Timothy Evans
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Timothy John Evans (November 20, 1924 – March 9, 1950) was a young man, possibly mentally retarded, who was hanged in the United Kingdom in 1950 for the murder of his infant daughter. Events subsequent to his execution, including a book proclaiming his innocence and a pardon for his daughter’s murder, led to abolition of capital punishment in Britain.
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[edit] Life prior to the murder of his wife and daughter
Evans was a native of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. In 1935 his mother and her second husband (Evans's natural father walked out on the family just after Timothy's birth) moved to London and he found work as a painter and decorator. At the time of his arrest, he was working as a lorry driver - no small feat for somebody who was illiterate.
On September 20, 1947, Timothy married Beryl Susanna Thorley. At Easter 1948, the couple moved to the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place, North Kensington, London. Their daughter Geraldine was born on October 10, 1948.
It is not disputed that Evans was prone to tell elaborate, fantastic, and generally harmless lies about himself - lies which tended to constitute a form of bragging designed to defend a rather fragile ego. He and Beryl were also given to having loud arguments which could be heard by the neighbours.
[edit] Events leading to Evans' arrest
On 30 November 1949, Evans went to the police in Merthyr Tydfil and confessed to killing Beryl and disposing of her body down the drain outside the apartment building. He said that he had given his wife some “abortion pills” and that she died after taking them. He told the police that afterwards he had made arrangements to have his daughter Geraldine looked after, and had returned to Wales.
When police examined the drain they found nothing. When re-questioned, Evans told a different story. He now claimed that his neighbour and fellow tenant, John Reginald Halliday Christie, had offered to provide an abortion for Beryl. Evans had returned home from work on 7 November to find Beryl dead. He said Christie then disposed of the body and made arrangements for some people to look after Geraldine while Evans lay low with relatives in Wales.
During a search of 10 Rillington Place, on 2 December 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. He replied with a simple “Yes.”
Evans now confessed to having strangled Beryl during an argument over debts on 8 November 1949, and to having strangled Geraldine two days later, after which he left for Wales.
[edit] Evans' trial and execution
Evans went on trial at the Old Bailey in January 1950. The court heard evidence related to both killings, although Evans was officially charged only with the killing of his daughter. During the trial, he reverted to his earlier story that his neighbour Christie was the actual killer. The jury found Evans guilty of his daughter’s murder and he was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint and Syd Dernley on 9 March 1950.
[edit] Discovery of evidence which cast doubt on Evans' conviction
Three years later, a new tenant in Christie's flat found the bodies of three prostitutes hidden in the kitchen pantry. A further search of the building and grounds turned up three more bodies, including Christie’s wife. Christie was arrested on March 31, 1953, and during the course of interrogation confessed to killing Beryl Evans. He denied killing Geraldine Evans, however. Christie was found guilty of murdering his wife and was hanged on July 15, 1953.
Christie’s conviction, and his confession to Beryl Evans’s murder, raised questions about the execution of Timothy Evans three years earlier, but a brief inquiry at the time found no reason to doubt Evans’s guilt in the murder of his daughter.
[edit] The campaign to overturn Evans' conviction
Journalist Ludovic Kennedy wrote a book about the case, 10 Rillington Place, and he and barrister Michael Eddowes fought to clear Evans's name. Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1966. The outcry over the Evans case contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in the UK.
On 16 November 2004, Timothy Evans's half-sister, Mary Westlake, started a case to overturn a decision by the Criminal Cases Review Commission not to refer Evans's case to the Court of Appeal to have his conviction quashed. She argued that although the previous inquiries concluded that Evans probably did not kill his daughter, they did not declare him innocent, since a pardon is a forgiveness of crimes committed. The request to refer the case was dismissed on November 19, 2004, with the judges saying that the cost and resources of quashing the conviction could not be justified, although they did accept that Evans did not murder his wife or baby.
[edit] Timothy Evans in popular culture
- Ewan MacColl wrote the song The Ballad of Tim Evans (also known as Go Down You Murderer) about the case.
- A film of 10 Rillington Place directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Richard Attenborough as Christie, Judy Geeson and John Hurt as Timothy Evans was released in the UK on May 12, 1971.
