The Christie Case

[Sherlock]

Despite the thorough research which Honest John has undertaken for his book, there are still certain questions arising from the Christie case to which we will probably never know the answers. Here are a few that spring to mind:-

1) Why exactly did Christie murder Ruth Fuerst in 1943, which as far as is known was his first murder? As Honest John suggests, this seems to have occurred on the spur of the moment and was not necessarily planned in advance. What then drove her to kill her? Did she taunt him in some way or was it necessary to dispose of her before his wife arrived home? Could she possibly have threatened to blackmail him in some way? Before this it seems that he only committed relatively minor crimes involving theft, apart from his one conviction for the assault of Mrs Cole in 1929.

2) What exactly attracted Beryl Susanna Thorley to Timothy Evans? Honest John records that she was employed as a relief telephonist by Thomas Wallis and Company of Oxford Street, which I understand was a department store. I presume that this was the shop from which she was dismissed after her husband made a scene there due to her flirtation with another male employee.

However, most books on the case state that before her marriage she was employed as a telephonist in the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane; Honest John does not mention this. F. Tennyson Jesse made the point that as Beryl worked in a plush hotel she must have been a fairly well-dressed and respectable person herself. What, then, attracted her to a coarse and semi-literate person like Evans? Ludovic Kennedy stated in Ten Rillington Placethat she had met him on a blind date with a friend of hers named Connie. As Honest John suggests, was she lonely after the break-up of her family after her mother's death?

It would appear that not a great deal has ever been discovered about Beryl as a person, although it would seem that she may have had an argumentative nature. One wonders what her own family made of Evans when she became engaged to him.

3) Why did Christie leave 10 Rillington Place after sub-letting it to Mr and Mrs Reilly? He must surely have known that it would only be a matter of time before the bodies were discovered, possibly even by them. Also, it does not seem to have been determined exactly where he went between his departure from the Rowton House and his arrest near Putney Bridge, although sightings of him were reported in various locations and it seems that he spoke to a Margaret Wilson in a cafe in the Pentonville Road, that he pawned his watch in Battersea, and that he tried to scrounge money for a cup of tea in Putney. The claim by journalist Norman Rae that he arranged to meet him near Wood Green Town Hall may or may not have been true, as no evidence exists to corroborate this and Christie himself seems never to have mentioned it.

4) If Timothy Evans was indeed guilty of the murders of Beryl and Geraldine, what exactly did Christie know about them?

5) What exactly was the extent of his indecent photographic activities, which apparently included a session at which his victim Kathleen Maloney was present. Who did he hire the photographic studio from? Could he possibly have been involved in the distribution of pornography? How many other women did he photograph, if any?

6) Did he commit any other murders? It has been suggested that he may haver murdered Dora Lloyd in 1932, although Honest John considers this unlikely.

[EddieX]

4) If Timothy Evans was indeed guilty of the murders of Beryl and Geraldine, what exactly did Christie know about them?

I would say for certain that Evans murdered neither Beryl nor Geraldine, and Christie knew everything about their murders.

[Honest John]

Hopefully the book answers some questions and sheds light in areas of the lives and deaths of the protagoniosts, but as I state, there's some things we'll never know as all involved are long dead - and, even when alive, were not particularly truthful. As to question 2, I'm not sure that the shop Beryl was fired from in 1949 was the same as the place she was employed in in 1947. It is regrettable that the files did not delve much into Beryl's background - unlike those in some murder cases. Presumably Basil Thorley coudl tell more, if he's still alive. Kenendy states that Ethel is the enigma but I would state that its Beryl who is more so, though partly this is because her life was so short and so there wasn't much time for her to do much in it, except the disastrous step taken in 1947.

[Sherlock]

I think that Basil Thorley may still have been alive in the mid-1990s when John Eddowes wrote The Two Killers of Rillington Place, but I do not know if he still is.

I would tend to agree with Honest John that Beryl is the major enigma in the case. We know so little about her as a person, possibly even less so than we do about Ethel; one of the very few things I have ever managed to discover about Beryl after much research online is that I recollect someone stating that they remembered her as an evacuee in the early 1940s, but I cannot remember where or by whom. It seems that her occupation was as a telephonist, in which capacity she was employed in both the Grosvenor House Hotel and at John Wallis and Company in Oxford Street. This seems to suggest that she was fairly well-spoken if she was required to deal with customers by telephone.

Possibly her friend Lucy Endecott might be able to shed some light on Beryl's character if she is still alive; I recollect that Honest John discovered that she went to live in Yorkshire after her marriage in the 1950s.

One wonders what would have happened if Timothy and Beryl had decided to move out of 10 Rillington Place when one of Evans's sisters found another flat for them, as Ludovic Kennedy records!!!!!!

[Honest John]

Beryl lived in a number of addresses in the 1930s; Lewisham (Catford actually, near where I once lived) and then what are now Lambeth and Southwark and I can supply you with these addresses. However none of the schools she may have attended seem to have kept admission registers, or rather, none survived; certainly not those of St Mark's school where she attended in the early 1940s - not far from Rillington Place, of course. Where she vlived from 1939-45 is impossible to know due to there being no electoral registers, but she must have been at Cambridge Gardens ir nearby as she attended the school just mentioned until at least 14. It is difficult to find much about most people's childhood and early life unless they were exceptionally important, kept a diary or wrote memoirs. or were at a school which kept copious records. Why she married Evans is a mystery, but there were many men killed in WW2, so the number of single young men about who were able bodied was less than usual - post WW1 matters were worse, so much the better for Christie.

[EddieX]

The other way of obtaining information as to Beryl's early life would be by interviewing her contemporaries. I appreciate that most of those still alive will be in their eighties, or older, and may have neither the inclination nor the ability to recall the minutiae of seventy years ago. I would be surprised if none of the earlier writers on Evans/Christie did not interview friends, relatives, classmates and neighbours etc. of the principal players in the drama, even if the results of such interviews were not contained in the published works.

[moonbegger]

Hello Sherlock ,

it does not seem to have been determined exactly where he went between his departure from the Rowton House and his arrest near Putney Bridge, although sightings of him were reported in various locations and it seems that he spoke to a Margaret Wilson in a cafe in the Pentonville Road

I dont know how much water it holds , but for what its worth , i Spent my teenage years growing up on the Essex rd , Islington . And quite a few of the older folks were of the mind that Christie lived on St pauls rd a few doors up from the junction with Essex rd , opp my folks house ! The house covered in foliage and fronted by a big black door is still there today , think its number 4 ? Not sure if it was before or after Rillington place . thought it worth a mention . it would be good to know if it was true or not

cheers

moonbegger

[Sherlock]

Hello Moonbegger

That is very interesting information that Christie may possibly have lived in St Paul's Road in Islington at some point in his life. It may well be true, as he seems to have moved around the London area a good deal before moving into 10 Rillington Place with Ethel in 1937.

Honest John, that is a very good point that there was a comparative shortage of able-bodied young men to choose from in the years immediately after World War II, so perhaps Beryl considered that Evans was better than no-one. Perhaps she was even physically attracted to him to some degree. Even if this was the case, one would have thought that she would have had a rather wider choice of partners than Evans; all the photographs I have seen of Beryl indicate that she was by no means unattractive herself. Therefore, as you rightly say, exactly why she chose to marry Evans is still a mystery. As F. Tennyson Jesse pointed out in her book, it certainly was not a shotgun marriage.

EddieX, I believe that, for example, Ludovic Kennedy certainly interviewed various people who knew both Christie and Evans for his own book, including their neighbour Mr Kitchener, Mr Hookway the furniture dealer and Mr Ernest McNeil who considered buying 10 Rillington Place before Charles Brown eventually did so. It is quite possible that not everything that he was told by them was eventually published in his book. For example, I understand that Mr Hookway considered Beryl to have been rather flighty, and was also of the opinion that she and Christie were having a physical relationship, however unlikely that may seem. The latter was almost certainly untrue.

The fact that Beryl flirted with the man in her place of employment does seem to indicate that other men did indeed find her attractive.

It would also be interesting to know exactly where the remains of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady were eventually buried. Possibly they were cremated?

[sdreid]

What did Evans do during the war?

[Honest John]

He was declared medically unfit for active service. He worked briefly in the mines in Wales and then was back in London. Served in the Home Guard. The book gives more details and from memory he was, I think, a van driver of some type.

[Simon Webb]

For several years I have been attempting to write a semi-fictional novel based on the crimes committed by John Reginald Halliday Christie at 10 Rillington Place. I haven't got very far with it as yet, but I might possibly finish it at some point!

Here are a few points which have occurred to me about these murders, which other contributors might possibly be able to shed some light on:-


1) Christie apparently persuaded at least his last three victims, Rita Nelson, Kathleen Maloney and Hectorina MacLennan, to sit in his so-called "strangling chair" prior to their murders. This was an old deckchair with strands of rope instead of canvas.

I wonder what exactly the significance of this chair was in Christie's murder ritual; was it some kind of bizarre prop constructed by himself, or were deckchairs of this type actually used at one time? Has anyone ever seen a similar deckchair anywhere else?

I do not think that the significance of this chair has ever really been explored in any book on the case I have read, including [I]10 Rillington Place[I] by Ludovic Kennedy and Trials of Christie and Evans by F. Tennyson Jesse.

I wonder if there could have been some bizarre connection between this rope chair and his use of a rope to strangle his victims.

2) It is recorded in most accounts of the case that Christie had an affair with a civilian employee at Harrow Road police station while he was based there as a Special Constable in about 1943. It is said that the lady's husband found them together and gave Christie a severe beating, which might possibly have acted as the catalyst for him to commit his first known murder of Ruth Fuerst. Moreover, it is also said that the husband actually cited Christie as co-respondant several years later in order to obtain a divorce from his wife. I do not think the name of the lady concerned has ever been recorded.

If this was the case, Christie's own wife Ethel must surely have known about the affair, and might well have had some knowledge of her husband's other sexual idiosyncracies. One wonders, therefore, if she ever suspected that Christie had actually committed murders? As the bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady were already buried in the garden by 1945, it does seem rather odd that she never found any evidence of this; presumably she did go into the garden on occasions! This is even stranger when one considers that Christie actually used one of his victim's thighbones to prop up his fence, which the police failed to discover when investigating the Evans murders.

It has also never been determined exactly what she did or did not know about her husband's activities at the time of the murders of Geraldine and Beryl Evans. One wonders, therefore, if she had a fairly good idea about her husband's crimes, but was afraid to confide in anyone, perhaps out of fear for her own life. Apparently she was in regular correspondance with her relations in Sheffield, as several letters written by her were found in her sister's former house there several years ago. As far as I know these made little reference to her husband.

3) I do not think that it has ever been determined conclusively that Ruth Fuerst was Christie's first victm, or if he committed any murders other than those to which he confessed. Professor Keith Simpson recorded in Forty Years of Murder that Christie was asked if he might have been responsible for the murder of a little girl in Windsor in the early 1950s, but that he considered that he had not.

Any comments other contributors might have on these and other points relating to the case would be most welcome.


regards

SHERLOCK

My new novel Severin: A Tale of Jack the Ripper uses some details from the Christie case, particularly the idea of storing bodies in a house. Fred West as well, of course. Is your novel going to explain the mystery surrounding the heavy manhole cover?

Don't forget a rope, or a 'rope's end' was regularly used for flogging children and can even have Christian overtones, as Jesus was flogged.

SW

[contrafib]

Just when it seemed there was nothing left to talk about, all these new talking points have come up.
Re: Beryl, i agree she's an enigma, purely because we know about a lot of her movements but nothing particularly about her manner. I suppose she must have been fairly feisty to give as good as she got in her fights with her husband prior to here death. Re: physical attractiveness, a couple of photos seem to show her as attractive but others show her as looking much older than her age. In the famous garden photo supposedly taken by Christie, she quite resembles Cherie Blair.
I always thought it would be fascinating to be a fly-on-the -wall at Rillington Place, not to see murders but just to get an impression of what the Christies and Evans's were like (the dynamic, if you will). John Newton Chance had a go but that book was pure guesswork for the most point, though interesting. On that subject, i should tell you a quick story. I used to live in a shared house in Chesterton Road, nr the old R Place, about a decade ago. I only knew the case vaguely when i moved there and didn't know the location but got to know it. Anyway, one night i had a dream that i was renting a room in the house at the time of Evans and Christie. In the dream, it was just a normal day and i'm in my very bare room. I can hear 4 distinct adult voices, which in my dream i know are the 4 main protagonists, and occasionally a baby crying. It seems to go for a long time. I woke up pretty freaked-out, but no events in the dream to give any clues to the truth i'm afraid.

[EddieX]

In view of Ludovic Kennedy's association as a technical director with the film 10 Rillington Place, I would think that the film gets as close to the truth as is possible in a dramatisation of the Christie murders.

[contrafib]

That's a huge assumption in the validity of Ludo's book. He essentially read Michael Eddowes's book, decided it was the truth and wrote a book with a pre-defined thesis. His book is full of conjecture. It really makes me laugh how well-conditioned humans are to believe anything official-sounding. Perhaps that's why people still read the papers, watch tv news and listen to politicians no matter how many times their lies are exposed

[EddieX]

That's a huge assumption in the validity of Ludo's book. He essentially read Michael Eddowes's book, decided it was the truth and wrote a book with a pre-defined thesis. His book is full of conjecture. It really makes me laugh how well-conditioned humans are to believe anything official-sounding. Perhaps that's why people still read the papers, watch tv news and listen to politicians no matter how many times their lies are exposed

I have not read Eddowes's book so cannot comment on that. I had assumed, and HonestJohn seems to verify, that Ludovic Kennedy had done original research by interviewing those who knew the principal players in the drama. If Eddowes had done likewise, then he and Ludovic may well have reached the same conclusion as to the truth by independent means, rather than the latter slavishly following the former's pre-defined thesis.