I'm a day late with this, my apologies.
On the 9th of March 1950 Albert Pierrepoint and Sydney Dernley killed Timothy Evans at Pentonville Prison in the manner then prescribed in British law, the 'long drop' form of hanging.
Evans had been born in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales on 20 November 1924. He had a troubled childhood, his father abandoned his family just before Timothy was born. In addition to his mother he had an older sister (Eileen) a younger half-sister (Maureen) born after his mother remarried in 1928 and a step-brother.
Timothy was, in the parlance of the time, 'slow'; the exact nature and extent of his mental retardation isn't known but he left school functionally illiterate and with a permanent problem walking, from a infected sore on his right foot that never completely healed.
Evans worked as a painter and decorator in London, and in the coal mines of his native Merthyr Tydfil, before finding work as a delivery driver in London. He was unfit for military service in WW2. In 1947 he married Beryl Thorley and their daughter, Geraldine, was born on 10 October 1948. At the time they were living with the extended Evans/Probert family in St Mark's Road, Notting Hill. The couple decided they wanted a place of their own (their marriage had been rocky and they'd separated for a period) and moved to a flat in a converted house quite near Evans's family at 10 Rillington Place.
Also living in the house, in a ground floor flat, was a man named John Christie and his wife Ethel.
Christie had been a soldier in the First World War, where he'd been gassed leaving him with life-long health problems. During the Second World War he'd served as a Special Constable (police reservist) during the Blitz. This shouldn't have been possible as he had a lengthy criminal record for theft and assault. When he and Evans met Christie was working as a Post Office Savings Bank clerk (also something that should have been prevented by his criminal record).
The exact events of the winter of 1949 are still not known. It's probable that Beryl Evans sought to terminate her second pregnancy (completely illegal at the time) and Christie offered to perform the abortion. On 8 November Christie told Evans that his wife had died during the operation, though it's virtually certain that he murdered her. This was probably Christie's third killing.
Christie convinced Evans to leave London, telling him that he's dispose of the corpse and arrange for a couple he knew to take Geraldine in. On 30 November 1949 Evans told police at Merthyr Tydfil that he had accidentally killed his wife after giving her an abortifacient and disposed of her remains in a sewer drain outside 10 Rillington Place. This story was disproved when police examined the drain and found no remains. Later he changed his account and told police of a botched abortion and that Christie refused to tell him where his daughter was. Based on this police searched 10 Rillington Place but managed to fail to find anything. This was despite the presence of two corpses buried in the small (fifteen square metre) garden, the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans in a wash-house and a human thigh bone supporting a fence post. After the search a dog owned by Christie dug up the skull of one of his earlier victims which he disposed of in a nearby bomb site. Despite this being found and handed in to police it wasn't connected to the missing women.
During a second search, on 2 December 1949, the police managed to find the bodies of the Evans's, but missed the other bodies.
Evans was shown clothing taken from the bodies of his wife and child and informed that both had been strangled. This was how Evans learned his daughter was dead. When asked by police if he was responsible for their deaths he allegedly answered "yes, yes". He later "confessed" to killing his wife after an argument over money, and to strangling Geraldine two days later.
Later investigation revealed that most of the "confession" was dictated to Evans by police investigators. There was no forensic evidence liking him specifically to the murders and he was threatened and abused by police while in custody.
The trial began on 11 January. Evans was accused only of the murder of his daughter, and claimed that Christie had committed the murders. The judge was visible biased (and slept through part of the case) and witnesses who could have ruined the prosecution case were intimidated by police.
The trial lasted three days and after deliberating for less than 40 minutes the jury found him guilty. Two months later he was dead.
Three years later police searched 10 Rillington Place again, after a new tenant found human remains. Parts of six female bodies were found including Ethel Christie. Christie admitted the crimes and was hanged on 15 July 1953, also by Albert Pierrepoint. An enquiry into the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans in 1953 reiterated his guilt and dismissed Christie's confessions to both murders. It was widely derided. A second enquiry in 1965 stated that Evans wasn't guilty of the murder of his daughter (the only crime he was convicted of) but that he "probably" murdered his wife. Evans was pardoned in 1966. In 2003 the UK's Home Office accepted Evans was innocent of both murders but his conviction has never been formally quashed.
The execution of Timothy Evans was one of the three cases (along with the hanging of Ruth Ellis and Derek Bentley) which changed public opinion in the UK and caused the moratorium and (eventually) termination of the death penalty in the UK.
And there you have it; a saga of police incompetence and corruption, witness intimidation, judicial bias and an illiterate Welsh van driver.
It could never happen today of course.
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