John Christie was an English serial killer who was active in the 1940s and early 1950s. He killed at least eight women in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London by strangulation. One of his victims was his wife Ethel. In March 1953, Christie moved out of his flat and the bodies of three of the victims were found hidden in an alcove in the kitchen not long after. The body of his wife was found underneath floorboards in the front room. He was arrested and convicted of his wife’s murder and was hung.
Early Life of John Christie
Christie was born in the family home near Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire. He was the sixth out of seven children. He and his father had a troubled relationship. Carpet designer, Ernest John Christie was a serious and uncommunicative man and he displayed little emotion towards his children. Christie was dominated by his five sisters and this caused his mother, Mary Hannah Halliday to overprotect him. These experiences all undermined his self-confidence. In later life, Christie was described by his childhood peers as “a queer lad” who “kept himself to himself” and “was not very popular”.
When he was 11, Christie won a scholarship to Halifax Secondary School. It was found that he had an IQ of 128. He sung in the church choir and was a Boy Scout. He left school aged 15 and got a job as an assistant film projectionist.
Christie enlisted in the army in September 1916 and the following April he was called up to join the 52nd Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment. The regiment was despatched to France in April 1918 where Christie was second to the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment as a signalman. In June he was injured in a mustard gas attack and spent one month in a military hospital in Calais. Later on, he claimed that the attack left him blinded and rendered mute for three and a half years. This period of muteness was the apparent reason for Christie’s inability to speak much louder than a whisper for the rest of his life. Author Ludovic Kennedy points out that there was no record of Christie’s blindness ever being traced. Also he says that Christie may well have lost his voice when he was admitted to hospital but he would not have been discharged as being fit for duty if he had remained mute. Kennedy claims that Christie’s inability to talk loudly was a psychological reaction to the gassing as opposed to a lasting toxic effect of the gas. This reaction and Christie exaggerating the effects of the attack, came from an underlying personality disorder which caused him to invent or exaggerate illness as a way of getting attention and sympathy.
Christie has a lifelong problem with impotency. His first attempts at sex were failures and this caused him to be branded “Cant-Do-It Christie” and “Reggie-No-Dick”. Problems with sex remained throughout his life and he could only perform with prostitutes most of the time. Christie married Ethel Simpson on 10th May 1920 but his problems with impotence endured and he carried on using prostitutes. The couple moved to Sheffield but they separated after four years of being married. Christie moved to London and Ethel stayed in Sheffield with her relatives.
Early Criminal Career
Christie received many convictions for criminal offences in the decade after his marriage to Ethel. His first conviction was for stealing postal orders when working as a postman. Fir this he received three months imprisonment. In January 1923 he was convicted of obtaining money on false pretences and violent conduct. He was bound over and out on 12 months’ probation. In 1924 he committed two more acts of larceny and received consecutive sentences of three and six month’s imprisonment. He was convicted of assaulting a prostitute in May 1929 and was given six months hard labour. Christie was also convicted of stealing a car from a priest and he was put in prison for three months in 1933
After his release from prison, Christie and Ethel were reconciled. He was able to end his course of petty crime but not his use of prostitutes. In December 1938, the couple moved into the ground-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Ladbroke Grove. At the time, this was a rather run-down part of London.
When World War II broke out, Christie applied to join the War Reserve Police. The authorities failed to check his background and he was accepted. He was assigned to the Harrow Road Police Station. Here he met a woman and they started an affair. The affair lasted until mid-1943. The woman’s husband was a serving soldier and he returned from the war. He learnt of the affair and went to the house where his wife was living. He found Christie there and assaulted him.
Murders
Ruth Fuerst was the first person Christie admitted killing. She was an Austrian munitions worker and part-time prostitute. He claimed that they met when she was soliciting clienst in a snack bar in Ladbroke Grove. According to statements made by Christie, he impulsively strangled her during sex in August 1943. This happened at Rillington Place and he hid her body firstly beneath floorboards of the front living room, before burying it in the back garden.
At the end of 1943, Christie resigned as Special Constable. He found a new job the following year as a clerk at a radio factory. This was where he met co-worker Muriel Amelia Eady who would become his second victim. In October 1944, Christie invited Eady to his flat and promised her that he had invented a “special mixture” which could cure her bronchitis. He told her to inhale the mixture from a jar which had a tube inserted in the top. The mixture was actually Friar’s Balsam and was used to disguise the smell of domestic gas. Eady was sat breathing the mixture from the tube with her back turned. Christie then proceeded to insert a second tube into the jar connected to a gas tap. As she breathed, Eady inhaled the domestic gas and was soon rendered unconscious. Christie then raped and strangled her. He then buried her body in the back garden.
Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl moved into the top floor flat at Rillington Place during Easter 1948. In October 1948, Beryl gave birth to a daughter named Geraldine. In late 1949 the police were informed by Evans that his wife was dead. The police searched 10 Rillington Place but no trace was found. A later search however revealed the bodies of Beryl and her daughter in an outside wash-house. Autopsies revealed that both victims had been strangled. Beryl had bruises on her face which suggested that he had been assaulted before her death. At first Evans claimed that Christie had killed Beryl in a botched abortion operation. However, under police questioning he confessed eventually to the murder himself. The statement appears forced and artificial however so is thought to have been fabricated by the police themselves. Evans withdrew the confession after being charged and again accused Christie. Evans was put on trial on 11th January 1950 for the murder of his daughter. The prosecution had decided not to pursue a second charge of murdering his wife. Christie was a principal witness for the crown. Despite the revelation of Christie’s criminal records of theft and violence, the jury found Evans guilty. He was hanged on 9th March 1950 after an appeal on 20th February had failed.
Many mistakes were made by police in the handling of the case, especially overlooking the remains of previous victims left in the garden of Rillington Place. For example, one femur was later found to be propping up a fence. The garden was very small and the fence was located next to the was-house where the bodies of Beryl and her daughter Geraldine were later found. Several searches were carried out at the house when Evans confessed to putting his wife in the drains. However, the three policeman involved did not enter the wash-house at any point. Apparently the garden was examined but the visible bones were missed by all the searches. Later Christie confessed that his dog had uncovered a human skull in the garden not long after the police searched it. The skull was removed by Christie and left in a bombed-out house nearby. It was found later and handed in to Notting Hill police station during the investigation but was ignored. A total lack of forensic expertise was shown by the police searches and had they been done efficiently, Christie would have been exposed as the murderer. This would have saved the lives of four women and also Evans.
The evidence of builders who worked at the property was ignored and the various police interviews with Evans suggest that they invented a false confession. He claimed that the body of his wife was located in a drain at the front of the house. The police did not find any remains there though. This failure should have incited a thorough search of the house, wash-room and garden to take place. No further action was taken until the two bodies were found in the wash-room outside though. Also, Evans was totally unaware at his first interview that his daughter was also dead. The police interrogation in London was mismanaged from the beginning, when they showed Evans the clothing of his wife and daughter and revealed they had been found in the wash-room. If Evans had been the killer and confessed honestly to where the body was, the police would have known if he was telling the truth. The several “confessions” which were apparently made by him bear no relation to what he probably said and were likely invented by the police.
All of Christie’s statements were accepted by the police as being factual. They did not probe him further and he ended up being a crucial witness at the trial of Evans. It is important to remember that Christie had criminal convictions for theft and malicious wounding and this makes his testimony questionable.
After Evans’ trial, nearly three years passed with no major incident for Christie. He did lose his job at the Post office Savings Bank due to his criminal past being disclosed in the trial, but he found another job with the British Road Services as a clerk.
New tenants arrived to fill the empty first and second-floor rooms of 10 Rillington Place. They were black immigrants from the West Indies and the Christies were horrified. They considered their new neighbours to be inferior and they loathed living with them. Ethel Christie prosecuted one of her neighbours for assault and this saw tensions come to a head. Christie negotiated with the Poor Man’s Lawyer Centre to remain having exclusive use of the back garden, seemingly to have space between him and the neighbours.
On 14th December 1952, Christie strangled his wife Ethel in bed. She had been seen in public two days before. He made up several stories to explain where she was and stop the possibility of more enquiries being made. Her relatives in Sheffield wrote a letter and he replied saying Ethel had rheumatism and was unable to write herself. He told one neighbour that she was in Sheffield visiting her relatives and told another that she was in Birmingham. Christie had resigned from his job at the start of December and been unemployed since. He sold Ethel’s wedding ring, watch and furniture and went to the Labour Exchange every week to collect his unemployment benefit. On 26th January 1953 he forged Ethel’s signature and emptied her bank account.
Christie killed three more women between 19th January and 6th March 1953. They were; Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina MacLennan. Maloney was a prostitute from the Labbroke Grove area and Nelson was from Belfast. She was visiting her sister who lived in Ladbroke Grove when she met Christie. Christie met MacLennan in a café. She was living in London with her partner, Alex Baker. Christie allowed them to stay at Rillington Place while they were looking for accommodation. He met MacLennan on her own and convinced her to come back to his flat. She did and he murdered her. Baker came looking for her and Christie assured him that he had not seen her. He managed to keep up the pretence and met up with baker regularly to see if there was any news of where she was and helped to look for her.
To kill his final three victims, Christie modified the gassing method he on Muriel Eady. He connected a rubber tube to a gas pipe in the kitchen and kept the tube closed off with a bulldog clip. He sat his victims in the kitchen and the released the clip, allowing the gas to leak into the room. The Brabin Report did point out that Christie’s explanation of his gassing technique was not acceptable because he to would have been overpowered by the gas. It was established, nonetheless that all of his victims had been exposed to carbon monoxide. They became drowsy due to the gas and he then strangled them with rope.
Christie raped his final three victims whilst they were unconscious and he carried on as they died. He quickly gained a reputation for being a necrophilliac when this aspect was crimes was publicly revealed. There is caution against categorising him in this way though. According to his accounts to police, he did not engage sexually with his victims exclusively after death. After murdering each of his final victims, Christie hid their bodies in a small alcove located behind the back kitchen wall. They were semi-naked and wrapped in blankets.
Arrest
On 20th March 1953, Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place. He fraudulently sub-let his flat to a couple from whom he took £7.13s. 0d. (about £181 as of 2013). The landlord visited that evening and when he found the couple there and not Christie, he demanded they leave first thing next morning. He then allowed the tenant to the top floor flat, Beresford brown to have use of Christie’s kitchen. On 24th March, Brown was attempting to insert brackets into wall when he discovered the kitchen alcove. As he peeled the wallpaper back he saw the bodies of Maloney, Nelson and MacLennan. He told the police and citywide search for Christie started.
After leaving his flat, Christie went to a Rowton House in King’s Cross. He booked a room for seven nights using his real name and address. He stayed for four nights and left on 24th March when news of the discovery of the bodies at his flat broke. He then wandered around London, spending most of his time in cafes. On 31st March Christie was challenged about his identity by a policeman on the embankment near Putney Bridge and arrested.
Conviction and Execution
Christie confessed to seven murders whilst in custody. His victims were the three women sound in the kitchen alcove, his wife and the two women found in the back garden. He also confessed to the murder of Beryl Evans but he denied killing Geraldine Evans.
Christie was tried only for the murder of his wife Ethel. The trial started on 22nd June, 1953 and held in the same court than Evans was tried three years previously. Christie pleaded insanity and he said that he had a poor memory of the events. His plea was rejected by the jury and he was found guilty after 85 minutes deliberation. On 15th July he was hanged at Pentonville Prison by Albert Pierrepoint. Pierrepoint had also hanged Evans.
Later Developments
Rillington Place was renamed Ruston Close in 1954, the year after Christie’s execution. Number 10 continued in multiple occupation however. The three families who lived there in 1970 would not move out for the shooting of the 1971 film “10 Rillington Place”. It was therefore filmed in the empty number 7.
In January 2003 Timothy Evan’s sister, Eileen Ashby and his half-sister, Mary Westlake, were awarded ex-gratia payments by the Home Office as compensation for the miscarriage of justice in Timothy Evan’s trial. Lord Brenna QC. was the idependent assessor for the Home Office and accepted that “the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans for the murder of his child was wrongful and a miscarriage of justice. There is no evidence to implicate Timothy Evans in the murder of his wife. She was most probably murdered by Christie.” He believed that due to Christie’s confessions and conviction, the Brabin’s report conclusion that Evans probably murdered his wife should be rejected.
Possible other Murders
There has been speculation that Christie was responsible for more murders than those that took place a 10 Rillington Place, based on the pubic hair that he collected. He claimed that the four different clumps of hair in his collection were taken from his wife and the three bodies found in the kitchen alcove. However, only one matched the hair type on those bodies, Ethel Christie’s. Even if two of the others had come from the bodies of Eady and Fuerst, there was still one clump of hair no accounted for and it could not have come from Beryl Evans.