According to Jennings he then said: ‘It’s a great relief to get it off my chest. I feel better already. I can tell you the cause that led up to it.’ He then went on to make a long statement, his fourth. As in the third there was no attempt to incriminate Christie and no mention of any abortion attempt.
Beryl, he said, was always moaning about the long hours he worked and about how little he was paid. She was in debt, and he had to work overtime to pay off her debts. He also had to borrow money. Then he discovered she was behind with their HP payments and with the rent. There was a row. ‘I told her if she didn’t pull herself together I would leave her, so she said: “You can leave anytime you like.”’ There was another row on the morning of Sunday, 6 November, after which he went out to the pictures. She nagged him on his return and until he went to bed. The following morning, he said, ‘She gets up and starts an argument straight away. I took no notice of her … My wife told me that she was going to pack up and go down to her father in Brighton … She was going to take the baby with her … So I said it would be a good job and a load of worry off my mind.’ When he returned from work that night he put the kettle on, sat down, and his wife walked in. ‘I thought you was going to Brighton,’ he remarked. She replied: ‘What, for you to have a good time?’ He went downstairs to fetch the push-chair. ‘I came upstairs and she started an argument again. I told her if she didn’t pack it up I’d slap her face. With that she picked up a milk bottle to throw at me. I grabbed the bottle out of her hand. I pushed her, she fell in a chair in the kitchen, so I washed and changed and went out.’ When he got home later, they argued again.
On Tuesday morning he went to work as usual. ‘I came home at night about 6.30 pm, my wife started to argue again, so I hit her across the face with my flat hand. She then hit me back with her hand. In a fit of temper, I grabbed a piece of rope from a chair, which I had brought home off my van, and strangled her with it. I then took her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed with the rope still tied round her neck. Before 10 pm that night I carried my wife’s body downstairs to the kitchen of Mr Kitchener’s flat …’ He fed and sat up with the baby and then put her to bed. Later, ‘when everything was quiet’, he wrapped his wife’s body in a blanket and a green tablecloth from the kitchen table and tied the bundle up ‘with a piece of cord from out of the kitchen cupboard.’ He took the bundle – Mrs Evans was quite small – down to the wash-house, put it under the sink and ‘blocked the front of the sink up with pieces of wood so that the body wouldn’t be seen’.
For two days, on Wednesday and Thursday, he fed, washed and changed the baby and went to work, sitting by the fire in the evenings. After he was sacked on Thursday, he came home, he said, ‘picked up my baby from her cot in the bedroom, picked up my tie and strangled her with it’. That night he hid the baby’s body in the wash-house ‘behind some wood’.
Why would Evans kill the baby? One explanation was put forward, but never used in the court, by PS Trevallian, who guarded Evans in his cell at Notting Hill Gate. Trevallian said later that as they conversed he remarked that he was unable to understand how or why anyone would kill a baby. Evans replied, according to Trevallian, that it was the continual crying of the baby that got on his nerves and that he strangled it to silence its noise.
There are other questions. Why did he remove the rope from his wife’s neck and not the tie from Geraldine’s? The tie, if it was his – and this was never clearly established – would obviously incriminate him. How was it that the baby was silent, according to the Christies, for two days, though left unattended for twelve hours at a stretch for two days? If alive, she must have cried and must have been heard by the Christies. It was on Wednesday evening that Mrs Christie asked Evans: ‘Where’s Beryl and the baby?’ To which he replied that they had gone away to Bristol. Why did he say he strangled the baby on the Thursday night? Was there some reason for this in his story in the second statement about the baby being given by Christie on Thursday to a couple from East Acton? Was he again trying to protect Christie? Or indeed someone else, some woman to whom he had given the baby on the Tuesday night?
It seems unlikely that Evans should wish to protect Christie. There is no reason to suppose that either man had any respect or liking for the other, or that Evans was dominated by the older man. Evans – a heavy-drinking, excitable, brawling wiry Welshman – must have been despised by his tall, quiet, nervous, teetotal neighbour. The Christies tended to keep themselves to themselves. The wives might have become familiar, but next to nothing is known about this.
Although Mrs Christie’s role in the events of that week is far from clear, the police apparently never doubted her innocence or her mystified reaction to the bundle under the wash-house sink. She was believed when she said in court that the last time she saw Beryl and the baby was on the Monday of that week: she had looked after the baby when Beryl was out. There is also no reason to suppose that the police terrorised Evans into making a false confession. No complaint or allegation about this was ever made by Evans, by his lawyers, or by his relatives.
On 3 December 1949, Timothy Evans was charged with the murder of his wife, to which he replied: ‘Yes, that’s right.’ When charged with the murder of Geraldine, he made no reply. On his way to the magistrate’s court in a police car, he told Inspector Black: ‘After I killed my wife I took her ring off her finger and sold it for six shillings in Merthyr.’ The ring was, in fact, found in a Merthyr jewellers’ shop. But when his mother, Mrs Probert, saw him after the magistrate’s hearing, he told her: ‘I never done it, Mum. Christie done it. Tell Christie I want to see him. He’s the only one who can help me now.’ She tried to talk to Christie, but he refused to see her and sent for the police.
When Evans was examined by the prison doctor in Brixton, he voluntarily repeated his account of Beryl’s death as contained in his fourth statement, and made no accusations against Christie. He was cheerful in prison, playing dominoes and cards, and never professed to be innocent – at least, not until he saw his solicitor on 15 December, when once again Evans accused Christie.
Timothy Evans was tried at the Old Bailey on Wednesday, 11 January 1950, before Mr Justice Lewis, a sick man who died a few weeks later. Mr Christmas Humphreys, then Britain’s leading Buddhist, led for the Crown: it was his first case as Senior Treasury Counsel. Evans, defended by Mr Malcolm Morris, was charged with the murder of Geraldine, as it was assumed by the prosecution that there would or could be no excuse of provocation – which might have been put forward as a defence in the case of Mrs Evans.
Christie was a good but cautious prosecution witness and Evans himself was the only witness, a poor and muddled one, for the defence. He was patently a liar. His counsel’s assault on Christie, revealing his previous convictions, was viewed with disfavour by the court, as were counsel’s allegations that Christie was an abortionist, a murderer and a liar. All this was firmly denied by Christie.
Evans’s explanation of his last two statements, a ‘load of lies’, was that they were made because he was ‘upset’ after hearing about Geraldine’s death, because he thought the police would ‘knock him about’ if he said otherwise, and because he wanted to protect Christie.
When asked by Mr Humphreys to suggest why Christie had strangled Mrs Evans, the accused replied: ‘Well, he was home all day.’ ‘Can you suggest why he should have strangled your wife?’ demanded Mr Humphreys. ‘No, I can’t,’ said Evans. ‘No,’ he said again, when the question was applied to his daughter.
Mr Humphreys’ closing speech was probably the shortest ever made in a murder trial. It lasted less than half an hour. The defence’s allegations and attack on Christie were dismissed as ‘Bosh!’
On Friday, 13 January, the jury took forty minutes to find Evans guilty of the murder of Geraldine Evans. Christie, who was in court, burst into tears. Evans said nothing and was sentenced to death.
Taken to Pentonville Prison, he was as cheerful as he had been in Brixton. He showed no sorrow for his dead family,
nor displayed any outrage at his sentence or even when his appeal was dismissed, although he still maintained that ‘Christie done it.’ He was well behaved, good tempered and calm. Before he was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint and Syd Dernley on 9 March 1950, Evans, a Roman Catholic, received the sacrament and made his last confession to a priest. There were no petitions, demonstrations or outcry before or after the execution of Timothy Evans.
Later that year, in August 1950, 10 Rillington Place was bought by a Jamaican hotel commissionaire, Charles Brown. The upstairs rooms – Kitchener had left by now – were occupied by several Jamaicans and others, much to the annoyance and distress of both the Christies. They complained several times to the Poor Man’s Lawyer Centre about noise, intrusion and assault, which they said were affecting their health. Christie was still suffering from fibrositis, enteritis, insomnia and amnesia. His wife suffered from nerves and depression and was regularly taking sleeping pills and pheno-barbitone as a sedative.
In the spring of 1952, Christie was advised to go to Springfield Mental Hospital for treatment for an anxiety neurosis, but he was reluctant to leave his wife. Deteriorating mentally and physically, he stopped seeing Dr Odess in September and gave up his £8-a-week job with British Road Services on 6 December. He was fifty-four. Three years had now passed since the death of Beryl Evans.
On 10 December 1952, Mrs Christie wrote a letter to her sister. Christie kept it and altered the date to the 15th, when he posted it. By then Ethel Christie was dead. She was last seen at a laundry on Friday, 12 December.
Christie later told the police: ‘She was becoming very frightened from these blacks … and she got very depressed. On 14 December [Sunday] I was awaked at about 8.15 am. I think it was by my wife moving about in bed. I sat up and saw that she appeared to be convulsive, her face was blue and she was choking … I couldn’t bear to see her, so I got a stocking and tied it round her neck to put her to sleep … I left her in bed for two or three days and didn’t know what to do.’
He alleged she had taken an overdose of pheno-barbitone, but no traces of it were found later in her body. He eventually buried her under the floorboards of the front room after wrapping her body (which was naked apart from unsecured stockings) in two dresses and a blanket, with a pillow case around her head and a vest between her legs.
Why did Christie kill his wife, with whom he had lived closely and amicably for nineteen years? Despite the alteration of the date on the letter, which could have been lying about, accidentally not posted, and then put to use as an afterthought, there is little to suggest premeditation. Nor is there any reason, beyond being wise after the event, to suggest that he wanted to rid himself of her so that suddenly, and after a nine-year gap, he could revert to his murderous wartime habits. There is also no reason to suppose that three years after the murder of Beryl Evans Mrs Christie had to be killed because what she knew had made her so fearful and guilt-ridden that Christie had to silence her in case she talked. Fictional murderers may be infinitely cunning, but Christie was sunk in apathetic despair. The murders that followed were made more possible because of Mrs Christie’s absence and because of his isolation. They probably happened because of her death, and not the other way around.
There is an interesting coincidence of events between the actions of Christie and Timothy Evans after the deaths of their respective wives: Mrs Christie’s body was wrapped up and hidden under wood; her wedding ring was sold on the 17th for £1 17s; the neighbours were told she had gone away; Christie sold nearly all his furniture (for £13) to the same dealer Evans had chosen; and eventually he left the house.
The furniture was sold on 6 January 1953, but Christie kept a mattress, some blankets, a table, two chairs, some crockery and cutlery. For ten freezing weeks he squatted in the back room with his mongrel bitch, Judy, and a cat. One of the chairs was a deckchair, with knotted webs of string in place of canvas. Once a week he received £2 14s from the unemployment exchange. Daily he disinfected the hallway, the drains, the front and back of the house with Jeyes Fluid, as he had begun to do towards the end of December.
During this period he murdered three prostitutes and put their bodies in a coal-cupboard in the kitchen.
On Friday, 13 March, a week after the last murder, he sublet his three rooms to a Mr and Mrs Reilly for £7 13s, getting three months’ rent in advance. He had decided to go away. After taking his dog to a vet to be destroyed, he walked out of 10 Rillington Place on 20 March with all he owned in a battered suitcase. That night he turned up at a Rowton House hostel for down-and-outs in King’s Cross.
Despite an unpleasant smell in the kitchen, the Reillys moved into Christie’s rooms and unknowingly spent one night with the corpses of four women before they were visited by the landlord, Charles Brown, and thrown out. Three days later, Mr Beresford Brown, a Jamaican who lodged upstairs, was clearing up the mess in the downstairs flat before it was reoccupied, and was inspecting the fabric as he did so. He knocked on a kitchen wall and heard a hollow sound. He tore off a loose piece of patchy wallpaper, covering what had been the coal-cupboard door, and by the light of a torch he saw a naked back through a gap in the boards.
It was not until DCI Griffin, senior police officers and the Home Office pathologist, Dr Camps, had gathered at the house at about 7.30 pm that the cupboard was opened up. Inside were three bodies. They were photographed, and removed in the reverse order of their concealment.
First out was Hectorina MacLennan (Ena), aged twenty-six, from the Hebrides. She was naked apart from her brassiere, and was squatting, head bowed, on a heap of rubble and ash. Next was Kathleen Maloney, also twenty-six. She was partly clothed and wrapped in a blanket, as was Rita Nelson, aged twenty-five, from Belfast; the latter was six months pregnant. The last two had probably been killed towards the end of January, and Ena MacLennan about 6 March. All three prostitutes had had VD and had been strangled with some ligature, not manually. All three had also been gassed – there was carbon monoxide in their blood – but not fatally. All three had a vest or some material between their legs, like a diaper, and intercourse had taken place about the time of their various deaths.
Later that night, the decomposing body of Mrs Christie was discovered under the floorboards of the front room. Although she also wore a kind of diaper there were no signs of intercourse. She had been strangled by some ligature and had not been gassed, injured or bruised.
The morning papers, reporting the finding of the three bodies in the cupboard, must have been read by Christie. He left Rowton House on 25 March, leaving his few belongings in a locker. He wandered about London for six days, sleeping rough, while 10 Rillington Place was stripped and searched and the garden dug up, a disruption that so crazed Christie’s cat that it had to be destroyed. In the garden an assortment of bones was unearthed, which when pieced together formed two skeletons – those of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady. In the yard, a tobacco tin was found that contained four sets of pubic hairs.
Despite the photographs in every newspaper and an intensive police hunt, the thin, bald, middle-aged man with glasses went unobserved until Tuesday, 31 March. At about ten-past nine on a cold grey morning, PC Tom Ledger was walking along the embankment south of the river by Putney Bridge. He saw a shabby, unshaven, hungry-looking down-and-out leaning on the embankment wall, looking at the river.
PC Ledger went up to the man and asked him: ‘What are you doing? Looking for work?’ The man replied: ‘Yes, but my employment cards haven’t come through.’ Ledger asked the man for his name and address and was told it was ‘John Waddington, 35 Westbourne Grove.’ Said Ledger: ‘Have you anything on you to prove your identity?’ ‘Nothing at all,’ the man replied. Some instinct or suspicion prompted the PC to ask the man to remove his hat. He did so, revealing a bald dome, and PC Ledger recognised John Christie.
The wanted man was taken to Putney police station. Coins amounting to 2s 3 1/2d were found on him, as well as a wallet containing identity cards, ration books (his own and his wife’s),
his marriage certificate, a union card, a St John’s Ambulance badge, three pawn tickets, a rent book and a newspaper cutting outlining the evidence Christie had given at the trial of Timothy Evans.
When told by DCI Griffin that his wife’s body had been found under the floorboards of his flat, Christie began to cry. He said: ‘She woke me up. She was choking. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer.’ He then made a long statement describing the murders of his wife and the three prostitutes. He was diffuse and vague, often saying he ‘thought’ or ‘believed’ or ‘must have done’ something and failing to remember details. Not once did he actually admit to strangling any of them, or gassing the last three, or having sex with them. According to him, all four unaccountably seemed to have died after some sort of struggle.
Christie was charged at Notting Hill police station with the murder of his wife and taken to Brixton Prison after a preliminary hearing at the West London magistrates’ court, to which he was accompanied by a very young PC called Bill Waddell, who also sat with him in a cell. That PC would one day become Curator of the Black Museum.
On 15 April, Christie was also charged with the murders of the three women in the cupboard, by which time his lawyers had told him his defence had to be one of insanity. To this end he was interviewed more than ten times by Dr Hobson, a psychologist. At the first interview Christie indignantly denied killing Mrs Evans. But after 22 April, when he first heard that the skeletons in the garden had been dug up and identified, he told Dr Hobson he had also murdered these women, by gas or strangulation or by both.
It was five days later that he said he had killed Beryl Evans – but not the baby, Geraldine. ‘The more the merrier,’ as he remarked to the prison chaplain. On 18 May, Mrs Evans and the baby were exhumed and their bodies examined.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 47