Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  It was not until 5 June, however, that Christie made a statement to the police in the presence of his solicitors, saying he was responsible for the deaths of Miss Fuerst and Miss Eady. For the first time he mentioned strangling and gassing, though confusedly, and admitted for the first time that he had had intercourse with his victims. In his last statement, made on 8 June, he described how he had killed Beryl Evans.

  He said that in November 1949 he disturbed her in a suicide attempt – she was lying on a quilt on the kitchen floor with the gas on. The next day he happened to go upstairs at lunchtime, he said, and she asked him to help her commit suicide:

  She begged of me to help her to go through with it … She said she would do anything if I would help her. I think she was referring to letting me be intimate with her … She lay on the quilt … I got on my knees but found I was not physically able of having intercourse with her owing to the fact that I had fibrositis in my back and enteritis. We were both fully dressed. I turned the gas tap on … held it close to her face. When she became unconscious I turned the tap off. I was going to try again to have intercourse with her but it was impossible … I think that’s when I strangled her. I think it was with a stocking …

  When Evans returned that evening, Christie told him his wife had gassed herself. Evans carried her body into the other room and put it on the bed:

  I told Evans that no doubt he would be suspected of having done it because of the rows and fights he had had with his wife. He seemed to think the same. He said he would bring the van down … and take her away and leave her somewhere … He did not know his wife had been strangled … I never mentioned it to him. I never had intercourse with Mrs Evans at any time. We were just friendly acquaintances, nothing more. I went up that first afternoon to have a cup of tea … I had some shoring timber and old floorboards from my front room which had been left behind by the work people and I asked Evans to take it to the yard for me, as I could not carry it owing to my fibrositis … I suggested he put it in the wash-house out of the way. I saw it in the wash-house afterwards and some of it was stacked in front of the sink … I feel certain I strangled Mrs Evans and I think it was with a stocking. I did it because she appealed to me to help her to commit suicide … I don’t know anything about what happened to the Evans’s baby.

  He then went on to say that he had gassed the three prostitutes as they sat in the deckchair by the kitchen window. He attached a piece of rubber piping to the plugged gas-pipe at the window – ‘I put a kink in the tube with a bulldog clip to stop the gas escaping’ – and, letting it dangle behind the chair, he then removed the clip.

  Some substantiation of this was provided by the fact that a bulldog clip and a piece of half-inch rubber tubing were discovered in the flat – although how did he avoid being gassed himself? However, his version of Beryl Evans’s death, about the assisted suicide and the invitation to intercourse, seems most unlikely. Few activities, let alone these, are likely to be contemplated or carried out by a sick man suffering from backache and diarrhoea. The autopsies on Beryl Evans showed that she had not been gassed, that she had been punched more than once, and strangled not with a stocking but with a rope. However, he may well have tried, when unexpectedly provided with an inert female body, to have intercourse with her, after her death.

  Whatever the truth, it seems that Christie’s self-love was such that he could admit to nothing nasty or perverted about himself. Reluctantly and cautiously he confessed, not to ‘murder’, but to having killed. And he tried to dignify and obscure his motives and his actions as much as he could. In no circumstances would he ever admit, to himself above all, to such vile and vicious behaviour as baby-killing, sadism, onanism, abortion and necrophilia.

  Was there, nonetheless, some truth in Evans’s story about the fatal abortion attempt? One fact contradicts this, and poses many more questions – a fact that was mentioned at both trials but never attested to. In the week that Beryl Evans died, there were workmen in the house as well as in the yard. Two were actually at work on the wash-house, repairing the roof, pointing and plastering. It was not a big job, but they worked slowly, storing their tools and equipment in the wash-house overnight. They finished working on the roof on Tuesday, 8 November (the day Beryl Evans is said to have died), but did not finish their plastering until the Friday, when they removed their tools and left the wash-house bright and empty.

  In addition to these two workmen there was a carpenter at work inside the house, repairing the floorboards in the front room and in the hall. He worked from Thursday the 10th until noon on Monday the 14th, when at Christie’s request he gave Christie the broken bits of floorboard for firewood.

  The presence of workmen in and about one’s house is disruptive at the best of times. They make requests and require cups of tea. It is most unlikely in these circumstances, with workmen and Mrs Christie in the house, that Christie planned an abortion, which could have waited until the following week, or have carried out a murder. After all, it was only when he was alone in the house that he felt safe enough to set about killing the first two and the last three of his victims.

  It is, however, conceivable that at night, in the heat of a row, Evans might well have struck and strangled his wife. But if so, how could he or Christie or both of them have put her body in the unfinished wash-house? There can be little error about the workmen’s dates – their employer kept time-sheets, and they all made statements in 1949 to the police. These statements were never, it seems, supplied to Evans’s counsel and never used by the prosecution, probably because they made nonsense of Timothy Evans’s confession of murder (on which the prosecution based their case) in respect of his alleged date of the disposal of the bodies.

  Were the bodies hidden in Kitchener’s flat until Monday evening, by which time all the workmen had gone and Evans had sold his furniture? And if Beryl’s body was put in the wash-house on Monday night, was that why Evans caught such a late train, at 12.55 am, to South Wales?

  Perhaps Christie, investigating the bumps and movement of the Tuesday night, came across Beryl’s body in Kitchener’s flat the following day. What would he do? He would hardly welcome the attentions of the police. But her body might have invited the attempt at intercourse that he later described. Later that night, avowedly anxious to help Evans, might he not have advised Evans to leave everything to him, to sell up and go? And might not the concealment of the bodies in the wash-house have been a temporary measure, as it had been with Fuerst and Eady? Might not Christie have intended burying the bodies, but have been prevented from doing so because of his fibrositis? All might have been well, as far as he was concerned, if Evans had kept quiet. This he failed to do. But what, unless it were a feeling of guilt, led Evans to make that first odd confession to the Merthyr police?

  The trial of John Reginald Halliday Christie for the murder of his wife began in the Number 1 Court at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Finnemore on Monday, 22 June 1953. The Attorney-General, Sir Lionel Heald, was the prosecutor and Mr Curtis-Bennett, QC, appeared for the defence, which aimed to show that Christie was guilty but insane.

  It was Curtis-Bennett who brought the attention of the court to the murders of all seven women, including that of Mrs Evans, which the accused said he had also committed. His memory of events, however, was poor and vague. Christie spoke slowly, with long pauses, and in such a low voice that a microphone was set up so that he could be heard.

  The only other witness for the defence was Dr Hobson, who said the accused suffered from gross hysteria which affected his reason, and that it was highly probable that at the time of the crime he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. Hobson also noted:

  He has this abnormal memory. I am prepared to believe that the abnormality of his memory is in some way purposeful, but that he himself is not aware of the fact that it is motivated … He often makes statements one after the other which to the listener seem self-contradictory, but Christie is unable to see the contradiction. I found … that thos
e things about which he has been most certain, and most sure, and most indignant when the opposite was suggested, were things we ultimately found him most mistaken about or deceiving himself about.

  He was most indignant, said Dr Hobson, when it was suggested that his wife had died in other ways and for other reasons than those described by Christie, and that he had picked up Kathleen Maloney in a pub. Dr Hobson said: ‘I have never … felt able to place any reliance on any of his statements without confirming the facts externally … I think he has tried to be as cooperative as possible. I believe that these tricks of memory, or avoidance of getting down to disturbing topics, is to preserve his own self-respect … rather than to avoid incriminating himself.’

  Dr Matheson, prison doctor at Brixton, appearing for the prosecution in rebuttal, described Christie thus:

  He is a man of weak character. He is immature. Certainly in his sex life he is immature. He is a man who in difficult times and in the face of problems tends to exaggerate in an hysterical fashion … I would call him not a man suffering from hysteria, but a man with an hysterical personality … He spoke quite freely, but when it came to what might be incriminating facts … he became vague, and started saying: ‘Well, it must have been so’ – ‘I think it must be that’ – ‘I can’t be certain’ – ‘I can’t remember.’

  Dr Curran, a psychiatrist, who also interviewed Christie on behalf of the prosecution, said he was ‘an inadequate personality with hysterical features, and a very extraordinary and abnormal man’.

  Summarising the ward reports, Dr Curran stated:

  Christie was somewhat emotional, tremulous and fearful on admission but soon settled down. He has been meticulously clean and tidy in his person and habits. He has always kept himself well occupied. He has mixed freely with the other patients. He has been noticeably egocentric and conceited. He keeps a photograph of himself in his cell. He has been a great talker and has seemed to enjoy discussing his case, bringing the conversation round to it. He has been cheerful and boastful. He has compared himself to Haigh. He has admitted in conversation that he ‘did some of them in’. He appeared to be above average intelligence He has always been polite and well behaved … He has slept well, his appetite has been good and he has gained 11 pounds in weight.

  Dr Curran added: ‘I do not believe Christie’s alleged loss of memory is genuine. It is in my opinion too inconsistent, variable, patchy and selective to be genuine … His lies seem to be purposive if not convincing … [He has] like many other criminals and murderers, a remarkable capacity for dismissing the unpleasant from his mind … He is a man with a remarkable capacity for self-deception.’

  The trial ended on 25 June 1953. The jury were out for eighty-five minutes, and found Christie guilty of the murder of his wife. He was sentenced to death.

  Much unease was felt before and after the trial about the case of Timothy Evans. Had an innocent man been hanged? As a result, a private enquiry initiated by the Home Secretary, Mr David Maxwell-Fyfe, QC, MP, was carried out by a senior QC, Mr John Scott Henderson. After reading all the relevant depositions, documents, transcripts and briefs, including the statements of the workmen, and after interviewing the police and lawyers concerned as well as Christie himself – who was more guarded and ambiguous than ever – Scott Henderson concluded that Evans had killed both his wife and child. His report was published on 13 July and presented to parliament.

  On 15 July Christie, was hanged in Pentonville Prison by Albert Pierrepoint, who had also hanged Evans. Pierrepoint was assisted this time by Harry Smith. Christie’s height was noted the previous afternoon as being 5 ft 8 1/2 in, his weight being 149 lb.

  A large, raucous crowd had gathered overnight in the Caledonian Road. In the morning, when Pierrepoint and Smith entered the condemned cell less than a minute before 9 am, they observed that Christie was regarding the chaplain and his final ministrations with a sneer. They swiftly secured Christie’s thin wrists before Pierrepoint removed Christie’s spectacles. As the door leading to the drop was opened, Pierrepoint noticed the look on Christie’s face. He recalled later: ‘It was more than terror … At that moment I knew Christie would have given anything in his power to postpone his own death.’ He stumbled towards it, and seemed as if he would faint.

  Some Labour MPs believed that the Scott Henderson report was a piece of official white-washing aimed at protecting the police, and so the matter was strongly debated in the House of Commons two weeks later, on 29 July. The Home Secretary refused to order a public enquiry. The report was again debated in November, and the Evans case continued to be discussed whenever the issue of the abolition of the death penalty was raised.

  On 10 February 1955, the Rt Hon James Chuter Ede, who had been Home Secretary at the time of Evans’s trial and execution, told the Commons: ‘I think Evans’s case shows … that a mistake was possible, and that, in the form in which the verdict was actually given … a mistake was made.’

  Later the death penalty was abolished for most crimes in a free vote in the Commons. But the pressure to re-investigate the murder of Beryl Evans and her daughter continued.

  In the winter of 1965-6, the case was reheard in public by Mr Justice Brabin. The main hearings of the enquiry covered thirty-two days. In a definitive report, published by HMSO in 1966, the judge concluded that it was ‘more probable than not’ that Evans had killed his wife, but that he did not kill his daughter. As Evans had been convicted and hanged for the murder of Geraldine, and not of his wife, he was given a free and posthumous pardon. His remains were exhumed and reburied outside Pentonville Prison.

  Among all the uncertainties of his statements, Christie had said ‘I feel certain’ twice – that he strangled Mrs Evans – and that the pubic hairs in the two-ounce tobacco tin found in the yard came from the three women in the cupboard and from his wife.

  It is highly likely that his very certainty indicated a lie. He later amended this second certainty, telling his solicitor that one of the sets of hair in the tin might have come from Beryl Evans. Forensic experts established that the type of one of the four teased-out tufts was the same as Beryl’s, but was also common to millions of women and could not in fact have been cut from her at the time of her death. One of the souvenirs was of a type that could have come from Mrs Christie. But none could have come from the three prostitutes, although two of the trophies might have come from Muriel Eady and Ruth Fuerst. It was impossible to be sure.

  On the other hand, all four could have come from four separate and completely unknown women.

  It was Christie who claimed ownership of the tobacco tin. But was it his? It could have belonged to Timothy Evans – he was a heavy smoker and Christie never smoked at all. Or did the tin have nothing to do with either, having been thrown into the yard by Mr Kitchener or some other occupant of 10 Rillington Place?

  On 13 July 1955, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Ruth Ellis, was executed in Holloway Prison for the murder of her lover. The executioner was Albert Pierrepoint. He resigned the following year on 23 February 1956 and was succeeded by Harry Allen and Jock Stewart, who between them carried out thirty-five executions over the next eight years.

  The real reason for Pierrepoint’s resignation was not known at the time. What had happened was that in January 1956 he was employed to carry out an execution in Manchester. The night before the execution, after Pierrepoint had got everything ready, the condemned man, called Bancroft, was reprieved. The snowy weather was so bad that night that Pierrepoint stayed overnight in a Manchester hotel, driving back home to his wife in the Rose and Crown at Hoole, near Preston in Lancashire, the following morning. Because of the reprieve, the £25 he would have received for a hanging wasn’t paid. In due course he received £1 for his expenses. He was so offended he returned the pound ‘with his compliments’. The sum of £4 then arrived in the post. He sent it back and resigned. In March his memoirs began to be serialised in the Empire News for a very large sum of money. The Home Office intervened, and after a third
instalment the articles came to an end.

  Albert Pierrepoint died in a nursing home at Southport on 10 July 1992; he was 87. During his 23 years as a hangman he had been involved in the executions of 435 people. In his autobiography he wrote, in 1974: ‘Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.’

  Mr Sidney Silverman’s Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill, given a second reading in 1956 in the Commons by 286 votes to 262, was rejected by the House of Lords. However, in March 1957 the Homicide Act was passed. The death penalty was now only to be exacted for five kinds of murder (a) committed in the course or furtherance of theft, (b) caused by shooting or by an explosion, (c) in the course or for the purpose of resisting or avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest, (d) of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty or a person so assisting him, (e) of a prison officer or murder done by a prisoner. A previously convicted murderer who killed again could also be sentenced to death.

  45

  JOHN DONALD MERRETT

  THE MURDERS OF VERA CHESNEY AND LADY MENZIES, 1954

  Unlike lightning, murderers sometimes strike twice. More than one convicted murderer has within a year or two of his release from jail or Broadmoor killed again. In fact, about one per cent of the dangerous criminals released from Broadmoor commit crimes similar to those for which they were incarcerated. Donald Merrett’s murders are doubly unusual, however, in that they occurred twenty-seven years apart.

  Vera Chesney, aged forty-two, was surprised to see her forty-five-year-old husband, Ronald Chesney, on the night of 10 February 1954. Not only had she seen little of him in recent years, but the last time he called on her in the old people’s home she ran with her mother in Montpelier Road north of Ealing Broadway, he had looked quite different. He had then been his usual self, hugely extrovert, if unusually amiable, and with his bulk, his beard, his big nose and one gold earring, he looked as piratical as ever. They had had a fine night out, going to the cinema and downing quantities of gin, Vera’s favourite tipple. Now, exactly a week later, he was back again and quite altered – without a beard or the earring, with his hair brushed back and wearing horn-rimmed glasses.