Last month was the seventieth anniversary of the execution of the serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie. This sensational case is a long time favourite of true crime buffs, ghouls, the curious, and those concerned with miscarriages of justice, but it received hardly any attention this year.
Gallons of mendacious ink and countless hours of pundit time have been expended on Christie, not because of the crimes he did commit, but because of two he did not. In 1950, Christie’s neighbour was hanged for the murder of his baby daughter. Timothy Evans strangled both her and his wife Beryl, sold the furniture in their top floor apartment (which was not his to sell) then took off to his native Wales where eventually he gave the police a cock and bull story about how Beryl had died. Concerned about the welfare of the baby, the police launched an intensive investigation, eventually finding Beryl and Geraldine’s bodies. Confronted with the evidence, Evans confessed. At his trial he pleaded not guilty; he was tried only for the murder of Geraldine because there could be no defence of provocation. He was convicted, his appeal was denied, and he was duly hanged.
That would have been the end of the matter, but two years later Christie lost the plot, sub-let his apartment (illegally) and walked off with just a suitcase. Shortly, the bodies of three women were found in the kitchen alcove and the body of his wife under the floorboards.
Christie was arrested walking around London like a lost soul and had clearly given up on life. The police conducted an extremely thorough search of the house and grounds of 10 Rillington Place finding the remains of two more women in the back garden. Christie had murdered them during the Second World War, one when he was working as a special constable.
The obvious (but erroneous) conclusion is that Christie murdered Beryl Evans and her baby, so Tim Evans must have been innocent. This has been the playbook of all but a few brave scholars who have researched this case, so let us take a look at what really happened, including the truth about Timothy Evans.
Christie was born in 1899 (not 1898 as stated on his criminal record) and served as a boy soldier in the First World War where he was injured by mustard gas. He married Ethel Simpson in his native Yorkshire on May 10, 1920. After four years, he and Ethel separated, and Christie entered a downward spiral of albeit petty crime. His last conviction was in November 1933; although he had been living in London and Ethel in Sheffield, they must have kept in touch because on his release from prison they reconciled and in 1937 they moved into 10 Rillington Place. Ethel was not a particularly attractive woman, so it may be she thought living with her estranged husband was better than ending up an old maid.
Evans was born at Merthyr Tydfil on November 20, 1924. One of the biggest myths about Evans is that he was a simpleton. When he was a young boy, he developed a serious foot infection that led to him taking a lot of time out from school. Some have claimed he was functionally illiterate; this was not the case. Evans read the Daily Mirror, which at that time was a serious newspaper. He was also employed as a driver which took him a fair distance outside London. In 1933, his widowed mother remarried, and shortly moved to London. Evans moved in with her in 1946, married teenager Beryl Thorley the following year, and in 1948 the couple moved into the top flat at 10 Rillington Place.
Evans treated his young wife abominably, and on one occasion was seen nearly to defenestrate the poor girl. Apologists for Evans have tried to excuse his behaviour or even to blame Beryl, but the simple fact is that he was a wife-beater with a liking for drink.
The accepted narrative is that when Beryl became pregnant for the second time, she couldn’t cope, and Christie was asked or offered to perform an abortion on her. It is widely believed Christie was a backstreet abortionist, but this appears to be speculation and embellishment after the event. He was said to have used this pretext to render Beryl unconscious with gas then strangle her, raping her either as she died or after death. When Evans returned home, Christie is supposed to have told him the operation had gone wrong and that there would be serious consequences for both of them if the news got out. He advised Evans to leave town, said he would arrange for baby Geraldine to be fostered or adopted by a couple he knew, and that was basically it. Evans was so stupid he didn’t see the strangler’s mark on his dead wife’s neck, and was so in awe of Christie that he did as instructed.
The myth of innocent Tim Evans was crafted primarily by two men: Michael Eddowes and Ludovic Kennedy. Together with Herbert Wolfe they set up the Timothy Evans Committee. Wolfe was a refugee from Nazi Germany; he came to Britain in 1933 and did well for himself, in spite of equating British justice with Nazi justice. Although he was 16 years younger than Eddowes, Kennedy was the senior partner and the loudest voice, probably because while Eddowes was a lawyer, he was a journalist. Kennedy wrote what is generally considered the definitive book on Evans and Christie; in 1971; 10 Rillington Place was made into a film in which Christie was portrayed as the Welshman’s landlord.
So what really happened to Beryl Evans and her baby? Because both men were inveterate liars we can never be absolutely certain, but it is most likely that Evans strangled Beryl during an argument and baby Geraldine because she wouldn’t stop crying; he would eventually claim as much. There is however one part of the story that is puzzling, but one no one seems to notice. Before fleeing London, Evans sold his furniture, which he was buying on hire purchase. It was valued around £100 and he sold it to a dealer named Hookway for £40. At the Evans murder trial, Christie said Evans told him he had got £60 for it. Anyone who knows anything about the retail trade and especially the secondhand retail trade will tell you how unlikely that sort of purchase was or is.
Another possibility is that Evans sold Hookway more than his furniture or that he obtained money from another source. He was a petty thief; when the police searched his apartment for the investigation they found a stolen briefcase.
So what happened? Evans murdered his wife and baby daughter, stole his wife’s wedding ring, sold his furniture, bought an expensive overcoat, then caught a train to Wales where he ponced off his family until his money ran out. While there he told a pack of lies about Beryl, but when his mother wrote to her sister (his aunt) and told her he had sold his furniture, the game was up. (One can imagine how differently something like this would play out today or even in the 1970s when telephones were more or less universal in working class homes).
Evans then went to the police station and told a police officer (also named Evans – there’s a lot of them in Wales!) he had “disposed” of his wife. At first, the officer thought he was drunk, but when it became clear there was a baby involved, the police had to act.
To Part 2.