Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook - Season 1, Episode 5 - John Christie | Forensic Files

Christie was the classic ambiguous serial killer he was filthy but he was also fastidious Christie was a monster
that have been going for years and murdering girls left right and center there was a sexual element in the
killing that gave it a ghoulish glamour in 1953 the police entered number 10 Rillington place in London it was simply
a house of Hollies the scene of eight horrific murders the man believed to be responsible for these brutal killings
was John Reginald Christie 60 years on I want to find out how this decade of destruction went undetected and how
Christie was able to frame one of his neighbors Timothy Evans for a murder he didn't commit
[Music] I'm Fred Dynegy as the official biographer for the Kray twins I've learned firsthand that when
it comes to crime there's always more to the story than meets the eye that's why I'm reinvestigating the
sickening murders committed by John Reginald Christie in the 1940s and 50s he gained the trust of vulnerable women
and exploited that trust to sexually abuse and then kill them hiding their bodies in his house how did he get away
with it and why wasn't he brought to justice earlier John Reginald Christie was born
in Halifax in 1899 one of seven children he was the youngest male amongst a large
d-- female household and he resented the fact the girls in the family had power over him it made him crave the
opportunity for authority someone who knows a lot about John Christie is Edward master an author with a passion
for historical crime very obedient boy they're bright at school he joined the scouts and he sang
in the choir when he joined the scouts they gave him a rather nice uniform and he wore it when he wasn't supposed to he
just loved the idea because it gave him definition it gave him an authority gave
him a kind of a a role to play if you like women played an important role in Christie's life one of his first teenage
sexual experiences is believed to have made a significant impact the way viewed the opposite sex the girl with whom he
went was slightly more experienced and he wasn't able to have sex with her of course she told her friend who told
the rest of them and suddenly his nicknames became can't do it Christie or Reggie no dick and that's very
humiliating if you're in a small community the problems Christie suffered in the lane
were to haunt him throughout his life I want to know if these frustrations played a pivotal role in Christie
becoming a serial killer professor David Wilson is a leading expert in understanding the criminal
mind here's the thing Fred which I think has quite a big and marked impact on Christie's development as a killer
he has impotence problems certainly when he's dealing with a woman who can exercise her own power the power that
comes from her gender and I think that has quite a big pattern on the way that Christie is going to behave later with
those women that he kills after leaving school Christie worked as a cinema operator and then a postman when he was
21 he met Ethel Waddington she was plain and homely after a short courtship they
married the manage appear to be happy for a while he admitted later that sex was always
very sporadic between the two of them so there was no possibility of children obviously he then took the job was the
postman which I've mentioned before and began to steal postal orders which meant
he went to prison for a short period of time and suddenly this image of reg Christie began to crumble a little
Christie became addicted to the CEDIA parts of life his release from prison he separated
from his wife Ethel and traveled to London and then for a 10-year period we have this kind of Twilight Zone where he
lives in the criminal underworld visiting prostitutes mixing with lowlife having a job here losing a job they're
not having any particular home just sort of drifting and going into prison three
or four times by the beginning of the Second World War Christie came to the conclusion he
wanted respectability so he persuaded his wife Ethel to return to him the Christie's relocated to Notting Hill
in London and moved into a small flat in ten Rivington place here nobody knew of
Christie's criminal past he set out to establish himself as a respected member of the community he's on the virtus
meant in the paper for the police reserve he applied didn't mention the fact that he had couldn't four
convictions of course and foolishly they didn't check so reg Christie the convicted criminal
is suddenly in uniform as a symbol of you know all that good and the right side of the law and of course being a
special constable that gives him further opportunities to meet and engage with people specifically young women that he
might want to have some power and control over indeed he's so fastidious in his role as a special constable
the neighbors described him as the Himmler of Rillington place Christie's position gave him power over the
community and he exploited it and having worked with the the criminal underworld
prostitutes would give him free entertainment should we say if he turned a blind eye to their soliciting and so
on so from his point of view it was wonderful I'm gonna meet a man who remembers wartime Britain very well he's
96 year old Len Trevelyan who saw service as an RAF pilot and also as an officer in the Metropolitan Police he
came face to face with Christie can you describe to me in place what it was like it was a
little cul-de-sac was a brick wolf right across the road at the end of 10 Rillington pressed and the houses there
were all occupied Multi multi tenants astray and fog to a room brilliance in place was in a poor
neighborhood however it was a perfect location for the now respectable Christi to continue with his senior pastime and
in that sort of rulings in place area I mean how big a problem was prostitution at that time many people had lost their
husbands or the girlfriends who had boyfriends that killed in the war so there are a lot of women with no men
folk behind them and the only way they could get a living was prostitution with no contraceptive
pill and no legal abortion many of the women found themselves with unwanted pregnancies Len Trevelyan believes
Kristi and his wife Ethel capitalized upon this carrying out illegal abortions in their kitchen they had this deck
chair in the kitchen down below and the girls would sit in this deck chair we had strings across the base of it and so
his wife was able to perform the abortion he had a rubber tube from the the gas stove and a tin fashioned I can
mask at the end and they used to put the girls out with coal gas so they were working a little scheme it's working
very well it's Lenz belief that the Christie's became well known amongst ladies in the
area for their procedures but life changed for a while when in 1943 Ethel went to visit with her sister in
Sheffield with his wife away Kristy became involved with a local prostitute Ruth first was an Austrian emigres she
came over to this country to train as a nurse but by the time she meets Christie
in 1943 she's by and large selling sexual services to American Air Force Minh in other words she's working as a
prostitute with Christie's wife away Ruth became a regular visitor to his ground floor flat
where he paid for her services Christie gets a telegram from his wife saying she's coming back from Sheffield and I
think he doesn't want to take the chance that Ruth's first isn't going to spread
rumors about him isn't going to turn up at 10 Rillington place demand to speak to Ethel Christie mrs. Christie and tell
her exactly what's been happening and I think it's that telegram that causes Christie to think he'll have to dispose
of Ruth just during their final sexual encounter Christie strangled Ruth years later he would tell the police she was
completely naked I tried to put her clothes back on her she had a leopard-skin coat and I wrapped this
around her I took her from the bedroom and put her under the floorboards of course killing someone is the ultimate
form of power the ultimate expression of the control that you have over that particular victim so clearly this is the
beginning of that sexual fetish that he has emerging Christie's first murder had
given him a thrill he was soon looking for another victim to satisfy his desires Christie carried on without a
care in the world he'd given up his job as a special constable and was now working at the ultra radio works in
Acton it was there that he met Muriel Edie Muriel Edie came from a respectable family spinster in her 30s they met
regularly in the canteen over a meal and she grew to trust him and she had this problem with Qatar and
she talked about that and that's what I set his mind rolling with his wife away Christie offered to cure Muriel of her
affliction using a breathing device when she visited 10 Rillington place he put a
mask on her face it was connected to the gas that gas will render Muriel Edie unconscious and I think Christie enjoys
having women unconscious because that way he can control them further as opposed to a
living breathing woman who's going to have her own views about what might be happening in terms of their relationship
with his victim unconscious Kristi had sex with Muriel and then he produced a rope and strangled her we have this
phrase about I felt this wonderful sense of excitement and this wonderful sense of of release which could only happen
not with his wife but with people in this situation Christie had now taken the lives of two young women Ruth fewest
and Muriel Edie he buried their bodies in his back garden nobody knew they'd been visiting
Christie it meant he was free to continue his murder spree and it wouldn't take him long to strike again
I'm Fred Tyler's and I'm reinvestigating the murders committed by the infamous serial killer John Reginald
Christine by 1947 he'd strangled two women and buried their bodies in his garden at 10 Rillington place this was
just the beginning of his killing spree Christie hid behind an air of respectability working as a ledger Clark
at the post office it's alleged that he along with his wife Ethel also helped out women who found themselves with
unwanted pregnancies in 1948 a couple by the name of Evans moved into the flat above the Christie's Tim and Beryl Evans
were expecting their first child and they quickly attracted the attention of their sinister neighbor here's this
young couple moved from Wales to with the Evanses from Wales moves into London trying to get a job this is a young man
in his mid-20s newly married working as a van driver and crucially has an IQ reputedly to be around 70 and he's got
this wife as well but Christie clearly is interested in because that we know know of course that Chrissie
interested sexually in young women that he can have power over the Evanses had their first baby geraldine but family
life wasn't all they'd hoped it would be the cramped and squalid conditions of railings in place weren't ideal to raise
a child the problem came when she conceived a second child and suddenly panic set in they were all short of
money he was earning seven pounds a week and could make it up to eight pounds but
then not had to cover the payments on whether rental obviously the payments on the furniture and all the other things
are known to barrel John Christy had learnt of her situation and was preparing a way to solve barrels problem
barrel is panicking she wants to have an abortion first of all her husband was against it so she tries to give herself
an abortion by taking pills inevitably Christy got to hear about it and said look I can solve this problem you know
and Evans went along with the notion that Christy would go up and perform this in fact he came down his wife said
Wendy go downstairs tell Christy it's alright which he did then he went off to work
little did Timothy Evans know he was leaving his wife in the hands of a murderer on his return Evans was told by
Christy that he'd tried to carry out an abortion on barrel but tragically she died during the procedure when Timothy
comes back from work that particular evening Christy reveals his your wife has died and you're to blame he said to
Evans well of course I go to prison but you know so would you because you're an accessory so what we have to do is cover
this happen barrels body was dumped into an empty room in 10 Rillington place Christy told
Tim he'd get rid of her body down a manhole outside evans was now left looking after his baby and having to
explain the disappearance of her mother with an IQ well below the average of 100
Evans was susceptible to another idea from his neighbor Christy so Christy said I've
got a childless couple in East Acton who would take the child on and see that she
was properly brought up and you could go back and see her you know eventually of
course these people didn't exist but as far as Evans of a concern they did the key thing that Christy would be telling
Evans is that you have to get out of London but don't imagine that Timothy Evans is going to behave logically
Timothy Evans was a young man clearly stressed clearly doesn't know how to react and is listening to somebody who
he thinks is looking out for his best interests so he simply does as he's told with his beloved wife dead
it's believed Evans made the decision to leave his child in the care of Christie
he then fled to Wales to stay with relatives both Beryl and Tim's family started to ask questions about his wife
and child's whereabouts Paul the 30th of November unable to maintain the pretense any longer and
wracked with guilt Tim went to the police station in Merthyr Tydfil he was cautioned and he made the first
of the two statements in mirtha did though the first said my wife died in an abortion and I disposed of her down the
manhole outside the police visited rulings in place searched the manhole and found nothing if they'd looked
elsewhere they might have found the hidden bodies of Christie's victims at this point
Evans implicated Christie claiming he'd played a part in her death in his statement to the police he said I asked
him how long she'd been dead he said since three o'clock then he told me my wife's stomach had been septic poisoned
the police paid another visit to Rillington place and this time knocked on the door of John Christie the
Christie's presented a united front denying any wrongdoing the word of this respectable middle-aged couple appeared
to be worth more than that of working class ever but of course you've got a young man
who's disappeared out of London and then reports his wife as being murdered he tells the police she's going to be found
in a particular drain that's a lie so the police don't have any reason to believe Timothy Evans Christie told the
police that his neighbour Evans was an abusive alcoholic the police quickly established that barrel and the baby
were missing and carried out a full-scale search of Rillington place behind a woodpile in the wash house they
uncovered the remains of Tim's wife Beryl and most shockingly that of baby Geraldine they'd both been strangled but
the suspicion of guilt didn't fall upon Christie he was taken to see the bodies at the mortuary but he was shocked by
the fact that his daughter was dead because he'd come back firmly believing that Geraldine was still alive and he
came up with the story about you know where they've gone to people in in East Acton after a lengthy interrogation at
Notting Hill police station the easily led Evans changed his story once again he confessed to the murders of his wife
and child briefly explained to me if you can how the system of statements worked
at that time a CID officer we were trained take it they had to go in a course and learned how to take
statements and statements are taken from prisoners under caution and they write down his answers in those days it was no
typewriting or recordings they had to write out his statements and get into assignment and acknowledging the
statements given in this case were crucial Evans had difficulty reading and writing so his account was dictated to
the police I'm gonna meet dr. John Olsen one of the leading experts in forensic linguistics who believes a full-stop is
just as revealing as a blood-stained knife if you think of language as being something which is very formal at one
end there very informal at the so at the higher end of this we would get what is called police register and
at the other end we would get what we would call very colloquial language what we find in the oven statements is a
complete mix but in the Merthyr Tydfil statements we don't find a great deal of mixture of register it is mote it is
fairly faithful to the way that that evidence probably would have spoken what about when we get to the statements made
to the police at Notting Hill police station I think we have a completely different situation can you illustrate
that yes we can see that I've put a blue rectangle around the first sentence there where it says she was incurring
one debt after another he wouldn't have said this is incurring absolutely not and this is very high register language
yes and here we have I would think a number of examples of police type language we have squandering I accused
her of squandering the money not a word evidence whatever of you I don't think so I don't think so it's a
little bit like incurring yeah it's kind of it doesn't really belong there I feel
and then that started a terrific argument in my house but I can't see you know a very ordinary chap from the
valleys who's grown up in London very little education using a phrase like terrific argument you know we had a
bloody Rao is probably what he would have said do you suppose Evans actually understood fully what he was alleged to
have signed and said no not at all on the 11th of January 1950 Timothy Evans went on trial at the Old Bailey charged
with the murder of his daughter Geraldine by now he'd retracted his earlier statements of guilt and
professed that Christie was guilty of the murders the trial would bring him face to face
with his neighbor when he got to the trial of course he pleaded not guilty was horrified at the idea that they
thought he'd killed his daughter but by this stage the evidence against him as presented was overwhelming you know here
was a man lived with a woman needed to get rid of the child killed her in a row bruh said the to Christie's swore that
they'd heard a thud in the room above and here was the man who'd been policeman and you had to talk to
policemen who've been in quarter number of times you who knew the ropes so Christie sold him down there Christie
sold him around the river and of course was the chief witness the trial lasted three days and after just 40 minutes of
deliberation the jury found Evans guilty of murder he was sentenced to death Christie's evidence had been
instrumental in convicting the trusting young man the bodies of the two other women Christie had previously killed
remained undiscovered he was still free from suspicion as the Christie's left court
Evans's mother shouted at him murderer murderer Ethel Christie's wife left to his
defence don't you dare call my husband a murderer she said he's a good man while
Christie went off on holiday to Sheffield Evans appealed to the Home Secretary mr. Tudor Ede but was
unsuccessful Timothy John Evans was hacked on March the 9th 1950 at Pentonville prison he
protested his innocence to the end but it did no good in the eyes of the law the case was closed they had their man
or so they thought [Music] I'm Fred Dodge and I'm investigating the sinister murders committed at number 10
Rillington place the home of serial killer John Reginald Christie by 1954 people had
been murdered in the house the police unaware of the first two had found Timothy Evans responsible for the latest
deaths and the young man had been hanged no one suspected Christie's involvement
in these crimes or indeed any other life in 10 Rillington place had changed since
the death of Beryl and Geraldine Evans a new landlord had filled the empty flats
Christie didn't want the new residents to discover the two bodies of Ruth Urist and Muriel Edie he disposed of on the
premises faced with increased comings and goings from their neighbors tensions between Ethel and John Christie began to
rise well here you've got Christie after Evans as hanged as he must have felt he's got away with her again he must
have felt powerful again I think interestingly the Ethel Christie's wife exercises some kind of informal control
over Christie's behavior but her relationship with Christie is breaking down so the two of them living close
together began to argue much more she was very depressed she was on tablets and they came a point I think when she
must have known rather more that she wanted to began to put two and two together you know there must have been
seeds of doubt in her mind and I think when they were close together and nothing else to do but be close together
Ethel began to challenge him nobody can really be sure why but on the 14th of December 1952 Christie decided to turn
his attention to Ethel he strangled his wife in their bed with a stocking unlike
his previous murders he didn't take advantage of her sexually his wife of 32 years had now become just another victim
Christie wrapped her body in a blanket and play under the floorboards the key thing for
me is where do the bodies go to because he is already disposed of the bodies of two murder victims in the garden but he
chooses to bury Ethel by prising up the floorboards in the ground floor flat of Rillington place and leaving her under
the floorboard so every day that he's walking back and forth across his landing he's walking on his wife this is
again a way of demonstrating in a very symbolic way the control that he must have had over her just days after the
murder a theft occurred in another of the flats in 10 Rillington place policemen lend Trevelyan paid christy a
visit and was invited in to the killer's home when I went up to tell Christy about this arrest that I made in his
house afterwards I interviewed him in his front room and in conversation I said to him what a terrible stink you've
got in this house Christy can't you do something about it he said well it's all these colored people and their strange
cooking it makes him a terrible smell and I thought well that doesn't fit him with this and I didn't realize then that
I was standing over the room and so first of all I founded the floorboards where understanding when I spoke to him
afterwards in you know when he was being arrested and when I was chatting to him
in his cell and and he said when I said your wife body was found under the floor
he said yes he said now you perhaps you realize what that smell was it you were talking about when you came out to tell
me about the the prisoner in later years Len Trevelyan believed he learned the motives behind the murder and how close
Christy had become to being caught did Christy explains he I I said to him what what happened after
the girls were operated on he said well we have to put them into the front room to recover and this was his downfall
he said well when she found me interfering with the girls she threatened to expose me and tell the
police about me he said and and I I couldn't and we struggled and I had an argument with her and and eventually I
strangled her in in the struggle Christy explained his wife's disappearance by telling people she'd gone to visit her
sick sister in Birmingham with an empty house he was now free to indulge his deadly desires and went looking for new
victims Rita Nelson worked at a local tea shop and found herself with an unwanted
pregnancy she turned to Christy for a solution he claimed that she met him outside a
pub and pursued him came back I firmly believe she came back because he said he could give her an abortion and part of
the abortion of course would have been the famous gassing treatment that he had where he would offer her something which
appeared to be curative and in fact was gas which would have rendered her unable
to defend herself in in the the chair and then he would have had his way with them
Reiter had gone to Christy for help yet she became the sixth victim to be murdered at 10 Rillington place the
serial killer was out of control then he puts her into an alcove from the kitchen
just had a little sort of cupboard on the front Bund her in there shortly afterwards there's another lady
who comes along casting Maloney someone he knows with whom he's had intercourse before and again he takes her back she
was drunk so there was no possibility of you know too much resistance and again strangling intercourse and he'd rather
forgot about it she left her in this the deck chair all night then woke up and found her there and then shoved it into
the alcove which wasn't very large so he put her on her back with a legs in the air so he kept - there with his wife
under the floorboards I think Ethel exercised some informal control over her husband's behavior and with Ethel out
the way hidden under the floorboards the numbers of victims increase and the gap
between victims narrows now crucially Fred remember this kind of idea that the serial killer at the end of a killing
cycle simply inhabits operates in the world that makes sense to that killer rather than makes sense in any cognitive
way that you and I might recognize Christy was murdering vulnerable women he knew wouldn't be missed
hector inna McLennan was in need of somewhere to live Christie heard about her plight and
offered her his flat but she wasn't alone hector inna had a boyfriend called alex
baker who moved in with her christy wasn't impressed but still let them stay after three days they decided to leave
Christy asked her to pay him one final visit before she moved on it would be her fatal mistake he strangled 26 year
old hector inna before taking advantage of her christy then took her body to the
alcove placing it alongside his previous two victims cause baker came expecting to find her there and Christy said she
never turned up let's let's search the house so they searched the whole house for when she wasn't there Christy made
him a cup of tea to calm him down they searched the streets in a search that Christy knew was totally futile and for
the next few days he went and saw Baker kept saying is that he used you know what the hell has happened to her but
all the time he knew exactly what happened behind closed doors Christy was becoming nervous the bodies of his
victims were literally beginning to stack up Christy took the decision he needed to move away from the scene of
his crimes but with no money he decided to sublet the flat Christy then met two people called the really husband and
wife and persuaded them that he was the landlord and that they could move in and
he took the rent off them for quite a you know I think I'm like 3 or 3 or 4 weeks in advance Christy then packed up
everything that he thought was important and off he went Christy vanished leaving behind the
house that had bore witness to eight murders and still contained six of the bodies so by the end of a killing spree
a serial killer as psychologically disintegrating he's no longer thinking in any way that you and I could
recognize as logical some people argue that they disintegrate because they want to be caught because they're basically
saying stop me whereas I tend to think given some of the people I've worked with it's not so
much that that they want to be caught it's because they're so filled with power because frankly if you've got away
with propping up a trellis in your garden with the bone of Muriel Edie and nobody's ever noticed that if you've
been putting your wife under the floorboards and nobody's ever noticed that the smell is overpowering of course
you're gonna think you can get away with anything on the 24th of March 1953 Beresford Browne a new tenant and number
10 was fixing a bracket to the kitchen wall he noticed wallpaper covering an alcove
on ripping the covering off he was the first to see the true horror Christie and left behind once again the police
were called to 10 Rillington place this time they left no stone unturned they found three bodies in the alcove under
the floorboards they found Christie's wife Ethel and in the garden they unearthed more remains bone after bone
was retrieved forming the skeletons of Ruth fewest and Muriel eating by March 1953 10 Rillington place and
turned into a real house of horrors the discovery of six bodies started the hunt
for a ruthless killer a killer who'd spent a decade living as a real-life Jekyll and Hyde just how had this serial
killer got away with murder I'm Fred Dinah and I'm investigating the hideous crimes committed by John Reginald
Christie he was a man responsible for the murder of at least six women one of whom had been his wife many believe he'd
also killed Beryl Evans and her baby Geraldine and allowed Timothy Evans to hang for the crime by 1953 Christie was
on the run the police launched one of Britain's biggest ever man hunts having uncovered a scene of devastation at his
flat they discovered the bodies of six women hidden at ten rulings in place several of them had never been declared
missing and Christie had covered the murder of his wife by telling people she was away visiting relatives he got money
from his wife's bank account just over ten pounds and Katie was on the run and he was crumbling he went straight to a
rotten house which is a place for down-and-out it's where you slept in a huge room with all the beds kicked
behind jail with each other made no attempt to disguise his identity and gave his insurance card and so on
and then just sort of drifted wandered through London how he slept and we don't know
[Music] on the 31st of March a man was stopped by police on the embankment near Putney
bridge he called himself John Warrington on further inspection it was obvious that
this man was in fact the sadistic killer they were looking for it was Christie he was taken to Putney police station
and accused of murdering his wife Ethel Christie claimed it was a mercy killing he'd awoken and discovered her
convulsing unable to breathe he then went on to describe the other killings as acts of self-defense or accidents
he had a capacity for deliberately forgetting things of putting unpleasant things in a part of his mind that he
closed the door as it were so he always showed himself in the good life he's added the victim of these women when
they come back they attack him he has to fight them off and somehow I don't know
how they fall dead at my feet I doesn't mention the gasps thing and he doesn't mention the the intercourse that he had
with them he's either a mercy killer with his wife or in the case of Vettel Evans he's there to help her commit
suicide which again you know could be seen in in a certain life Christie was aware that if he was tried and found
guilty of the murders he'd be executed by distancing himself from them and portraying himself as insane he'd have
an opportunity to escape the gallows forensic linguist John Olsen has examined the statements Christie made
and thinks they reveal how cunning he was so he was it was a good use of languages articulate and in my
experience when the police are dealing was a very articulate clearly spoken person then they are not going to alter
that language in any way although it was all about him he had this way of kind of
making himself invisible in the text can you show can he give any certainly can I
hear he says the statement I made on the fifth June 1953 is true so far as I remember what happened except that a
square scarf was not used when the gas was inhaled if I can just point out what's actually happening there when he
says a-square scarf was not used he's actually saying I didn't use a scarf to kill this woman to put over a head so
that she couldn't get any air but he's phrasing it in this very impersonal way as though it was almost somebody else
who's doing the action sort of absent humans he's himself definitely absent in himself yes
ordinarily you'd look at that and think did the police write that well no absolutely not that is that is the way
that he if you look throughout his statements and throughout his testimony he always absents himself away from the
eyes and ears of his interrogators Christie had a different story that he would tell to one of his guards then
Trevelyan I was called upon to sit in with him and chat to him and he recognized me as being the person who
had spoken to him some time before you know when I went to his house so he was he was willing to chat he was pleased to
get it off his chest and I I did say so these last three girls they were pregnant he said well he said I couldn't
tell them that my wife was not there to do the abortion he said so I had to keep
them quiet and if they were dead they couldn't talk about it he said one and then I hoped there would be no more but
then in due course were two others came he said and I dealt with them the same way he said but I'm afraid each one of
them I did indulge in sexual intercourse with them when they were dead Christie was charged with the murder of four
women the law meant he could only be tried for one the prosecution decided the strongest
case was for the murder of his wife Ethel once he got to prison his attitude trained him and if you if you watch him
in photographs when he was arrested he's doing things like this but when he gets
to prison suddenly he becomes well not exactly a glamour boy but he's a bit of a special
case you know he'd been involved not just in murders but there is sex involved which is something very unusual
at that stage most serial killers love inserting themselves into the heart of the story it gives them that sense of
power of celebrity that often they've desired in the past but can't gain in any legitimate way and so of course
Christie would be like that he would follow the papers he would enjoy the attention on the 22nd of June 1953 it
was standing room only in court number one at the Old Bailey journalists and the public filled the gallery keen to
see the man whose crimes had shocked Britain Christie was trying for the murder of his wife Ethel in a trial that
lasted only four days when asked if he'd committed more murders than were known about he replied I can't say exactly I
might have done Christie's testimony would be crucial in determining whether he was fully responsible for the murders
or was insane while giving evidence he showed no emotion about the murders of his last three victims it was only when
talking about his wife's murder that he burst into tears the psychiatrist who supported that defense was a man called
Hobson gave a very convincing account but the other two psychiatrist who spoken to him and Great Lengths both
said he had a hysterical personality but that doesn't mean to say that he was insane he knew exactly what he was doing
and this calculation involved at every stage of the game this man planned these things Christie also admitted to
murdering fellow rulings and place resident Beryl Evans but there was one murder he refused to
take responsibility for the crime that Timothy Evans had hanged for that was the Evanses baby Geraldine well
he never admitted to gentleman's death he said why should I kill a small child like that what he knew that it would
destroy the image of himself that he was trying to build up this man who was involved in one killing which we could
be a mercy killing and three in which he was basically defending himself also he
knew that he if he went into prison as a child killer he would be view very differently than us or somebody went in
as a sex killer because if you kill a child a lot of the prisoners have families
with small children and he's more likely to be attacked and beaten up in his summing up justice Fenimore said that
just because a man acted like a monster it did not mean he was insane after just
one hour and 20 minutes of deliberating the jury returned a verdict of guilty Christi was sentenced to death by
hanging for the murder of his wife whilst awaiting his fate at Pentonville prison Christi received a letter from
Timothy Evans his mother in it she begged Christi to admit to killing the baby Geraldine that her son had been
hanged for Christi not only refused but he also retracted his statement that had
said he'd killed Beryl Evans why do serial killers in the Maine not confess to all the killings they've
committed serial killers that I've worked with never want to speak about those things I think partly because it's
the ultimate form of control often they've been seeking power and control in creating victims that power and
control has lost taken away from them after they've been arrested so how do they then regain that sense of power and
control and what they do is they refuse to talk they refuse to discuss anything whatsoever about the crime it's the
ultimate form of power and control they can exercise even after conviction on the 15th of July 1953 john reginald
christie was hanged at Pentonville prison but even after his death his crimes and confessions
left questions unarmed at Christie's admission to murdering Beryl Evans during his trial led to
several inquiries in 1966 Timothy Evans received a posthumous royal pardon but attempts to formally quash his
conviction have failed the judicial review in 2004 described Timothy Evans his fate as an historic and unique
injustice Evans had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had inadvertently moved into a murderers
lair 10 Rillington place has now been flattened and erased from the London map but the atrocities that John Christie
committed in the house of horrors will never ever be forgotten [Music]

Brief Summary

John Reginald Christie murdered multiple women and framed Timothy Evans, leading to a wrongful execution.

Key points

The Rise of John Reginald Christie. Exploring the life of Christie, a man who gained the trust of vulnerable women and exploited it for his horrific crimes.
The Tragic Fate of Beryl Evans. Timothy Evans leaves his wife in the hands of a murderer, leading to a tragic outcome.
The Trial of Timothy Evans. Timothy Evans goes on trial for the murder of his daughter, facing overwhelming evidence against him.
The Murder of Ethel Christie. John Christie strangled his wife Ethel in their bed, marking a turning point in his crimes.
Discovery of the Bodies. In March 1953, police uncovered six bodies at 10 Rillington Place, revealing Christie's horrific crimes.
Christie's Trial. During his trial, Christie showed no emotion about his victims, only breaking down when discussing Ethel.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How did he get away with it?

1:40WatchOct 4, 2019

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.