John Reginald Halliday Christie

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John Reginald Halliday Christie (Halifax, West Yorkshire, April 8, 1898 – London, July 15, 1953) was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and '50s. He was arrested, tried and hanged in 1953, having previously been involved in one of the most sensational murder trials in British legal history, in which his tenant Timothy Evans was accused of the murders of his own wife and child, and subsequently convicted of and executed for the murder of the baby; some critics have speculated that Christie actually committed the murders and framed Evans for it. While neither Christie's guilt nor Evans's innocence in these particular crimes (as opposed to Christie's other murders) have ever been conclusively proven, the case sparked massive public outrage, contributed to the suspension of the death penalty in Britain in 1964 (it was later abolished outright), and remains controversial to this day.

1 Early life
2 Murders
3 Controversy
4 External links
5 See also
6 Bibliography

[edit] Early life

Born in April 1898 and raised in Yorkshire, Christie was abused by his father and dominated by his mother and sisters. His one happy childhood memory, at the age of 8, was seeing his grandfather's corpse as it lay in state in the family home; he felt powerful in front of the dead, helpless body of a man he had once feared. By the time he reached puberty, he already associated sex with death, dominance and violent aggression, rendering him impotent unless in complete control. His first attempts at sex were failures, branding him as "Reggie-No-Dick" and "Can't-Make-It-Christie" throughout adolescence. He was a good student, particularly skilled at detailed work, and it was later found he had an IQ of 128.

Christie enlisted as a signalman in World War I, during which he was hospitalized after a mustard gas attack, claiming to have been blinded. No record of his supposed blindness exists, however; in 10 Rillington Place, considered the definitive Christie biography, author Ludovic Kennedy wrote that Christie, a hysteric since childhood, exaggerated his blindness, as well as the three-year period after the attack in which he was mute, as a ploy to get attention.

Christie married 22-year-old Ethel Simpson from Sheffield, on 10 May 1920. It was a dysfunctional union, as Christie was impotent with her and frequented prostitutes. Friends and neighbours gossiped that she stayed with him out of fear. They separated after four years, when Christie moved to London and Ethel lived with relatives.

His convictions included three months imprisonment for stealing postal orders while working as a postman in April 1921, nine months in Uxbridge jail in September 1924 for theft, six months hard labour for hitting a prostitute (with whom he was living at the time) over the head with a cricket bat during an argument in May 1929, and three months imprisonment for stealing a car in 1933 from a priest who befriended him. Christie and his wife reconciled after his release in late 1933, but he did not reform, continuing to seek out prostitutes to relieve his increasingly bizarre, violent sexual urges, which included necrophilia.

On the outbreak of World War II, he joined the police force and was accepted, despite his criminal record. Assigned to Harrow Road Police Station, he enjoyed the new respect his position gave him and was hard working and efficient. He also began an intimate relationship with a woman working at the police station whose husband was a serving soldier. This lasted until December 1943, when he resigned and got another job. The husband caught them in the act and beat Christie up.

[edit] Murders

Christie's first known victim was a mistress, Ruth Fuerst, whom he impulsively strangled during sex in August 1943. In October the following year, he murdered a workmate, Muriel Eady, by promising to cure her bronchitis with a "special mixture," a gas he had concocted which contained carbon monoxide that would render a person unconscious; once Eady was knocked out, Christie choked her to death, and raped her when dead. It was a ritual Christie would compulsively act out for the rest of his life.

Christie was the ground-floor tenant of 10 Rillington Place in North Kensington, London, where he and his wife had lived since December 1938. He buried both Fuerst and Eady in the building's communal garden plot. Timothy Evans and his wife, Beryl, moved into the top-floor flat in April 1948, and six months later she gave birth to a daughter Geraldine. A year passed without any apparent incident, but in November 1949, she became pregnant again, but feared that they could not afford another child. According to Christie's later confession, he promised the couple that he could abort the baby.

On November 8, he used his "special gas" to incapacitate Beryl, whom he strangled and raped postmortem. When Evans returned from work that night, Christie told him his wife had died during the procedure and that they had to hide the body to avoid prison, as abortion was, at the time, illegal in England. Christie then convinced Evans, whom Kennedy describes as a gullible man with an IQ of 70, to stay with a relative in Wales and leave Geraldine in his care. Evans later said that he returned to the flat several times to ask about Geraldine, but Christie had refused to let him see her, saying that it was too soon to take her back.

On November 30, Evans went to the police in Merthyr Tydfil and confessed to accidentally killing Beryl by giving her "abortion pills," and then disposing of her body in a sewer drain. He told the police that, after arranging for Geraldine to be looked after, he had gone to Wales. When police examined the drain, however, they found nothing. When re-questioned, Evans said that Christie had offered to provide an abortion for Beryl. Evans had returned home from work on November 8 to find Beryl dead. He said Christie then disposed of the body and made arrangements for some people to look after Geraldine while Evans laid low.

During a search of 10 Rillington Place, on December 2, 1949, the police found the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine hidden in the wash house in the back garden. Both had been strangled. When Evans was shown the clothing taken from the bodies of his wife and child, he was asked whether he was responsible for their deaths, and said "Yes". He now confessed to having strangled Beryl during an argument over debts on November 8, and strangling Geraldine two days later, after which he left for Wales.

This confession, along with other, contradictory statements Evans made during the police interrogation, is often cited as proof of his guilt, although Kennedy writes that the interrogation he underwent was brutal and manipulative. In any event, Evans recanted, and the case went to trial. Christie was a key witness for the prosecution, and was instrumental in Evans being found guilty. Evans was hanged on March 9, 1950.

Christie was sacked from his job from the Post Office Savings Bank, which he had held for the previous four years, due to the disclosure of his theft offence at Evans's trial. He sank into deep depression and lost 28 pounds. He remained unemployed until finding a clerical job in September 1950 with British Road Transport services where he stayed until early December 1952, when he resigned, claiming he had found something better and that he would be moving to Sheffield with his wife early in the new year. In reality he had found nothing. It appeared that by now he had lost control of his urges.

On 6 January 1953 he sold all his furniture to a dealer. He also sold his wife’s wedding band and watch. Without a bed, he slept on a mattress on the floor. All he had left were three chairs — one of which was quite significant to him — and a kitchen table. To get money, he forged his wife's signature on an account she had had and emptied it. He was also claiming unemployment benefit.

By this time he had murdered his wife, which he did on the morning of 14 December 1952. In the first three months of 1953 Christie murdered three other women. His final murder, of Hectorina Mclennan, took place around March 3. Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place on March 20, 1953. He defrauded a couple who took up residence, by taking 3 months rent money from them, when he was not authorised by the landlord of the property. They were forced to move out within 24 hours. A few days later, a new tenant discovered the bodies hidden in a wallpapered-over coal cellar in the kitchen. A nationwide manhunt ensued on March 25. It ended on the morning of March 31 when Christie was arrested at Putney Bridge after being challenged by a policeman. Christie had somehow successfully evaded arrest for a week.

Christie's flat was cold, and the bodies of the dead women had been preserved quite well. Around their teeth, their gums were pink, and pathological tests later revealed Carbon Monoxide in their bodies.

While in prison, Christie confessed to murdering all the women found in the cellar, as well as Beryl Evans. His trial began on Monday 22 June 1953, coincidentally on the same stand as Evans. He tried for the insanity plea but the prosecution stated that although he may have had sexual perversions, that didn't mean to say he was insane. The jury agreed and after retiring for 22 minutes found him guilty of murder on June 25. He was found guilty of murdering his wife.

Christie said on 29 June that he would not appeal against the death sentence and the Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe said on 13 July that he would not grant him a reprieve. Some MPs tried to postpone the execution in order that Christie would talk more about the murders but this failed also. Christie was hanged at 9am on July 15, 1953.

Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1966.

[edit] Controversy

While Christie neither confessed to nor was convicted of killing Geraldine Evans, public opinion widely found him guilty, casting serious doubt onto the fairness of Evans's trial and execution. Christie, after all, had been a key witness against him; if he did kill Geraldine, then Evans was executed on the basis of perjury. Kennedy thinks it unlikely that two strangler-murderers were living and killing in the same apartment building at the same time, and cites the fact that Beryl's rape had been suppressed at trial; other critics cite Evans's confession, volatile temper, and motive of wanting to dispose of an unwanted pregnancy. To date, there exists no definitive evidence to prove or disprove either theory.

In 1970, the movie 10 Rillington Place was released, based largely on Kennedy's book, starring Richard Attenborough as Christie and John Hurt as Evans. Some of the film was made in Rillington Place itself (renamed Ruston Close after Christie's execution), using a similar neighbouring gaslit property, shortly before the entire street was cleared for redevelopment.

It is highly unlikely that the truth regarding the events of November 1949 will ever be known.