The Christie Case

[Limehouse]

In answer to Chris, you're right about the 2004 verdict. I wonder why it suddenly came up again in 2004. Did the commission simply bow to long-term pressure from Evans's family?

I think most of us would agree that IF Evans killed his wife, it would have been somewhat impulsive, not thought out as Christie's murders seemed to be. The theory with Christie killing the child would be that Christie took control of the situation and was able to kill the child while Evans simply wouldn't have been able to face doing it. We would assume therefore that Evans wouldn't have been present when this happened, but the prisoner he was on remand with (was it Hume, i can't remember?) stated that Evans told him that he watched Christie strangle the baby.
Very confusing!!
Can someone clear up these details??

Well - fellow prisoners are notorious for embellishing conversations with high profile inmates such as Evans. Sometimes they do this in exchange for lighter sentences for their own crimes and others just like their bit of fame. A similar thing happened when James Hanratty was on remand. A fellow prisoner claimed Hanratty had 'confessed' to him that he was the A6 killer/rapist.

Also - I think that Evans is a very unreliable 'witness' (if that is the right term in this actual case). I can imagine that he was very distressed and very scared. I think - as I said before - that he would have said anything to anyone that he thought would be approved of. He had a low IQ and was completely out of his depth.

[contrafib]

In answer to Chris, you're right about the 2004 verdict. I wonder why it suddenly came up again in 2004. Did the commission simply bow to long-term pressure from Evans's family?

I think most of us would agree that IF Evans killed his wife, it would have been somewhat impulsive, not thought out as Christie's murders seemed to be. The theory with Christie killing the child would be that Christie took control of the situation and was able to kill the child while Evans simply wouldn't have been able to face doing it. We would assume therefore that Evans wouldn't have been present when this happened, but the prisoner he was on remand with (was it Hume, i can't remember?) stated that Evans told him that he watched Christie strangle the baby.
Very confusing!!
Can someone clear up these details??

[Limehouse]

I respect your opinion Delboy, and really my main motive for discussion is to pick up snippets to try and piece a jigsaw together. My issue with Kennedy is that he used a lot of conjecture, and that official papers released in 1994 seemed to tell us more about Evans's character, namely that he was violent. We know that neighbours saw him with his hands round his wife's throat on at least one occasion. Having said that, John Eddowes's case is also very questionable.

I agree that Evans would have probably been released had for example someone found the human thigh bone propping up the garden fence when the police were at the house investigating Evans and investigated further, but i think the discussions here are about what we think really happened rather than the legal standpoint. I know from personal experience that British justice and the real truth don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Anyway, you have said before that you believe in truth and justice, so the official line on Evans is that he was a murderer but deserved a pardon because he was innocent of the murder he was tried for (i.e Jeraldine). This was Brabin's official verdict, as we know.

It is true that Evans was violent towards his wife but Christie also had convictions for violence. I am not excusing him - but Evans' violence probably stemmed from his immaturity and lack of ability to control his anger.

I don't really understand the theory that Evans killed his wife but Christie killed the child. Why would he do that?

[Chris]

Anyway, you have said before that you believe in truth and justice, so the official line on Evans is that he was a murderer but deserved a pardon because he was innocent of the murder he was tried for (i.e Jeraldine). This was Brabin's official verdict, as we know.

I don't think it's correct that the official line is that Evans was a murderer. The Criminal Cases Review Commission considered his case in 2004, and decided not to refer it to the Court of Appeal. There was a judicial review of that decision which upheld it, but in the judgment it was stated that "It is recognised that he committed neither murder." Indeed, the ground for upholding the decision was that it had already been established that he was innocent, so there would be little point in formally quashing the verdict (which would have implied only that the conviction had been unsafe):

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2004/2779.html

I'm not entirely convinced by that reasoning, particularly as Derek Bentley's conviction had been quashed despite a pardon having previously been granted. But although, technically speaking, the conviction stands, I think we can say the official line is that he was innocent of both murders.

[contrafib]

I respect your opinion Delboy, and really my main motive for discussion is to pick up snippets to try and piece a jigsaw together. My issue with Kennedy is that he used a lot of conjecture, and that official papers released in 1994 seemed to tell us more about Evans's character, namely that he was violent. We know that neighbours saw him with his hands round his wife's throat on at least one occasion. Having said that, John Eddowes's case is also very questionable.

I agree that Evans would have probably been released had for example someone found the human thigh bone propping up the garden fence when the police were at the house investigating Evans and investigated further, but i think the discussions here are about what we think really happened rather than the legal standpoint. I know from personal experience that British justice and the real truth don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Anyway, you have said before that you believe in truth and justice, so the official line on Evans is that he was a murderer but deserved a pardon because he was innocent of the murder he was tried for (i.e Jeraldine). This was Brabin's official verdict, as we know.

[Delboy58]

Having read all of the books mentioned here by other members, I found most of them to be sensationalist and heavily driven by emotion. Even though Kennedy had his critics and may well have been biased himself, I still find his book to be the most believable and reliable account of events that took place at Rillington Place. Yes, we may never know any more than we do now about the true facts of this case but I think Christie was an extraordinary man capable of horrendous acts and attrocities yet able to present the outward appearance of a mild mannered respectable citizen. Evans on the other hand, although reputedly prone to telling tales to enhance his persona, was a far more straight forward character. He would no doubt have been an easy target for the manipulative Christie. I beleive Ethel knew nothing about his crimes, and if at the end she began to suspect then that would certainly explain why she was murdered.

[Sherlock]

I believe that the little girl whose murder in Windsor Christie was asked about was named Christine Butcher. I think I read somewhere else that Christie was briefly suspected of killing her as a man resembling him in appearance was seen in a photograph taken of a crowd in Windsor who were awaiting the arrival of the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson who was apparently staying or appearing in the town at the time of the murder.

My guess is that he did not have any connection with this murder; Christie himself stated that he had not been to Windsor for many years. However, we should not forget that Christie was a pathological lier!!!

As for other books on the case, The Two Stranglers of Rillington Place
by Rupert Furneaux is well worth reading if you can obtain a copy. Furneaux anticipates the verdict of the Brabin enquiry by concluding that Evans killed his wife Beryl but that Christie killed baby Jeraldine. This Panther paperback was published in 1961, the same year as Ludovic Kennedy's Ten Rillington Place.

Another book on the case published in 1961 is The Crimes at Rillington Place; A Novelist's Reconstruction by John Newton Chance, who concludes that Evans killed both Beryl and Jeraldine, although he may have been subject to Christie's malign influence.

SHERLOCK

[The Bounder]

Apparently the police question Christie he thought they were going to ask him about the murder of a child in Windsor. Why would Christie think this? I tried to research this information myself for my own little piece on Christie but could find no mention of it outside a throw away line made by Martin Fido on one of his audio presentations. It would be interesting to know where this info came from and indeed who the child was.

[contrafib]

I fear that we will never know the details, and that new snippets heard tend to confuse as much as clarify.
I've heard before that Ethel told (or hinted to) a fellow tenant that her husband was involved in dodgy activities, but i'm not sure where i heard this.

A small request- Could one of the experts on the case provide a brief summary of the best books on this case, and briefly what conclusions they drew? Kennedy and Eddowes are the obvious opposite opinions, and i know about Brabin (Evans killed Beryl, Christie killed Jeraldine), but have other authors reached the same/different conclusions?? I heard one rumour that Beryl may have killed her baby, but that seems slightly far-fetched. Then again, some believe that Jackie O set her husband up, and Yoko Ono killed John Lennon. I don't consider anything impossible.

[Limehouse]

Hi Sherlock

I doubt whether Christie's wife assisted with his 'abortions' but I would not be at all surprised if he was involved in attempting to abort pregnancies. In those days contraceptive devices were usually only prescribed to married women and these consisted of rather unreliable methods as there was no pill. Many single and married women who were pregnant and with little money or no support to bring up a child were desperate enough to seek out people who would be willing to abort them. They took terrible risks with their health and I can see a creep like Christie making the offer just so that he could assault the women. I think he also offered other 'cures' and this is how he lured women to his home.

I would personally be wary of any confessions made by Evans. Firstly - 'confessions' have been extracted from quite a number of innocent men over the years - even as late as the 1970s when Stefan Kiszko 'confessed' to the murder of Leslie Molseed just because he was exhausted and completely stressed from days of questioning. Secondly - Evans had a very low IQ and would probably have said anything he thought people wanted to hear simply to get out of a situation without thinking through the full implications. I believe that Christie killed Beryl but managed in some way to convince Evans that he had killed her or been responsible for her death. I believe Christie then offered to arrange an adoption for Geraldine and Evans trusted him.

[Sherlock]

Did anyone see the program on Christie in the series on infamous murders presented by Fred Dinenage which appeared on the Crime Channel earlier this year?

It did not present a great deal of new information on the case, but it did feature a gentleman named Trevallian, whom I think had been a dectective at Notting Hill Police Station when Christie was arrested in 1953, and who had also briefly met Christie on a previous occasion.

If I remember correctly, Mr Trevallian stated that Christie had told him that he had carried out abortions on young women when seated in his "strangling chair", and whom he then put in his front room to recover from the operation. Christie also told Travallian that his wife Ethel assisted him with the illegal operations!!

Chrisie also told Trevallian that he had sexually assaulted the women in the course of the abortions, and that he had murdered his wife Ethel when she had discovered this and threatened to expose him as a sexual deviant.

Interestingly, F. Tennyson Jesse stated briefly in her introduction to The Trials of Evans and Christie that it had been theorized that Ethel had helped her husband with abortions, and Rupert Furneaux stated in The Two Stranglers of Rillington Place that a woman had told another resident of the house that she had had an illegal operation performed by Christie.

I do not know what to make of this. As far as I am aware there is no evidence that Ethel ever assisted her husband with abortions, or indeed that he ever actually performed one himself, although it is quite possible that he pretended he could do so in order to sexually assault women. Indeed, I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the police suspected that abortions were carried out in the house before Christie's arrest, and F. Tennyson Jesse also stated in her account of the trial that when Christie was finally caught someone in Notting Hill remarked that the local abortionist had now been arrested.

As Christie was a pathological lier, it is quite possible that he was lying to Trevallian; perhaps he wished to sully the memory of his wife in some way by claiming that she helped him with abortions.

Interestingly, I think that Mr Trevallian also appeared in the series on the Murders of the Black Museum presented by Gordon Honeycombe a number of years ago, when he stated that Timothy Evans had confessed to him that he had killed his daughter Jeraldine; I think that this is also stated in the paperback edition of the Brabin Report published by the Stationary Office.

What do others think? Was Christie really an abortionist assisted by his wife, or was this another of his lies?

SHERLOCK

[Limehouse]

Personally - I believe Evans was innocent of both murders. There was no need for him to kill Geraldine as members of his family would have taken on the child following the death/disappearance of Evans' wife and Evans knew this.

[contrafib]

Anyone still alive out there???

I wonder if Dr Oates will uncover any new evidence or hypothesise about the Evans murders? The 'official line' from 1966 was that Evans probably killed Beryl and Christie killed Geraldine, as we know. I think we'll find the details about Christie's life are different to what we think, anyhow.

[contrafib]

Thanks for the info. Here's the link for everyone

http://eddiethecomputer.co.uk/history/Pub/Christie_Uxbridge.pdf

[Sherlock]

New Book on Christie Case

I understand that Dr Jonathan Oates who is currently archivist for Ealing Borough Council is undertaking research for a new biography of John Reginald Halliday Christie which will be published in 2013, the 60th anniversary of his execution.

Some of the results of his research have already appeared here and there on the web. For example, he has discovered that Christie was briefly a volunteer in the RAF for several months in the early 1920s, when he hoped to be posted abroad in order to escape his criminal past. He was apparently based at the RAF central depot in Uxbridge.

It also seems that the frequently stated fact that Christie was imprisoned for stealing a car from a Roman Catholic Priest in the 1930s (eg by Ludovic Kennedy in 10 Rillington Place) is incorrect. It appears that Christie actually stole the car from a garage belonging to McAlpines the building contractors with whom he had been employed for a time. The connection with the priest seems to have been derived from a newspaper story in 1953 which stated that at the time he stole the car Christie and his wife were employed as chauffeur and housekeeper respectively by a Fr Matthew Lynch of Uxbridge. Dr Oates points out that this cannot have been the case as Christie was employed elsewhere at the time and had not yet been reconciled with his wife.

However, it is interesting to note that the website of Our Lady of Lourdes and St Michael RC Church in Uxbridge states that Fr Matthew Lynch became parish priest there in 1937, so it is not impossible that he did in fact meet Christie at some point if he had ministered elsewhere in the Uxbridge area prior to 1937. It was late in that year that Christie and his wife moved into 10 Rillington Place, rather than 1938 as is usually stated.

Dr Oates recently appealed in the Scottish Sunday Post for anyone who could provide background information on the life of Hectorina Maclennan, Christie's last victim, who came from Aultbea in the Hebrides. Apparently she may not in fact have been a prostitute, as is usually stated.

It is also the case that Christie himself had Scottish connections, as one of his distant relatives on his father's side was born in Kilmarnock in Ayrshire.