Doctors Who Kill

by Davis, Carol Anne; Davis, Carol Anne

  A miserable childhood

  John Reginald Christie, who later became known by his middle name of Reggie, was born on the 8th April 1898 to a passive mother and a strict disciplinarian of a father. He was terrified of the latter, who beat him for such supposed infractions as eating a tomato without permission and rocking backwards and forwards on a park bench. His father, a carpet designer who was also First Superintendent of the St John Ambulance Brigade, became increasingly irate with the frail boy and bestowed his favours on his other six children instead.

  Reggie hated his older sisters as they bossed him around and he feared his grandparents, but was pleased when his mother’s father died and he was able to view the old man in his coffin. He began to fantasise that everyone who ill-treated him would become similarly lifeless and he spent most of his spare time at the local graveyard. As a result of this, and his excessive hand-washing, the other children considered him odd.

  The Christies were deeply religious and, outwardly, Reggie appeared equally puritanical, but he had the sexual desires of a growing boy – desires that he believed to be wrong. He was particularly perturbed when he looked at his sisters and felt lustful, particularly as he despised their dominant personalities. Love and hate were becoming entwined in his confused young mind.

  At fifteen, he left school and became an assistant cinema operator, as he had a love of film and photography and an intrinsic understanding of machinery. He began dating a girl he met in church, but, when he attempted to have sex with her, he lost his erection. She told her friends and he became known, humiliatingly, in the locality as Reggie No Dick. At eighteen he joined the army but remained an outcast, taking his landlady’s baby out in its pram whilst his comrades had fun in the pub. To outsiders, he was a shy youth with high colouring, the type of boy that you’d happily take home to mother, but inwardly he seethed with lust and rage.

  Prostitutes

  At nineteen, Reggie began to use prostitutes and may well have continued to do so when posted abroad to France. The young soldier was knocked unconscious by a shell and was so traumatised that afterwards he could only speak in a whisper. He would later exaggerate his injuries in order to get sympathy, telling acquaintances that he’d gone blind.

  By the time he was twenty-one, he’d left the army and returned home to Halifax, where he began to date his neighbour, Ethel Waddington. They married the following year, though he struggled to consummate the marriage and often failed at subsequent attempts at intercourse. Soon he returned to prostitutes. However, he struggled to afford his regular visits to call girls from his mill worker’s salary so retrained as a postman. Unable to resist temptation, he stole money orders from his mail sack, was caught and sentenced to seven months in prison.

  Separated

  The next few years saw Reggie become increasingly embroiled in crime. He left his wife with relatives in Sheffield and moved to London, ostensibly to make his fortune. But, in 1924, he was sent back to prison for two counts of larceny. On his release, he set up home with a prostitute, living off immoral earnings but, in 1929, he attacked her brutally with a cricket bat and was sentenced to six months’ hard labour. In 1933, he went back to jail for stealing a car from a priest who had befriended him.

  At this point, Reggie wrote to his wife from prison and suggested that they make a fresh start. By now, she hadn’t seen him for nine years and she was bored and lonely, so acquiesced. The couple set up home in London but it was soon clear that marriage wasn’t helping Reggie to cope with life and he spent many hours at his doctor’s surgery, complaining of numerous imaginary ailments. His sympathetic GP prescribed sedatives and sleeping pills.

  In December 1938, Reggie and Ethel Christie moved to 10 Rillington Place in London’s Notting Hill. Though the end-of-terrace had three floors, it was very small. The Christies had the basement flat, the first floor housed an elderly gentleman and the top floor was unoccupied when the couple arrived.

  Reggie joined the War Reserve Police as a special constable (they didn’t check to see if he had a criminal record) and completed two first aid courses. Later he would pretend to have superior medical training…

  The first known murder

  Whilst working as a policeman, Christie befriended a young nurse called Ruth Fuerst who supplemented her income by selling sexual favours. In the same time frame, he was beaten up by a soldier for trying to have sex with the man’s wife. Christie hated being a victim and was determined to take his rage out on someone, but he feared other men and their anger so decided to vent his wrath on the unsuspecting Ruth.

  In August 1943, she accompanied him back to Rillington Place (Christie’s biographer, Ludovic Kennedy, claimed that the killer had probably used his policeman status, threatening to report her if she didn’t submit to him), where he strangled her on the bed, causing her to defecate and urinate. Undaunted, he stripped the bed and had sex with her corpse.

  That same day, a telegram arrived from his wife to say that she was returning from visiting relatives and would be home that evening, so the killer put Ruth’s corpse under the floorboards. He subsequently buried her in the garden rockery and would later admit that he never thought about her again.

  The paper mask

  John Reginald Christie now found himself attracted to 39-year-old Muriel Eady, who worked alongside him at an electronics firm. He knew that she would never sleep with him so pretended that he had a medical background and could cure her catarrh.

  Muriel trustingly arrived at 10 Rillington Place one morning in October 1944 (she had previously socialised with Ethel Christie so had no reason to doubt Reggie’s motives) and he held an inhalation device over her mouth and nose. At first, she was just inhaling Friar’s Balsam, but when he released a bulldog clip on the tube, she also began to inhale gas that was coming from the gas point. As she lost consciousness, he strangled her and had sex with her still-warm body – he was able to spend a lot of time with it as his unsuspecting wife was again away visiting relatives in Sheffield. He buried Muriel’s body in the garden, close to the previously buried corpse.

  Reggie now began to encourage neighbours and acquaintances to call him ‘the doc’ and was always keen to suggest solutions for their minor health problems. As a middle-class man living in a working-class area, it was easy for him to sound knowledgeable and he told them that he’d had medical training in the army and the police.

  The abortionist

  In March 1948, new neighbours moved into the upstairs flat: Timothy and Beryl Evans. Timothy was a 25-year-old van driver who had the mental age of a ten-year-old and Beryl was expecting their first baby. She gave birth to a girl, Geraldine, and went back to work part-time, helped by her family and a babysitting friend.

  In the autumn of 1949, Beryl confided in Reggie ‘the doc’ Christie that she was pregnant again and had no idea how she’d cope. She’d have to give up her job and they’d never manage to pay the bills, plus, at nineteen, she wasn’t ready to become a mother for the second time. Christie told her about his supposed years at medical school and offered to abort the foetus. Desperate, Beryl agreed.

  Christie also showed Timothy his first aid certificates and said that, before the war, he had been training to be a doctor. He showed the illiterate Timothy his first aid manuals and the younger man looked at the pictures and was suitably impressed.

  On Tuesday, 8th November, Timothy went to work and Ethel Christie went out for the day, after which Reggie ascended the stairs to the Evans’s flat, carrying a piece of rubber tubing. She lay down on a quilt and he attached the tube to the gas pipe and put the tubing to her face. The teenager panicked and began to struggle, whereupon Reggie hit her about the head and strangled her with the rope he had secreted in his pocket. He subsequently had sex with her corpse. He was horrified when her babysitter came round and rattled the door handle, but the woman assumed that Beryl was angry with her for some reason and went away.

  Reggie waited for Timothy Evans to come home from work then showed him hi
s wife’s corpse, which was bleeding from the nose, mouth and genitals. He said that she had died during the abortion, and that he would now dispose of the corpse down the drain. Timothy, who had an IQ of 67 (as opposed to Reggie’s 128) didn’t ask for details of exactly how this disposal would be carried out.

  The following night, Reggie told Timothy that he had given his baby, Geraldine, to a couple who wanted to adopt her. He coached Timothy to tell everyone that Beryl had taken the baby to visit her father in Brighton. In reality, Christie had strangled the little girl – she and her mother would later be found in the wash house of 10 Rillington Place.

  The killer then persuaded Timothy to go and stay with relatives – but the young man missed his daughter so much that he returned to Rillington Place and asked to be put in touch with the couple who were supposedly caring for her. By now, Timothy’s relatives were equally concerned about the child’s disappearance, as they had telegraphed Beryl’s father and the man had replied that Beryl hadn’t visited him.

  They questioned Timothy in depth about his wife and child and he couldn’t supply them with a satisfactory answer, so they threatened to write to other relatives in an attempt to find out what was happening. Out of his depth, Timothy decided to go to the police. He determined to implicate himself as he was terrified of implicating Reggie, a former policeman, who had warned him that the police looked after their own kind.

  Walking into Merthyr Vale Police Station, the police station closest to his family, he told the astonished desk detective, ‘I have disposed of my wife.’ When asked how, he said, ‘Down the drains’, the disposal method that Christie had told him he would use.

  Asked to make a statement, Timothy said that a man in a cafe had sold him abortion pills, which he’d duly given to Beryl, but that she had died and he’d pushed her, head first, down the drain. He’d taken his baby to ‘be looked after’, then visited his relatives.

  The police went to the drain at Rillington Place and found that they needed three strong men to lift the manhole cover – and that the drain was empty. They told Timothy this and he was deeply shocked, and made a subsequent statement implicating John Reginald Christie.

  Reggie was brought in for questioning, but, as a former policeman and a man from a good family, he gave a much better account of himself than the bumbling Timothy. He dismissed his upstairs neighbour as a fantasist, something that others who knew Timothy had also told the police.

  Detectives also questioned Ethel Christie but her husband had briefed her well and she told them that Beryl had gone elsewhere for an illegal abortion. They now searched the wash house and found the corpses of Beryl and little Geraldine. They told a stunned Timothy that they had found both bodies and arrested him for the murder of his wife and child. He was shocked to hear that Beryl had been strangled as this contrasted with the abortion story Reggie had fed him and which he’d believed completely. He was also absolutely devastated to hear that his baby, whom he had doted on, was dead.

  Fitted up

  Before long, the police were telling the media that Timothy Evans had confessed and they produced his supposed verbal statement, but, for a man who could neither read nor write, it contained the unlikely phrase ‘She was incurring one debt after another’ and referred to ‘false pretences’ and ‘no fixed abode’ – terms more frequently used by the police than by a man who was seven years old before he could even pronounce his own name. Timothy later told his mother that the police kept him awake until 5 a.m., badgering him to confess.

  By that time, it’s likely that the young man would have said anything in order to get some sleep. He apparently told detectives that he’d locked the wash house (it didn’t have a lock) and that he’d strangled his baby, although he couldn’t explain why. He’d carried her body and that of his wife to the wash house – an impossible task given that he was small in stature and only weighed ten stone, whilst his pregnant wife weighed nine. He had apparently moved the body down both flights of stairs without making a sound, as neither of the Christies awoke.

  Later, when Timothy had rested, he said to his mother, ‘I didn’t do it, Mam. Christie done it. Ask him to come and see me. He’s the only one who can help me now.’

  Trial

  On 11th January 1950, Timothy Evans’ trial began at the Old Bailey. Reggie took the stand as the Crown’s chief witness, describing the layout of the house and suggesting that Timothy was an angry young man who frequently rowed with Beryl. Whenever he was asked about something that might incriminate him, Reggie’s voice faded to a near-whisper and, when he was urged to speak up, he said that his vocal cords had been damaged by gas poisoning in the war. This naturally assured him the sympathy of the court.

  The defence suggested that Reggie had committed both murders but he denied this and talked at length about his health problems. Why, the jury doubtless wondered, would a sick man with chronic back pain want to murder a young woman and her baby? In contrast, Timothy was an unsympathetic figure, who apparently couldn’t cope with domestic life.

  Timothy claimed that Reggie had told him that Beryl died during the abortion, and that he had helped the older man to carry his wife’s body to another flat in the building as the owner was in hospital. Reggie had volunteered to look after the baby the following day whilst Timothy was at work, and had subsequently told him that a couple in East Acton were fostering the child. His relatives had later questioned him about the whereabouts of his wife and daughter, whereupon he’d gone to the police.

  Timothy explained his confession to the double murder by saying that he feared the police would beat him up – one of the detectives had terrified him by playing the role of ‘Bad Cop’ during his interrogation. He also said that, having been doubly bereaved, he felt that he had nothing left to live for, so was indifferent to being hanged.

  No one was surprised when the jury took only forty minutes to return with a unanimous guilty verdict and he was sentenced to death. Timothy was stunned – but Reggie, perhaps feeling guilty, burst into tears.

  Guilt

  In the days that followed, John Reginald Christie genuinely seemed to be distraught that an innocent man would die for his crimes. He stopped eating, lost weight and returned to his doctor’s surgery, where he wept and complained that his nerves were bad. He was prescribed a stronger sedative and advised to have a holiday with his wife. He did so, and, on his return, was given a medical certificate for a month off work. Yet, despite his guilt, he did not go to the authorities and confess to the murders, so Timothy Evans was duly hanged.

  For the next two years, the Christies remained at Rillington Place, though the house had a change of landlord. The new landlord was Jamaican and let the other rooms to black tenants, something that offended Reggie’s racist sensibilities. His nerves worsened, his health declined further and he stopped attempting to have intercourse with his wife. His doctor sent him to see a psychiatrist, who concluded that he was a latent homosexual and deeply neurotic. He wanted to treat Reggie as an inpatient but the man declined.

  A domestic murder

  On 6th December 1952, the mild-mannered man, who had been working as a clerk, handed in his notice, saying that he had found a better job in Sheffield. Just over a week later, on the 14th, he strangled his wife with one of her own stockings as she slept. He left her there for three days, and then hid her under the floorboards of the front room, sprinkling floral disinfectant around the area every day.

  Reggie now invented story after story to explain away his wife’s disappearance. He told some people that she was visiting relatives, and told others that she was caring for her sister who had just had a gynaecological operation. He also showed them a telegram that Ethel had ostensibly sent.

  Deep down, however, the killer, having given up work, was not waving but drowning and running out of cash. He sold his furniture in order to have money to live off and forged Ethel’s signature so that he could raid her savings book. Then he went out to the pub, determined to meet a woman for sexual releas
e.

  A prostitute’s murder

  In mid-January, Reggie met up with 26-year-old streetwalker Kathleen Maloney. He’d previously taken photographs of one of her friends after persuading her to take off her clothes. Now he made some excuse to get Kathleen back to Rillington Place, where he put his medical apparatus over her face and gassed her. When she became drowsy, he strangled her and had sex with her corpse. Afterwards, he pulled away a large cupboard to reveal an alcove, put her body there and covered it with ashes, then slid the cupboard back into place.

  The abortionist strikes again

  That same month, Reggie met 25-year-old waitress Rita Nelson. The young woman was single, seven months pregnant and had recently left her native Belfast; she knew no one in London and was frightened of the impending birth and motherhood. Reggie told her that he was an abortionist and she accompanied him back to his flat, where he persuaded her to inhale gas. She broke free and struggled, but he strangled her and had necrophiliac sex before putting her body in the alcove next to Kathleen’s corpse.

  The one that got away

  His medical ruse was working well, so the unemployed clerk continued to use it. He promised a woman he met in a cafe, Margaret Forrest, that he could cure her migraines by getting her to inhale a certain type of gas. He would make no charge for this and his wife would make her a nice cup of tea. When she questioned his qualifications, he said that he was a doctor who had been struck off for performing an illegal abortion but that he still enjoyed curing the sick. Margaret made two appointments for the treatment but failed to turn up, a move that undoubtedly saved her life.