The Christie Case

[sdreid]

The first I heard about the case was on a TV news/crime type program. It was maybe fifty years ago and I don't know what show it was. If wanted to take a wild guess I'd say Omnibus. It was a documentary type presentation wherever it was.

[Sherlock]

I think I first read a newspaper article on the Christie/Evans case back in the 1970s when I was about nine or ten years of age. I well remember that the article stated that Christie's last three vicitms were "stacked like brooms" in his kitchen cupboard!!

[Honest John]

Thanks for asking about me. The book proofs arrived recently and I have been rather busy compiling an index and checking through for the final time. At the same time I have made a few more enquiries. I now know the addresses of Beryls' family from 1929-1939, or at least a few of them and a friend is today checking a few school records. I found that they lived just around the corner from where I lived in Catford in the 1990s. I had a lengthy talk with a son in law of Kathleen Maloney, though learnt little new. I have checked inquest records for all the victims 1943-1953 and found a few more new points, such as the extent of Ruth Fuerst's movements 1939-1943. I hope to check Christie and Evans' inquest reports tomorrow. Sent a letter to HMP Pentonville for any relevant files there as they haven't been deposited anywhere, but no joy yet and may well be too late. Unfortunately not all of this can be incorporated into the book at this late stage.

Well, seven months to gp to publication. Kensington library are holding a Christie evening in November, date to be aranged, so I and a few others will say a few words before a Q and A session.

Saw the opening of the film again yesterday. Does anyone know if the music is available? Regrettably the first few minutes are so error ridden that one can only assume the words 'This is a True Story' were meant ironically, but I do not think so.

[Sherlock]

I know that the theme music for the film version of Ten Rillington Place was composed by John Dankworth, but I don't know if it is available commercially.

The beginning of the film is certainly full of errors. For one thing, Christie is depicted as a Special Constable when Muriel Eady arrives at the house in 1944, when in actual fact he had left the police and was working at Ultra Radio by that time. Later, Timothy and Beryl Evans are shown arriving at the house with baby Geraldine in 1949, when they actually moved there at Easter 1948 and Geraldine was not born until October of that year.

Another point is that when Christie persuades Muriel to inhale the gas there is a kind of mouthpiece at the end of the tube. I do not think that Christie ever mentioned using any form of mouthpiece in his confessions to any of his murders in which gas was involved.

[sdreid]

The 10 Rillington Place movie is one of my top 5 true crime films. I'm not sure why they change some of the events when there really doesn't seem to be any reason to do so. The real story is as compelling as it gets.

[Honest John]

The others are that Muriel was suffering from catarrah not bronchitis, she was a plump young woman not a thin middle aged one, and the costume she was wearing was not similar to the type in the film. Also, she left home in Putney at about four pm but is shown arriving at RP in the dark. I don't think it would be dark much before about 7pm and travelling from Putney to Ladbroke Grove hardly takes three hours. However, some of this information is only available if you read the relevant files and these were not open until 1992, so perhaps one should not be too harsh on the filmmakers. It is certainly very atmospheric.

[Sherlock]

Another error which I noticed is the scene in which Timothy and Beryl Evans board a single-decker London bus on route 15 when they leave Timothy's place of work. A double-decker bus would almost certainly have been used on that route and not a single-decker as depicted. I know this because I have been interested in buses for most of my life!!!

In the scene where the detective and police constables are searching the house after the disappearance of Evans the constables are wearing collars and ties as part of their uniform. I'm not absolutely sure about this, but if this was taking place in 1950 this style of uniform is inaccurate, as I think I read that uniforms with collars and ties were not introduced for London policeman on the beat until the following year, 1951, as part of the celebrations for the Festival of Britain. In 1950 the uniforms would still have been of the older style buttoned right up to the neck with no collar or tie visible.

[contrafib]

I've never been too bothered by small changes in detail in adaptations of true events. I would still like to see some kind of double-ended adaptation though perhaps that would be better-served by a documentary rather than a dramatisation. I still think there is much scope for a modern-style documentary covering the events up to the present and with both archive and new interviews. The case is very rarely mentioned compared to the Moors Murders or The Krays, perhaps because it's just slightly longer ago than those other cases.

[Honest John]

Finally, as to the opening scenes, we see the foot of Ruth Fuerst - yet no signs of decomposition almost fourteen months after her murder!

I can't comment on the buses/police uniforms as I don''t know much abou them. Yet why should they catch a bus, because the Royalty Cinema, favoured by Evans, was only on Ladbroke Grove. Beryl's brother worked there.

Yes, an open ended ending would be interesting. Linda Stratford's book offers just that, of course, and that's one of its strengths.

[contrafib]

Which book did Linda Stratford write??

[Sherlock]

Do you mean A Capital Crime by Laura Wilson? I can't find any online references to any books by Linda Stratford.

I also feel that Richard Attenborough did not resemble Christie all that much as he seemed too stout. I remember reading somewhere that Donald Pleasance was also offered the part but turned it down.

[Honest John]

Yes, Laura Wilson's Capital Crime is meant. Can't think why I made the error. Perhaps as Christie told Scott-Henderson and others at Pentonville, 'I was very fogged about everything and I asked him for his assistance'.

Interesting about Donald Pleasance, who played many villains.

[Sherlock]

The website www.10-rillington-place.co.uk has some interesting new photographs of the graves of Hectorina MacLennan, Christie's last victim, and Penry Probert, Timothy Evans' stepfather. Both of them are in Gunnersbury Cemetery, where Beryl and Geraldine Evans are also buried.

The website also states that Christie's victims Rita Nelson and Kathleen Maloney are also buried in unmarked graves in Gunnersbury Cemetery and provides a photograph of the piece of ground on which their graves are located.

[Flatfoot]

I have recently become interested in the Christie case. Much of what I post has already been discussed by others, so some of this may be repetitious.

I am a "Christie done it" person. Yes, it's possible that two killers, though with differing methods, lived in the same house, but it's not likely. And one of the suspects had already killed two people and would go on to kill four more. Without any further evidence likely to come forward, that makes Christie the likely killer of both Beryl and Geraldine Evans. Whether the standard version has all the details correct, I think it's likely that Christie, who seemed to fancy himself some kind of doctor wannabe, enticed Beryl with some type of possible procedure and killed her. Geraldine was just "collateral damage," who had to be disposed of so as not to arouse suspicion. Then it was into the wash house. I also wouldn't be surprised if Ethel had at least a inkling that her hubby was involved in the murders, even if she wasn't aware of the details.

Whatever Timothy Evans' exact level of literacy or IQ, it's clear that he was at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with a master manipulator like Christie. He was also easily manipulated by the police. We now know that false confessions occur and that often the authorities are in part responsible for them. Taking into account Evans' mental shortcomings, it's not hard to imagine that he was a victim of police misconduct. It is also easy to imagine that later inquiries might tend to side with the police. So there also probably was a grave miscarriage of justice in the case of Evans.

Was Christie an evil monster? I wouldn't go that far. Perhaps he did like children and animals, as people also sometimes say about the Nazis. But liking children and animals hardly amounts to anything compared with being a rather perverted and cold-blooded serial killer. I would say that Christie was a man who committed monstrous acts and personally I have very little pity for him.

Since it isn't likely that any forensic or any other kind of valid evidence will come forward in this case, we have to work with what we have. While there will never be 100% certainly, I feel from what I know about the case that indeed "Christie done it."

[Sherlock]

Hi Flatfoot. It's good to hear from you.

I certainly think that Christie was a highly deranged and dangerous individual. Had he not been executed in 1953 it seems obvious that it would have been necessary to hold him in a secure environment such as a prison or a secure hospital for the remainder of his natural life, as it is difficult to see that such a man could ever have been rehabilitated to any real extent. It is probable that he would always have posed a real danger to women had he been released at any point.

The fact that he took various quite elaborate measures to conceal the death of his wife such as forging her signature on a letter to her bank and displaying a false telegram supposedly from her to a neighbour would seem to suggest that he knew exactly what he was doing when he killed her, and did not do so in a fit of temporary insanity or mania. No doubt this was also the case with his other victims. It would appear, for example, that he planned the murder of Muriel Eady rather carefully, with the provision of his bogus treatment for curing her catarrh.

As far as I can tell Christie never seems to have expressed any remorse for any of his victims, with the possible exception of his wife. I certainly think he regarded Ruth Fuerst, Muriel Eady, Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina Maclennan as little more than objects with which to satisfy his sexual lust.

His motive for killing his wife is still unclear. His story that he killed her as an act of mercy after she had taken an overdose of barbiturates was proved to be false by the results of the post mortem on her body. It is not impossible that she had discovered something about his previous murders. I have also wondered if he killed her in a fit of rage after she had taunted him for his lack of sexual ability, as apparently Christie mentioned to one of the doctors who interviewed him in Brixton Prison that she had sometimes scolded him for this reason.