Inside 10 Rillington Place: John Christie and me, the untold truth

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This is the story of John Christie’s horrific reign of terror and how Timothy Evans paid the price for it. John Christie’s Troubled Youth And First Forays Into Crime Rita Nelson, 25, was last seen alive on January 13, 1953, and is thought to have been killed by January 19. Kathleen Maloney, a 26 year-old local prostitute, was last seen in early to mid January but was probably killed after Rita Nelson. Hectorina Maclennan, 26, was killed at some point before Christie moved out of the flat on March 20, 1953. Four years later in August 1943 he committed his first murder, strangling Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian munitions factory worker, in his bed while his wife was away.

But there is nothing very new about that theory, first proposed by Christie himself when questioned by the police, and subsequently repeated in any number of books. Sci-fi writer John Newton Chance, supported by the well-known Express columnist Robert Pitman, published a book, The Crimes of Rillington Place, insisting on Evans’s guilt. Crime writer Robert Furneaux had previously produced The Two Stranglers of Rillington Place (1961), not to be confused with The Two Killers of Rillington Place (1994), the work of John Eddowes, who insisted that Evans had been a violent psychopath. Beryl’s surviving brother, Peter Thorley, has written a fascinating account of life inside Rillington Place. It was soon joined by a second victim, Muriel Amelia Eady, a 32 year-old colleague, on 7 October 1944. Relentlessly disparaged and misrepresented as having been a prostitute – she was not – by those to whom truth is evidently either inconvenient or simply unimportant. The book should be read by any and all who have an interest in the subject and by the legions of readers, and viewers, whose perceived knowledge and understanding derive from the mass of previous works, that of Ludovic Kennedy in 1961 chief among them.

Christie was arrested on March 31 on the Embankment near Putney Bridge and went on trial at the Old Bailey on June 22 but was charged only with the murder of his wife. His defence was that he was mad and as a consequence the body of Beryl Evans was exhumed to see if it contained traces of carbon monoxide poisoning – like Christie’s other victims – it didn’t for very obvious reasons. This gives the reader the impression that the judge did not give a summation and left the jury with only the barristers’ last words to consider before they brought in their verdict. At the age of 11, Christie won a scholarship to Halifax Secondary School, where his favourite subject was mathematics, particularly algebra. He was also good at history and woodwork. [6] [7] It was later found that Christie had an IQ of 128. [8] He also attended Boothtown Council School (also known as Boothtown Board School) in Northowram. Christie sang in the church choir and was a Boy Scout. After leaving school on 22 April 1913, [6] he entered employment as an assistant projectionist. [9] See for instance Marston's summary of barrister Geoffrey Bing's criticism of the trial, p. 100: "Bing pointed out that Evans's guilt depended on two incredible coincidences. The first was that two murderers, living in the same house but acting independently, strangled women... The second was as extraordinary as the first: that Evans accused the one man in London who was strangling women in the identical way that he, Evans, had strangled his wife and child". Aged 85 years at the time of publication, it follows that Thorley was but fourteen in 1949 when the fateful events occurred that deprived him of his sister and niece, and the book provides a most credible, moving and compelling account of what really went on at that house, recounted in a way, and in such detail, that only someone who was actually present and deeply involved could ever have brought forth.

We then start to hear the rather incongruous-seeming strains of Whispering Grass (Don’t Tell The Trees) – a popular song first heard on the radio in 1940. But in the early 1970s – after the film 10 Rillington Place was filmed – the whole street was demolished. As I note in my original post about the book, it is not without its issues and, having been involved myself at the time as a sort of technical consultant cum proofreader, it was and is frustrating to see certain things make it through to the published work despite them having been flagged up during the writing stages. I know that the Thorleys were less than thrilled with the final outcome and did not feel as though their story had in all respects been best served by the publishers. But the murders for which John Christie’s name is most widely known occurred in November 1949 — murders for which another man was hanged. Timothy Evans Moves Into 10 Rillington PlaceOn November 30, he went to a Merthyr Tydfil police station where he told the police he had killed his wife. Shortly before Beryl died, she told Thorley how scared she was of Evans, and gave him her wedding ring for safekeeping, believing her husband would pawn it. He still has it now. She also told him Evans had threatened to kill her. He added: ‘They decided to not build anything on this land and it’s not listed as contaminated, but as a memorial garden.’ I want her here, next to me when I go,” he explains. “But this book is the final chapter. This is it now. This is what I know happened.” Christie carried on with his own life, getting a job as a clerk and taking on new tenants at 10 Rillington Place.

Her husband, an illiterate van driver, was handy with his fists and spent money on gambling and drinking.First, I should have said that if Christie did help Evans in disposing of the evidence, in retrospect his best bet would obviously have been to leave things as they were and call the police himself. But hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s understandable if his first reaction was to panic and try to “manage” the situation himself. Still, I dare say that point was clear enough.