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The Murderer at 10 Rillington Place

6 January

Timothy Evans with Beryl and Geraldine, and Beryl's sister.
John Christie
Timothy Evans

This week we discuss the murders at number 10 Rillington Place. Timothy Evans was found guilty of, and executed for, the murders of his wife and daughter, Beryl and Geraldine Evans. But Timothy accused his downstairs neighbour of the murders, the key witness for the prosecution, John Christie. Joe talks about the miscarriage of justice and Sandra proposes new monikers for serial killers.

Joe got his information from:

Sandra got her information from:

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

Yeah! You loser.

Speaking of losers, how's your day been? [Laughter]

Uneventful, is how my day has been.

I have a feeling I might keep you on the phone for a while today, because I feel a bit depressed and this is the only plans I've had...

For the entirety of this year.

Yep. And also, I don't have two days to edit the episode, so if I take three hours on this, I don't mind.

So what you're saying is, this is going to be full of burps and toilet breaks

That is the gist of it, yeah. Also, I've thought about one thing, and that is that you have a tendency to duck out when you're laughing. Like duck away from the microphone.

Well, I can't duck away from the microphone because it's fixed to my headset. So your thought is full of poop.

Yeah. Maybe it's because my laughter is so fucking loud. [Laughter] It mutes... It mutes you.

Well, maybe because I usually laugh silently.

Yeah, maybe.

I'm not a loud laugher, I'm not you. [Makes honking sound] That's my impression of you laughing.

[Music]

So do you know what day it is?

It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. I'm your host Sandra.

And I'm your host miserable bastard.

That's Joe, by the way.

They know who it is, we don't get any new listeners.

Some people listen to just one episode, then they don't know who you are. Although you are the miserable bastard, so.

Well there you go then, problem solved.

The miserable bastard is Joe. Today we're going to talk about the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans. I got my information from wikipedia, an article on medium by Andrew Paul Shakespeare, an article on whales online by Jason Evans, an article in the montreal gazette from 1953 and all that's interesting.com. And a house of lords debate from 1966.

I got my sources from the wiki wiki wah, a parliamentary debate from 1961, and some other places that I do not remember, but will be available on the website - midweekmurders.netlify.app. You're lucky that I remembered.

So Timothy Evans entered the police station in the south of Wales on the...

Merthyr Tydfil.

What?

That's the police station, Merthyr Tydfil.

Oh. I didn't write it down because I didn't think I would be able to pronounce it.

Merthyr.

Merthyr.

Tydfil.

Tydfil.

Exactly. Now with a Welsh accent, Merthyr Tydfil.

...entered a police station in the south [Laughter]

In the south of Wales on the 30th of november 1949, telling the police that he was worried about his 18 months old daughter Geraldine. The police asked him where the mother of the child was, to which he answered that she had died in unusual circumstances. He went on to tell police that his wife Beryl had been pregnant, but the couple had decided on an abortion, which was illegal at the time, as they couldn't handle the financial strain of a second child. He then told police that he had been given a bottle of some unknown liquid, by a man who had told him that this would lead to a termination of the pregnancy. He stated that Beryl had drunk the contents of the mystery bottle, and had died shortly after. He claimed that he had then disposed of Beryl's body by putting it down a manhole situated outside the couple's home in Notting Hill, London. He also said that he had arranged for somebody to take care of Geraldine before going back to his hometown in Wales. In Wales, his relatives had become worried for his wife and daughter, as they suspected that Timothy had abandoned them because of the pregnancy. They wanted to know where his daughter was, and as Timothy failed to locate her, they persuaded him to go to the police. So the police searched the home at number 10 Rillington Place, and realized that the manhole cover required three men to remove. Also, they did not find a body down there.

They did not find no body.

Timothy then recounted his quote-unquote confession, and told the police that his downstairs neighbor had offered to perform an abortion on Beryl. Timothy now told them that he had returned from work on the 8th of November, the day that the quote-unquote abortion was supposed to have taken place, to the news that his wife had died due to complications. His neighbor, John Christie, informed him that he would put Beryl's body down the manhole, and make sure Geraldine was taken care of by giving her up for adoption. Christie then urged Timothy to get out of London and lay low somewhere, as he claimed that the police would be looking for him. The police returned to Rillington Place to perform a second search of the home, and this time they found the bodies of both Beryl and Geraldine wrapped in a table cloth in the wash house situated in the garden. They had both been strangled. I'm guessing that a wash house is a house in the garden with, like, some kind of laundry...

Yeah. I think it all would have been external to the main house.

Timothy had been in solitary confinement for two days before he was shown articles of clothing that the bodies had been wearing, and identified them as belonging to Beryl and Geraldine. He was then interrogated for hours, and threatened with violence should he not cooperate. They wanted him to sign the confession. The confession they wanted him to sign though, stated that he had strangled Beryl on the 8th following an argument, and then two days later murdered his daughter, before traveling to Wales. And Timothy was described as having the IQ of a 12 year old, and was more or less illiterate. The confession however, was coherent and worded in a way that makes it implausible that Timothy had much input in what it said at all. And with this, I kind of mean that it sounded like it was put in a narrative that the police wanted things to have happened.

Yeah. So I think it was examined later, not at the time, and they found that there were quote linguistic discrepancies between what you would expect someone with the IQ of between 10 and 12 to be able to articulate, and common phraseology that the police would use.

obviously you would need to be of a

certain

iq to be able to register to be in the

police

and that linguistic investigation found

that the written statement from timothy

didn't match with the iq levels

of his reported ability

the thing that was also a problem was

that

timothy when he left school he could

more or less write his name

that was it yeah i mean you see a

confession that's been

doctored by the police so when you write

a confession it has to be

your own words and for someone

illiterate obviously they would have had

to dictate it

but at the same time you would expect

that level of dictation to be the same

wow your noise cancelling headphones did

not cancel that out

i just opened it i'm sorry i

heard that clearly so yeah the level of

his iq means that he wouldn't have been

able to write

which means that he would have had to

dictate his statement but also

given his level of iq he wouldn't have

been able to

come up with complex sentence structures

or words that weren't necessarily in the

common vernacular and so when you look

at

the statement and compare it to what you

would expect to come from

a 10 to 12 year old child which was

his mental ability and there were

obvious

signs that this didn't correlate

particularly strongly

timothy evans was put on trial for the

murder of his daughter

on the 11th of january 1950.

at this point he had withdrawn the

signed confession

on the advice of his lawyer he claimed

that his

second confession had been truthful and

that

john christie his neighbor was the

culprit

the prosecution loft this off in court

as fantastic even though christy had

previously

served six months in jail for hitting a

woman in the head

with a cricket bat what's more

is that people living at number 10

really can

place could only access the wash house

by using a knife to unlock it that knife

was in the possession of ethel christie

john's wife which i feel like is weird

because how the hell do you have an

outhouse

that is just unlocked with a knife

not a key a knife i'm like

that is weird i feel like it's a very

basic latch mechanism that

latches from the inside and so the only

way to open it

is to put a knife to be able to release

the latch that makes sense that it was

like an

inside job yeah like a

poorly designed or broken

latch mechanism seems to be the only way

that that would make sense i also read

that it was

like an adjacent to their

flat john christie and ethel's fat

adjacent to

their kitchen so probably they could

open it from the inside

maybe yeah there might have been an

alternative route

in so the notting hill

police had also talked to some builders

who were making repairs to number 10

ridlington place at the time when the

murders

took place the builders had stored their

tools

in the wash house and assured the police

that the bodies had not been there

when timothy had left wales as they had

thoroughly cleaned it out when they

finished work on the 11th

of november yeah so it's theorized

that beryl was killed on the 8th

yeah geraldine was killed on the 10th

the builders would have cleaned the

outhouse on the 11th

and then would have given the

spare timber on the 14th

okay and also noticeably timothy

traveled to wales on the 10th

i think yeah and was theorized to have

hidden barrel between the 8th and the

10th

yeah so the police forced the builders

to amend their statements

and they were not summoned to give

evidence in court

also the workers timesheet was

a piece of evidence that was submitted

to the police

to corroborate the workers story that

they'd been working

at least until the 11th so they

submitted that

to the police and then the police

conveniently

lost it did they

yes they did and then got the workers

to change it from there were definitely

no bodies on the 11th when they cleared

the wash house to they did not see

any bodies but that does not mean there

were not any

i'm quite sure that they would have oh

they

definitely would have found anybody's

and

the fact that the police conveniently

lost this piece of evidence that

irrefutably

cleared timothy and showed that he

couldn't have dumped the bodies

in the wash house in the times that the

police indicating he could

because it didn't fit with their

theories

eloquently said so john and essel

christie were the prosecutors

key witnesses john denied having offered

to help

terminate beryl's pregnancy and in turn

offered up evidence of timothy's

and barrow's frequent loud arguments

apparently timothy might have had an

alcohol issue he might have been

physical

in those arguments and the other

neighbors could attest to this as well

which does sound damning

it does statistically make sense

i'm not surprised that the police

believed this theory because no i'm not

either

very common yeah it doesn't take a leap

of logic

to come to that conclusion but also

there is a history of domestic abuse

therefore

the husband did it is not okay there is

a history of domestic abuse

therefore husband is prime suspect no

problem with that as long as it's

investigated fully and sufficiently

looking at you crown court in this case

the jury were reportedly also swayed by

the fact that john christie had been a

volunteer

part-time police officer during world

war

ii which is funny because our last case

he was also a part-time police officer

so

what we're saying is all pcsos are

murderers

so much of the evidence collected during

the investigation was never

showed to the jury and they took only

40 minutes to reach a guilty

verdict timothy evans was hanged

on the 9th of march 1950

which is also my birthday so happy

birthday to me

not it's my birthday i can cry if i want

to

three years later john christie was

discovered to be a

serial killer he had moved out of his

flat

and when an upstairs neighbor had

started using the christie's kitchen

he discovered the bodies of three women

kathleen maloney rita nelson and

hectorina mclennan hidden

in a concealed kitchen pantry

and with concealed i mean i think they

kind of plastered the wall but not

plastered just with paper

paper the wall which is weird but i

think that was it

no i don't know and then so

john christie i did read about his

childhood blah blah blah

i felt like some of the things from his

childhood was

worth mentioning his father was

very strict he was also

mentioned to have an overprotective

mother

which i was like who doesn't have an

overprotective mother he was also called

to have been

teased by his sisters older sisters

i'm like all siblings tease their

younger

siblings that's just what siblings are

did you get teased by your siblings all

the time

yeah you just have one older sibling

but let me tell you that's what siblings

are no i mean my mum wasn't

overprotective she

popped me out from a vag and was like

there you go there's the world

fend for yourself

but i mean like my mother was very

overprotective

that's life trying to deal with it mate

that's what all the people say

riding high in april shut down

me he also had a lifelong

problem with impotence

he was branded as reggie no dick

and can't do it christy

[Music]

which i feel like should be what we

call serial killers i [ __ ] love can't

do it christy that's

right that's great we should dub him

that because

what the [ __ ] is his deal he's a

pathetic

man can't do christy great moniker

like we should call golden state killer

small

dick joe because

[Music]

some of us are genetically predisposed

but he should be called up because

golden state killer

is a bit menacing we should just call

him small dick joe because

people have been assaulted by him

have described it as a very small dick

we should call him small dick joke we

should call

the zodiac killer can't spell paradise

because they recently did you read about

this

i've read that they decoded some of his

letters

yeah they decoded a coded letter from

him

very recently and turns out he

can't spell paradise i don't think that

will catch on you probably should have

worked on that a bit harder before

publicizing it to the world

true story but we should call him

paradise because he can't [ __ ] spell

or

maybe zodiac can't spell that'll be good

needs work i get your point work a bit

harder on the zodiac

so during a further search done by

police three more bodies were discovered

christie's wife ethel ruth

first an austrian nurse and

muriel edie a former colleague

of john christie and they were buried

not his wife but the other two were

buried in

shallow graves in the garden which

should have been discovered when they

looked for

beryl and geraldine was this the one

where there was a thigh bone propping up

his garden trellis

yes and the police came out of that

search and they were like nah nothing

suspicious in the garden

it's all good it's like [ __ ] hell

mate

it's a thigh bone in a fence yes

somebody needs a better prescription in

their glasses

and also one of their skulls

were reportedly discovered by

children in the area oh yeah that they

submitted to the police

yeah and the police were like oh random

skull

nah can't be relevant yeah exactly

all six victims had been strangled

and wrapped up in fabric just like

beryl and geraldine john christie then

confessed to the murder of beryl

evans on four different occasions

but he never confessed to the murder of

geraldine

but everybody knew everybody knew

apart from the people that were

involved in his prosecution because

everybody that were involved in

his prosecution said that he only

pleaded guilty for murdering beryl

to rack up the number of people he

killed

to support his claim of insanity oh

that's the only reason that they were

like oh yeah you killed barrel did you

because you're insane

they weren't like oh barrel died same mo

as all the other victims that you've

murdered and stashed away in your house

must have been you

no it was like beryl yeah only claiming

that to get away with insanity

[ __ ] 1950s judicial system was

[ __ ] rigged mate

although he did confess to necrophilia

on barrel and on the other victims

well that's an interesting point as well

dr tyr i think his name is pronounced

so he was the guy that did the autopsy

of

beryl and there are multiple sources out

there saying that the evidence he gave

at trial

has been disputed both at the time

and afterwards so he said

that he found vaginal bruising

which coincides with all of the other

christie victims either at the time or

just

after the trial he said he couldn't be

sure

whether that bruising was inflicted

pre or post-mortem

to be fair to dr teal is quite hard

to determine the exact time the bruising

would occur mainly because the body will

naturally bruise postmortem

which is how you can tell if a body has

been moved

post-mortem so if you imagine your

body's pumping all your blood around

happy as larry

hearts like yeah

look at me i'm alive i'm so happy

and then it dies

if you're laying down on your back

naturally gravity will cause all of your

blood

to pull on your back and the back of

your legs

and so on so if someone's died on their

back

and then been moved post-mortem

somewhere else and been laid on their

stomach a

forensic pathologist will be able to

tell that this body has been moved

because all of the blood pooling is on

their back

now when you get more localized to

things

like vaginal bruising which are very

common

in forced sexual situations

it's a lot harder to tell whether that's

been inflicted

pre or post-mortem because of the higher

rate of blood flow

and the fact that the blood flow will

naturally pull

downwards towards the anus

but the indication that there was

bruising

in the internal walls of the vaginal

canal

would indicate that the penetration

occurred during life or

very soon after death

which kind of doesn't lean towards the

necrophilia

that has been reported and was

supposedly confessed

there's one way that would have been the

easiest

to prove timothy's innocence

and christie's guilt and that would have

been

to test the seminal fluid that was

recovered forensically

from beryl's vaginal cavity

yeah oh god they didn't test it john

chrissy was executed on the 15th

of july 1953

by the same hangman who had executed

timothy evans as the noose was lowered

over john christie's head he complained

about his nose

itching which he couldn't do anything

about seeing

as his hands were tied behind his back

the hangman replied it won't bother you

for

long which is a great bit of

morbid banter did i tell you about john

christie's

hypochondriac hippopotamus

hippopotamuses hypochondria

ism hypochondriac

[Laughter]

queen eye

self-diagnosis of multiple diseases

what is it called hypochondriac

ism

what is it called i don't know what the

present participle of it

is okay he was a hypochondriac and he

reportedly

said that he had been cast with mustard

gas

when he was in world war one because

apparently he had been

a soldier in world war one and also

speaking of which his photo of him

in the 1950s ish he looks

like a proper serial killer whereas

i've seen timothy and

quite handsome chap yeah he looks mostly

confused

yeah more handsome than the rugged

handsome

officer neville heath who was

handsome and rugged and handsome

he looked like a troglodyte timothy

not a bad looking fella no not really no

he looked wicked but also john christie

looked like a serial killer

in the photo because he was 1950s

because he was

obviously but also his eyes are like

creepy

but he was saved by conjugate hip hip

[Music]

because he was like oh my god the

mustard gas in world war

one made me both deaf and mute

and then he was like yeah didn't know

about this

three years later he was like i can't

only speak in

whisper tones i can't raise my voice

i can only speak in swahili

yeah he was thinking at all he's

speaking

of whispers because i've been

mustard gassed it affected my voice

as such that i can only whisper

i can see why you were chosen

for live performances

obviously that's psychosomatic

but also it's funny because he was like

oh i'm such a

fresh child old man

i've never done anything and then he was

a [ __ ] serial killer

so i've got some points on the inquiry

i don't know if you looked into that at

all what was the inquiry

so later on after

christy had been found guilty there were

two inquiries into

whether there had been a miscarriage of

justice

in sentencing timothy

to death one of them was conducted

by a chap called henderson

he looked at all of the evidence that

was

available at the time to the jury

and any evidence that had come forth

afterwards such as the conviction

and evidence against christie the

esteemed

mr henderson he might have been a sir

found

that there were no grounds

at all to consider any

reasonable doubt that timothy

might not have been guilty so he

upheld the conviction and i spent

about an hour reading through

a commons debate between a bunch of

politicians

that was like oh the right honorable

gentleman is wrong

or the right honorable gentleman

insults this right honourable gentleman

the right honorable gentleman that's

insulted is

misinterpreted the right honorable

gentlemen

but basically in the midst of all of the

right honorable gentlemanism they came

to

the conclusion that there were five

points in the original conviction

that could be questioned number one

is that timothy did not report

his dead wife after coming home from

work

now if you were innocent you'd do that

right

yeah but also abortion was

illegal back then oh you mean if beryl

had died from the abortion process

which he thought that she did because

john christie had tried to convince them

that he had the medical knowledge of

doing an abortion okay that makes sense

yeah

number two is that the timesheet

of the workmen that were working in

the wash house went missing

number three is that the defense

lawyers so timothy's lawyers

were convinced of his guilt

and therefore did not push

for certain pieces of evidence to be

presented in court such as

the seminal fluid recovered in barrels

veggie vag say vagina a genie

no say vagina [ __ ] sake i'm just gonna

have a problem cutting this the shoe

shoe

did you read anything about the i

haven't finished yet i've got

three more points made okay i'm with you

okay

yeah for [ __ ] sake stop

[ __ ] interrupting me vagina

stop shouting it i'm sensitive

stop encouraging me i'm not encouraging

you

you're encouraging you

you're doing this to yourself

i need to pee

i'm over it i'm over it that's fine it's

totally fine

number four was supposedly the judge

during the trial gave a biased summary

to the jury

so when you've got a jury at trial

before the judge sends off the jury to

come to their decision he's meant to

give a summary

of all of the evidence that's been heard

both prosecution and defense

in this case apparently i haven't read

it myself

the judge gave a skewed

opinion which favored the prosecution so

in the jury's mind

they were already linking the evidence

in the prosecution's favor rather than

defense

and the final point is that

given that christie was a

main prosecution witness in timothy's

trial

the jury would have had a predisposition

to

favor someone of intellect which

was exacerbated and played upon

by the prosecution team against

timothy's lower iq in 1966

timothy evans received the royal pardon

i've got a couple more points on the

first inquiry so when they were looking

at the first inquiry that was conducted

by henderson

there was a lot of debate about

a lot of the findings one of the

politicians was looking through the

report

and said there's a number of assumptions

that you have to work on

to be able to support the conviction

that was given

the first assumption is that there are

two killers working with the same

modus operandi you then have to assume

that these two killers were

in the same house a floor apart

but were working independently and

in ignorance of the other you then have

to

assume that one of these people

killed six victims and one of these

people

killed only one two no he was only

charged for one he wasn't charged for a

barrel

oh yeah you then have to assume that it

was

complete chance that evans

wrapped the body in the exact same way

that

christy wrapped his victims and then you

have to assume

that it was complete chance that during

the trial

evans accused christie of the murders

now when you put all of those together

that's a ridiculous amount of

assuming that needs to be involved

for it to be plausible that christie

committed

all of his crimes that he confessed to

and was also

linked to and that evans

committed the crime of murdering

geraldine

and also beryl that he wasn't convicted

for

so just on that basis alone it's

ridiculous

it's impossible yeah yeah they went on

to say

during the trial so they took into

account evan's confession

which said that both beryl and geraldine

had been hidden behind the sink

in the wash house behind a bunch of

timber and that they've both been

strangled

when that was questioned the chief

inspector

at the time said that he did

not disclose any of this information

to timothy evans when interviewing him

then they interviewed his second in

command

who when asked did chief

inspector jennings state that the bodies

were hidden

behind the sink he said under oath

yes sir then when he was asked did chief

inspector jennings

disclose that the bodies were hidden

behind

the timber framing he replied under oath

yes sir so the confession

which supposedly contained information

that only the murderer would know was

divulged by the chief inspector

when deliberately questioning timothy

evans

to try and get a confession out of him

the

final point about the inquiry was that

the defense lawyers that were hired

by timothy's mother i think it was

and sister or sister-in-law there were a

couple of people that were close family

that

had hired the lawyers to represent them

for the inquiry

to start with that defense lawyer had

been giving a date

by the prosecution that he was to

attend court and he was fine with that

he was happy with it he turned up

and they said actually they changed your

court day

it's a different day now so the defense

lawyer then missed out

on i think it was three days of the

inquiry

yeah that's like in harry potter yeah

when they change it to

that morning and then it just has to

turn up oh my god

so the defense lawyer i think his name

was gil

i'm gonna call him gil so gil asked the

court to see the evidence

from the days that he missed and the

days that he was

not allowed to attend this was refused

by mr henderson the person conducting

the inquiry seven gill said that he

wanted

access to timothy evans original

statements

and all of the transcripts from

the original trial and mr henderson

refused

so then gill said okay so i want to call

some defense witnesses so mr henderson

said

okay that's fine but you

mr gill are not allowed to question them

directly

you have to submit your questions

to me mr henderson and i will

choose whether to ask them or not

what yeah [ __ ] so there was a

massive debate in the house of commons

as to whether henderson's

inquiry was valid or not and obviously

given what you said earlier they managed

to get it to a second inquiry

which managed to redact the sentence

on timothy but also an independent

assessor of the home office said that

the conviction of

timothy evans is now recognized to have

been one of the most notorious

if not the most notorious miscarriages

of justice and that's the case it's also

interesting

that this case was used

very heavily in the argument for

abolishing

capital punishment in the uk so thanks

timothee

you stopped us all from getting

decaffeinated definitely

yes what are you gonna do now hmm

probably sleep i thought that i should

do a board game little dance

make a little love get down tonight

with our listeners how does that work

with video suzanne and liam

joe and the others are the russian bots

i don't get it maybe we should do a

board game night

maybe we should have a strip poker night

could do that and then put it on patreon

yeah exactly or only fans

midweek murders only fans

okay thank you so much for listening to

this week's episode

of midweek murders we'll see you next

week

bye bye are we going yeah i think so

oh okay see you never

See you not soon!

[Music]

Topics
  • John Christie
  • Timothy Evans
  • Beryl Evans
  • Geraldine Evans
  • overturned convictions in the United Kingdom
  • people wrongfully convicted of murder
  • wrongful executions
  • 1940s murders
  • English serial killers
  • true crime
  • UK
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