranglers would have been living in the same property at the same time if Evans and Christie had both been guilty, kept alive the issue that a miscarriage of justice had taken place in Evans's trial.

This uncertainty led to a second inquiry, chaired by High Court judge, Sir Daniel Brabin, and conducted over the winter of 1965–66. Brabin re-examined much of the evidence from both cases and evaluated some of the arguments for Evans's innocence. His report's conclusions were that it was "more probable than not" that Evans had killed his wife, and that he had not killed his daughter, for whose death Christie had been responsible. Christie's likely motive was that her continued presence would have alerted people to Beryl's disappearance. Brabin also noted, however, that the uncertainty involved in the case would have prevented a jury from being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Evans's guilt had he been re-tried. These conclusions were used by the Home Secretary of the time, Roy Jenkins, to recommend a posthumous pardon (in turn granted) for Timothy Evans, since Evans had been tried on and executed for the murder of his daughter. The pardon allowed authorities to return Evans's remains to his family, who had him reburied in a private grave. Even so, Evans remained implicated in the murder of his wife according to Mr. Justice Brabin's findings.

At this time, there was already debate in the United Kingdom over the continued use of the death penalty in the legal system. The controversy generated by Evans's case, along with a number of other controversial cases from the same time, is considered to have contributed to the suspension in 1965, and later abolition, of capital punishment.

Later developments

In January 2003, the Home Office awarded Timothy Evans's half-sister, Mary Westlake, and his sister, Eileen Ashby, ex-gratia payments as compensation for the miscarriage of justice in Timothy Evans's trial. The independent assessor for the Home Office, Lord Brennan QC, accepted that "the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans for the murder of his child was wrongful and a miscarriage of justice" and that "there is no evidence to implicate Timothy Evans in the murder of his wife. She was most probably murdered by Christie." Lord Brennan believed that the Brabin Report's conclusion that Evans probably murdered his wife should be rejected given Christie's confessions and conviction.

However, a legal appeal by Mrs Westlake to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to have Evans's convictions formally quashed in the Court of Appeal was rejected in March 2004. The Commission ruled that even though there was a real possibility that Evans's conviction for the murder of his daughter would be overturned, the cost in resources to do so could not be justified since it would not lead to any tangible benefits (Evans had already been pardoned and his family awarded compensation). Furthermore, the Court of Appeal could not address the question of Evans's guilt in the murder of his wife if he had not been formally convicted of that charge. Mrs Westlake subsequently appealed against the Commission's decision in the High Court on 16 November 2004. Her appeal was turned down, with the High Court justices agreeing with the Criminal Cases Review Commission that the cost of overturning Evans's conviction could not be justified. Both justices nevertheless considered Evans to be innocent in the murder of his daughter and that no jury could have convicted him of the murder of his wife if he had been tried on that charge.

Supporters of Evans's innocence have often, as justification for their case, pointed to the unlikelihood of two people living in the same property who were guilty of murdering people in the same way, that Evans's sub-normal intelligence made him easily manipulable by Christie and that there may have been police impropriety in securing Evans's confessions. Critics of this view point out that Evans continued to confess to the crimes—to the prison medical officer—even after his police interrogation, that the evidence that Evans could have been either manipulated or influenced by shock to confess to a crime he did not commit is unconvincing and that the pathologists and medical officer who were involved in both cases believed that Evans was guilty of the crimes.

Other murders

It has been speculated that Christie was responsible for the murders of other victims besides those at 10 Rillington Place. The basis for this is in a collection of pubic hair that Christie took from his victims. Christie claimed that the four different clumps of hair in the collection came from Mrs Christie and the three bodies in the kitchen alcove. However, only one of the clumps was of the same hair type as those on the bodies—that of Mrs Christie. Two could have come from the bodies of Fuerst and Eady, which had by then decomposed into skeletons. That still left one clump of hair unaccounted for. (The clump also could not have come from Beryl Evans, as no pubic hair had been removed from her body.)

Professor Keith Simpson, one of the pathologists who worked on the case, considered it "odd" that "Christie should have said hair came from the bodies in the alcove if in fact it had come from those now reduced to skeletons; not very likely that in his last four murders the only trophy he took was from the one woman with whom he did not have peri-mortal sexual intercourse; and even more odd that one of his trophies had definitely not come from any of the unfortunate women known to have been involved."

In popular culture

Christie and Timothy Evans's story was turned into a film, 10 Rillington Place, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Richard Attenborough as Christie. A reconstruction of Christie's execution at Pentonville Prison can be seen in the Chamber Of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London. The protagonist of Thirteen Steps Down, a psychological thriller novel by Ruth Rendell, is obsessed with John Christie. A fictional play based around the resurrection of John Christie, Christie in Love, was written by Howard Brenton. While based in London, Australian artist Brett Whiteley produced a series of paintings of Christie in the 1960s.

External links

• Crime Library article
• List of documents relating to Christie and Evans held in the National Archives
• Murder UK – John Reginald Halliday Christie
• Website examining the location of 10 Rillington Place in modern-day London and providing historical photos of the site, as well as a summary of Christie's murders
• Bartle Road / Rillington Place location in Ladbroke Grove (Google)