Movies - 10 Rillington Place

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10 Rillington Place, Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, London, was the site of the crimes of John Reginald Christie, one of Britain's most notorious serial killers, resulting in a miscarriage of justice which contributed towards the abolition of the death penalty in Britain. 10 Rillington Place is also the title of a book on the case by Ludovic Kennedy published in 1965, and a 1970 movie directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Richard Attenborough as Christie, John Hurt as Timothy Evans and Judy Geeson as Beryl Evans.

Summary

John Reginald Halliday Christie and his wife Ethel lived in the ground floor flat of 10 Rillington Place from 1938. At Easter 1948 Timothy Evans, a 24-year-old Welshman, and his wife Beryl moved in to the top floor flat, and shortly afterwards their daughter, Geraldine, was born. In the summer of 1949 Beryl became pregnant again, but she could not afford to support another child and was desperate for an abortion, which was illegal in the UK at that time. Also aware that her husband, a lapsed Catholic, would object to an abortion, Beryl made discreet enquiries and mentioned the problem to John Christie.

Although he had no medical qualifications, Christie persuaded her to let him carry out the abortion. On 8 November 1949, Evans returned home to be told by Christie that the abortion had gone wrong and that Beryl was dead. Evans, a weak and gullible character who was quite likely mentally retarded, agreed to help Christie move the body into the empty flat on the first floor and let a neighbour take care of the child.

Dazed and confused, Evans went to work the next day, and when he returned, Christie told him that Geraldine was being looked after by a family in nearby Acton, and that he would dispose of Beryl's body down a manhole. He suggested that Evans leave London. Evans agreed, and stayed with an aunt in his native South Wales, but three weeks later, wracked by guilt, he went to the police station in Merthyr Tydfil. He told a detective that he had disposed of his wife's body, but implied that she had died after drinking an abortifacient concoction. When the police investigated the drains outside 10 Rillington Place they found nothing. Evans then made another statement, this time implicating Christie as a bungling abortionist. Police made another search of 10 Rillington Place and found the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine hidden in a wash-house.

Timothy Evans as prime suspect

At this point the police thought they were dealing with a run-of-the-mill domestic murder. Investigation showed that both mother and child had been strangled, which contradicted Evans' account. Evans was brought back to London where, without legal advice, he made a third statement admitting that he had strangled his wife, killed his daughter two days later, and hidden the bodies in the wash-house.

At the trial at the Old Bailey in January 1950, barely six weeks after Evans' arrest, two important facts were withheld from the jury. There was evidence that Beryl had been sexually assaulted after death, which was inconsistent with Evans' statement; and two workmen, who were willing to testify that there were no bodies in the wash-house when they worked there several days after Evans supposedly hid them, were never called to give evidence. In fact Christie moved the bodies to the wash-house two weeks later, after the workmen had finished their work.

On 13 January 1950 the jury took only 40 minutes to find Evans guilty of his daughter's murder. It had been decided not to charge him with his wife's murder as the evidence was considered less strong. His appeal was rejected on 20 February 1950, and on 9 March 1950, Albert Pierrepoint hanged Timothy Evans at Pentonville prison, London.

New murders by Christie

By December 1952, Ethel Christie was in poor health with chronic arthritis and rheumatism. John Christie later claimed that he only put her out of her misery by strangling her, which he did on the morning of 14 December. He kept up the pretence that Ethel was alive, writing letters to her sister in Sheffield, altering the date from the 10th to the 15th on one letter, and claiming her arthritis prevented her from writing in person.

Over the next three months, Christie invited three prostitutes back to 10 Rillington Place and murdered them. Nobody missed Kathleen Maloney from Southampton or Rita Nelson from Belfast, but Hectorina MacLennan was seen with Christie by her boyfriend, Alex Baker. Christie claimed that MacLennan had wandered off and kept up the pretence for two weeks, asking Baker how she was. Baker assumed that she had gone back to Scotland.

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