The Christie Case

[Cogidubnus]

Evans was childlike in his naivety...right to the end...a born victim...his story always saddened me.

RIP

Dave

[contrafib]

It might seem strange that Christie and Evans actually worked together on these crimes, but it's also unlikely that anyone could kill people and move bodies around a tiny house like 10 Rillington Place without anyone knowing. This is especially true if Evans was the killer because Christie is known to have been a 'control freak' in that house (he bored a spyhole so he could see who was at the front door when he didn't answer it), particularly since he had 2 bodies to conceal. John Newton Chance's book, although technically fictional, conveys this last point quite well. Christie must have been constantly on edge, with 2 bodies buried in shallow graves in that patch of wasteground known as the 'garden'.

[Flatfoot]

Thank you Sherlock. This is one intriguing case.

Like much else in this case, I guess we'll never know for sure why Christie killed Ethel. Was it some kind of psycho-sexual urge he couldn't control or was it for a more pragmatic reason, such as he believed she was going to talk to someone? The movie 10 Rillington Place seems to go with the latter theory, that she was going to visit relatives in Sheffield and might tell them and not come back. Christie was such a conniving person that I wouldn't put anything past him, and as you say, he seemed to plan things out as much as possible on most occasions.

I think we can see just how dangerous he was by the fact that after he disposed of Ethel and she was no longer around, he killed three women in as many months. Thank goodness that he was discovered when he was.

From the few excerpts I have read of Christie's conversations with the police, he seemed to blame the victims for their own deaths. She did something wrong or made a wrong movement or something and she practically forced Christie to kill her. He was always trying to place the responsibility for the murders anywhere but onto himself. That's one more reason that I don't feel much pity for him.

One of the speculations that I find hard to believe is that Beryl was having an affair with Christie with Tim Evan's permission. I believe that was the idea of the used furniture dealer. It certainly sounds very far-fetched. While it's more relevant to the main story, I also think that the idea that one person killed Beryl and a different one killed Geraldine also seems a bit bizarre. It's not impossible of course, but it's another thing that seems hard to believe, especially knowing what Christie was capable of.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[contrafib]

Which book did Linda Stratford write??

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.