10 Rillington Place

10 Rillington Place, Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, London, was the site of the crimes of John Reginald Halliday Christie, one of Britain's most notorious serial killers. The case against Christie was particularly controversial because of his involvement in an earlier trial where another tenant of Rillington Place, Timothy John Evans, had been found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death by hanging. Christie had provided important testimony against Evans where the latter was found guilty of murdering his baby daughter and was subsequently executed. It was later found out that Christie had been an active serial killer during the time Evans and his wife and daughter had lodged at the premises; Christie was definitively linked to the murder of six women (one of whom was his own wife) on the site. Because of this and because the prosecution case against Evans was largely based on Christie's testimony, it was widely assumed after Christie's own trial that he had also been responsible for the murders of Evans's wife and daughter. Although there has been no definitive evidence to prove/disprove Christie's culpability, the incident caused widespread public controversy and helped contribute towards the abolition of the death penalty in Britain. "Ten Rillington Place" is also the title of a book on the case by Ludovic Kennedy published in 1961 and a 1971 movie directed by Richard Fleischer. Rillington Place was renamed Ruston Close shortly after Christie was hanged and has since been demolished.

Background

John Reginald Halliday Christie and his wife Ethel lived in the ground floor flat of 10 Rillington Place from 1938. At Easter 1948 Timothy Evans, a 23-year-old Welshman, and his wife Beryl moved in to the top floor flat, and in the following October their daughter, Geraldine, was born. In the Autumn of 1949 Beryl became pregnant again, but she could not afford to support another child and was desperate for an abortion, which was illegal in the UK at that time. Also aware that her husband, a lapsed Catholic, would object to an abortion, Beryl made discreet enquiries and mentioned the problem to Reginald Christie.

Although he had no medical qualifications, Christie persuaded her to let him carry out the abortion. Evans was later informed both by Christie and Beryl herself of her intentions, and although Evans had his misgivings, he let her go ahead with the abortion. [cite book |title= Ten Rillington Place|last= Kennedy|first= Ludovic|authorlink= Ludovic Kennedy|coauthors= |year= 1961|publisher= Simon and Schuster|location= New York|isbn= |pages= 60-61] On 8 November 1949, Evans returned home to be told by Christie that the abortion had gone wrong and that Beryl was dead. Evans agreed to help Christie move the body into the empty flat on the first floor and let a neighbour take care of the child.

Evans went to work the next day, and on his return Christie told him that Geraldine was being looked after by a family in nearby Acton, and that he would dispose of Beryl's body down a manhole. He suggested that Evans leave London. Evans agreed, and stayed with an aunt in his native South Wales. Three weeks later he went to the police station in Merthyr Tydfil. He told a detective that he had disposed of his wife's body, but implied that she had died after drinking an "abortifacient concoction". When the police investigated the drains outside 10 Rillington Place they found nothing. Evans then made another statement, this time implicating Christie. Police made another search of 10 Rillington Place and found the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine hidden in a wash-house.

Investigation and Trial

The police initially thought they were dealing with a run-of-the-mill domestic murder. Investigation showed that both mother and child had been strangled, which contradicted Evans' account. Evans was brought back to London where, without legal advice, he made a third statement admitting that he had strangled his wife, killed his daughter two days later, and hidden the bodies in the wash-house. Kennedy alleged that this statement was a false confession and was probably forced from Evans. The allegation was based on the likelihood that it would have taken much longer to write than the time the police recorded it as and that it contained terms which Evans would have been unlikely to have understood. [Kennedy, "Ten Rillington Place", pp 101-102] Evans was then charged with the murder of his daughter and his wife. However, in accordance with the practice then prevailing, the prosecution elected to proceed to trial only for the murder of Geraldine Evans. A separate indictment alleging the murder of Mrs Evans was "left on file" and not prosecuted to trial.

The trial of Timothy Evans took place at the Old Bailey in January 1950, barely six weeks after Evans's arrest. The prosecution case against Evans relied heavily on evidence from Christie and his wife. They stated that on the night that the murders were alleged to have happened (8 November 1949), they had heard a loud "thud" coming from above them (at the time, the only people living above the Christies's apartment were the Evanses). Christie also denied Evans's allegation that he had agreed to perform an abortion on Beryl, which was the basis of Evans's defence.

Police Failures

During the trial, the defence failed to pursue three important issues which cast doubt on the prosecution case. Firstly, there was evidence that Beryl had been sexually assaulted after death, which was inconsistent with Evans's statement and would later appear more in line with Christie's "modus operandi", which was not known during Evans's trial. The defence reasoned that Beryl's sexual assault would make their case for Evans harder and they did not present it to the jury. Secondly, two workmen had given evidence to police that they had used the washhouse between the days of the 8th and 10th of November (when Evans was supposed to have hidden the bodies) and had not seen any bodies in a room that measured 1.37 metres by 1.32 metres. [Kennedy, "Ten Rillington Place", p 37] It was later theorised that Christie had hidden the bodies in the temporarily vacant second floor apartment and then put them in the washhouse on or after the 11th, the day the workmen had finished their work at the property. Finally, the police failed to collect and analyse forensic evidence at the crime scene, such as fingerprints on a brief case found in the Evans's flat or in the wash house where the bodies were found. Indeed, their searches of the property were superficial and perfunctory, because bones of Christie's previous victims were visible in the tiny garden next to the wash house.

Christie's apparently thoughtful evidence and middle-class respectability went down well with the judge and jury, in contrast to Evans's error-prone testimony and working class background. [ [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/christie/evans_5.html Number 10 Rillington Place ] ] On the other hand, Christie had a criminal record, including violence to women, while Evans had no previous convictions whatever. The judge gave a biased summing-up of the case and was already an ill man. On 13 January 1950 after 40 minutes' deliberation the jury found Evans guilty of his daughter's murder. An appeal was rejected on 20 February 1950, and on 9 March 1950, Albert Pierrepoint hanged Timothy Evans at Pentonville prison, London.

New murders by Christie

The rest of 1950, 1951 and most of 1952 passed without apparent incident, but on the morning of 14 December 1952, John Christie strangled his wife Ethel, by then in poor health with chronic arthritis and rheumatism. Christie later claimed that he was putting her out of her misery, but at the time kept up the pretence that Ethel was alive, writing letters to her sister in Sheffield, altering the date from the 10th to the 15th on one letter, and claiming her arthritis prevented her from writing in person.

Over the next three months, Christie invited three prostitutes back to 10 Rillington Place and murdered them. These were Kathleen Maloney from Southampton, Rita Nelson from Belfast, but Hectorina MacLennan was seen with Christie by her boyfriend, Alex Baker. Christie claimed that MacLennan had wandered off and kept up the pretence for two weeks, asking Baker how she was. Baker assumed that she had gone back to Scotland.

On 8 January 1953, having given up his job a month before, Christie sold most of his furniture, including his bed. He slept on an old mattress for the next 10 weeks. He became increasingly aware of the unpleasant smell, and started to sprinkle disinfectant around his flat and garden to prevent the neighbours noticing. On 20 March, he illegally sub-let his flat to a couple named Reilly, who paid him seven pounds thirteen shillings — three months' rent — in advance, and then left 10 Rillington Place for good.

The landlord soon learned of the sub-letting, and he ordered the Reillys out. He gave permission for the second floor tenant, a Jamaican immigrant named Beresford Brown, to use the ground floor kitchen. Brown decided to tidy up the kitchen, which had been neglected since Ethel's death. He cleared rubbish into the back yard and tore off some of the peeling wallpaper. In one corner, he discovered not a wall but a door to what had been a pantry. Brown pulled the door ajar, pointed his torch into the pantry, and saw a body, clad only in a bra, stockings and suspenders, hunched over in a sitting position. Brown called the police, who discovered two more bodies in the pantry.

The three bodies were those of Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson, and Hectorina MacLennan. A more thorough search then revealed the corpse of Ethel Christie under the floorboards in the front room and two skeletons were discovered in the garden — those of Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian prostitute, and Muriel Eady, a former work colleague of Christie, who had been killed during an earlier killing spree between 1943 and 1944.

Christie captured and put on trial

The police named Christie as their prime suspect. He evaded arrest for another week, but on 31 March, he was seen by PC Thomas Ledger standing on Putney Bridge and looking into the River Thames. Christie gave a false name and address - "John Waddington, 35 Westbourne Grove" - but on being challenged admitted to being John Christie. He was taken to Putney police station where he confessed to the murder of his wife, and later several others.

The following day, Christie was charged with his wife's murder, and two weeks later with the murders of Maloney, Nelson, MacLennan, Fuerst and Eady. On 8 June he admitted killing Beryl Evans. This cast doubt on the investigation of 1949 — Timothy Evans had been convicted of murdering his daughter, but it was assumed that he had also killed his wife. However, Christie never admitted killing the child, Geraldine, so the public was misled into believing that two murderers had lived in the same house, and both were guilty.

Christie's trial began on 22 June 1953. His defence of not guilty by reason of insanity was rejected, and the jury took 82 minutes to convict him of murdering Ethel Christie on 25 June. Four days later Christie announced that he would not appeal, and no medical or psychological grounds were found for a reprieve. At 9am on the morning of 15 July 1953, Christie was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Pentonville Prison, on the same gallows as Evans.

Miscarriage of justice

The arrest and trial of Christie caused much controversy concerning the earlier trial of Evans. Christie had been a key witness in the prosecution case against Evans - that it now turned out that Christie had also been a serial murderer cast doubt on the reliability of his evidence and therefore the fairness of Evans's trial. If indeed Evans was guilty of the crimes for which he was charged, it would have entailed the unlikely coincidence that two strangler murderers had been living in the same premises at the same time and operating independently of one another. Concerns were raised in the media following Christie's trial that there had in fact been a miscarriage of justice and that an innocent man had been executed. These prompted the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, to commission the Henderson Report to determine whether such a miscarriage of justice of justice had occurred. John Scott Henderson, QC, was given just eleven days to weigh up the evidence in deciding on the matter of Timothy Evans and he concluded that the latter had been guilty of murdering Geraldine Evans and that there had been no miscarriage of justice.

This conclusion nevertheless was criticised because of the minimal amount of time given to Henderson and because it came across largely as an attempt to mitigate the possibility that an error had taken place in the British legal system. A number of books published after the trial of Christie highlighted these problems, which included F Tennyson Jesse's "Trials of Evans and Christie" and Kennedy's "Ten Rillington Place". Both highlighted the fact that there were numerous inconsistencies in the case against Evans which the Henderson Report did not adequately address. Kennedy's book in particular was successful in keeping the issue alive and prompted a further report conducted by High Court Judge, Sir Daniel Brabin, in 1965. The Brabin Report concluded in 1966 that Christie had murdered Geraldine Evans and then convinced Evans not to go to the police (which was the opposite of what Christie had claimed - that he had never harmed the baby). As a result, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins awarded Timothy Evans a posthumous pardon - but only for the crime on which he was tried, the murder of Geraldine. Since Evans still stood accused of the other crime for which he was not tried, the murder of his wife Beryl, the report did not exonerate him entirely.

This issue was taken up by Timothy Evans's half-sister, Mary Westlake, when she started a case in November 2004 to overturn a decision by the Criminal Cases Review Commission not to refer Evans's case to the Court of Appeal to have his conviction quashed. She argued that although the previous Brabin Report had concluded that Evans probably did not kill his daughter, it did not declare him innocent, since a pardon is a forgiveness of crimes committed. The request to refer the case was dismissed on November 19, with the judges saying that the cost and resources of quashing the conviction could not be justified, although they did accept that Evans did not murder his wife or child.

Book

Christie's murders were popularised by the book "10 Rillington Place", written by journalist Ludovic Kennedy in 1961. Kennedy examined the backgrounds of both Christie and Evans and also covered in-depth the controversy surrounding their trials. Kennedy strongly criticised the Henderson Report's conclusion that two murderers had lived at the property and provided numerous examples of problems with this account.

Film

In 1971 Kennedy's book was adapted into the film "10 Rillington Place", directed by Richard Fleischer and starring John Hurt as Timothy Evans, Richard Attenborough as Christie, and Judy Geeson as Beryl Evans. Parts of the film were shot in Rillington Place itself (renamed Ruston Close after Christie's execution) using a similar neighbouring gaslit property shortly before the entire street was cleared for redevelopment.

Location of Rillington Place

Rillington Place was a row of Victorian three-storey terraced houses built during the 1860s, along with much of Notting Hill and North Kensington. The name was changed to Ruston Close in 1954 at the request of the residents due to the heightened public interest. Sightseeing trips around 10 Rillington Place continued until the street was demolished in the early 1970s to make way for the Westway urban motorway. By 1977 the street had been redeveloped as Bartle Road with a new housing development which was completed in 1978 by William Old Construction Ltd. The site of 10 Rillington Place is often alleged to be now a small garden between two blocks of flats, but this has yet to be proved.

References

ee also

*False confession
*Miscarriage of justice

External links

* [http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&ll=51.515847,-0.21419&spn=0.006236,0.019741&t=h&z=16&om=1 Bartle Road / Rillington Place location in Ladbroke Grove (Google)]
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