Bodies in the Back Garden--True Stories of Brutal Murders Close to Home

by Cawthorne Nigel

  Christie had shared the cramped Victorian house with Jamaican-born Beresford Brown and his wife, and other tenants. There was a flat on each of the three storeys. The address was already famous for the 1949 murder of 19-year-old Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine. Beryl’s husband Timothy was hanged for their murder the following year. The Browns had moved into the Evans’s top floor once it became vacant.

  In March 1953, Christie quit Rillington Place. He had sub-let his ground-floor flat to a Mr and Mrs Reilly, saying that he was moving to Birmingham. His wife, he said, had gone on ahead. When the landlord found out that Christie had illegally rented the place to sub-tenants, he told them to move out and gave the Browns permission to use the downstairs kitchen. There was no possibility of using the rest of the flat and Christie had left behind piles of rubbish.

  Over the next few days, Brown began to tidy the place up, dumping armfuls of old clothes and other rubbish beside an old washhouse in the back garden. Then he began work on the kitchen. First, he wanted to put up a bracket to hold a radio set so he could listen to music while he worked. He tapped what he took to be the back wall and found it was hollow. When he stripped away the wallpaper, he found no wall there at all. It was merely the door to an alcove that had been papered over.

  When he opened the door and shone his torch through the crack, he could not believe what he was seeing. Dropping the torch, he ran to the second floor to fetch Ivan Williams, the tenant who lived there. Together, they went back downstairs; Brown then picked up the torch and shone it into the alcove.

  They saw a shocking sight. Sitting on top of a pile of rubbish was a partially clothed woman’s body. She was wearing a white, cotton pique jacket fastened with a safety pin, a blue bra, stockings and a pink suspender belt. Brown ran to get the police.

  When detectives arrived at 10 Rillington Place, they found not just one body in the alcove, but three. A second was wrapped in a blanket attached to the first by the bra straps. Behind them was a third, covered in the same way (an old woollen one), tied at the ankles with some plastic flex. All three women had been strangled.

  By the early hours of the next morning, 25 March, the body of a fourth woman was found under the floorboards in the front room. She was identified as Christie’s wife Ethel. The police called a halt for the night. An officer was posted outside the house; a guard would remain there for the next few weeks.

  The following day, detectives started digging up the tiny back garden at Rillington Place, where Christie grew runner beans. They found the skeletons of two more women. Medical tests showed that they had been buried for approximately ten years. Leading pathologist Dr Francis Camps said that both had been strangled. The skull of one woman was missing.

  In the press, Scotland Yard announced that this was ‘the most brutal mass killing known in London’. They wanted to interview one ‘vital witness’ named John Reginald Halliday Christie, and they issued the description of a slight, balding, middle-aged man. Football crowds were asked to report any sighting at once, and Christie’s face appeared in every national newspaper. It seemed incredible that another series of murders had occurred at the same address where Timothy Evans had killed his wife only four years before.

  John Reginald Christie was born on 8 April 1898 in Black Boy House, Halifax. His father, Ernest, was a pillar of society; a designer for Crossley Carpets, he was also a founder member of the Halifax Conservative Party and a leader of the Primrose League, an organisation promoting purity among the working classes. He was also the first superintendent of the Halifax branch of the St John Ambulance.

  Christie’s mother Mary was known as ‘Beauty Halliday’ before her marriage. She was keen on amateur dramatics.

  One of seven children, John was his mother’s favourite. He was terrified of his disciplinarian father. ‘We almost had to ask if we could speak to him,’ he wrote later. But Christie had another problem in the family – he found himself completely dominated by his older sisters.

  Christie was a good pupil at school and sang in the choir. After school hours, he was a Boy Scout and later became an assistant Scout Master. When he was eight, his maternal grandfather died. Christie felt the trembling sensation of both fascination and pleasure at seeing the body.

  After leaving school, Christie started work at the Gem Cinema in Halifax. One day, he and some friends went down the local lovers’ lane known as the ‘Monkey Run’. They paired off. Christie found himself with a girl much more experienced than him. Intimidated by her, he could not perform. Word got round and his friends started taunting him as ‘Reggie-No-Dick’ or ‘Can’t-Do-It-Reggie’.

  At 17, Christie was caught stealing and was sacked. His father banned him from the house; he had to sleep on the allotment and his mother would take him food.

  He drifted from job to job until he was called up for service in the First World War. Sent to France, he was gassed and was sent home with a disability pension.

  On 20 May 1920, he married the long-suffering Ethel Waddington. The following year, working as a postman, he was caught stealing money from letters and was jailed for nine months. Two years later, he was bound over for posing as an ex-officer and the court put him on probation for violence. Probation did not help; the following year, he served another nine months for theft. His wife then left him.

  In 1929, he was sentenced to six months’ hard labour for attacking a prostitute and, after yet another spell in prison for stealing a car from a Roman Catholic priest who had befriended him, Christie wrote to Ethel, asking her to have him back. Foolishly, she did.

  They moved to London. When they visited Ethel’s family in Leeds, Christie spoke of his ‘big house in London’ with servants. But he never earned over £8 a week, the going rate for a junior clerk. They lived in a shabby little flat in north Kensington and there were no servants.

  Just before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Christie became a Special Constable. He seemed to be a reformed character, but he was never popular. Locals feared his petty-mindedness. Christie and another unpopular Special Constable were known as ‘the rat and the weasel’.

  Although he was losing his hair, Christie still saw himself as a charmer, but his basic hatred of women was plain. ‘Women who give you the come-on wouldn’t look nearly so saucy if they were helpless and dead,’ he said. Christie took pride in concealing his violent intentions from the women he took back to 10 Rillington Place, until it was too late.

  His first victim was Austrian-born Ruth Fuerst. She worked in a munitions factory, but the pay was poor and she supplemented her income with a little prostitution.

  Christie met her while trying to trace a man wanted for theft. She asked him to lend her ten shillings and Christie invited her home. One hot August afternoon in 1943, while Mrs Christie was away in Sheffield, she called again at 10 Rillington Place.

  Christie held back from sex on this occasion, but Fuerst encouraged him. Once intercourse was over, he strangled her. Christie said he felt a great sense of peace after he had murdered her and was fascinated by the beauty of her corpse. He wanted to keep her, but his wife returned home unexpectedly and he had to bury her in the back garden that night. This had to be done stealthily as the communal lavatory was out there.

  Despite this, Christie compared his first murder to an artist’s first painting. ‘It was thrilling because I had embarked on the career I had chosen for myself, the career of murder. But it was only the beginning,’ he said later.

  Christie quit the police force at the end of 1943. He went to work at the Ultra Radio Works in west London, where he met Muriel Eady. She suffered from catarrh and he said he had a remedy. One afternoon in October 1944, she came round to 10 Rillington Place and he showed her what he said was a patent inhaler. In fact, it was nothing more than a jar with perfumed water in it. There were two holes in the lid with rubber tubes attached. Unbeknownst to Muriel, one of them was connected to the gas pipe.

  Christie persuaded her to inhale through the other tube
, confident that the perfume would cover the smell of gas. As she lapsed into unconsciousness, he had sex with her, then strangled her. Christie was delighted at the thought that his second murder was so much cleverer than his first. All his careful planning had paid off. She, too, was buried in the garden. It was an area less than 20ft sq.

  At Easter 1948, Timothy and Beryl Evans moved into the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place. Evans had been born in Merthyr Vale on 20 November 1924. He never knew his father, who had walked out of the house one day and was never seen or heard of again. Timothy Evans was educationally backward and had a speech impediment. In his early years, he could not pronounce his own name. His schooling was further held back by a foot injury which led to long spells in hospital.

  Some years after her husband’s disappearance, Timothy’s mother obtained a certificate saying that he was presumed dead. In 1929, she married again and, during the Depression, the family moved to Notting Hill where, in 1947, Timothy married a local girl, Beryl Thorley.

  Evans, then 24, had seen the ‘To Let’ sign outside 10 Rillington Place while living with his mother and stepfather. Beryl was pregnant and the couple needed a place desperately, so they took the cramped attic flat.

  On the floor below lived railwayman Charles Kitchener. He kept himself to himself; his eyesight was failing and he was often away in hospital. The ground floor was occupied by John and Ethel Christie.

  The Evanses and the Christies got on well. Ethel was fond of the baby and looked after Geraldine when Beryl went to her part-time job.

  In the summer of 1949, Beryl fell pregnant again. There was little money coming in and they were behind on the hire-purchase payments. Beryl wanted an abortion. Timothy, a Roman Catholic, forbade it. But Beryl was just 19 and did not want to be tied to a home and family. She was adamant and found that there was a back-street abortionist in the Edgware Road who would do the job for £1.

  When Christie heard of her plans, he told Beryl that he could help her out. He could perform an abortion on her in the house. Later, he approached Timothy Evans, who said that he had not realised Christie knew anything about medical procedures. To convince him, Christie offered to show him one of his medical books. It was the first-aid manual of the St John Ambulance Brigade. Evans, who was barely literate, knew no better. He was impressed by the pictures.

  On 8 November 1949, or the day before, Evans came home to find Christie waiting for him with bad news. The operation had not been a success, Christie said. Beryl had died.

  Christie begged Evans not to go to the police. He would be charged with manslaughter as Beryl had died during an illegal abortion. Evans wanted his mother to look after the baby, but Christie said he would find someone to look after the child. When Evans returned from work on 10 November, Christie said that Geraldine had been taken to a couple in East Acton who would look after her.

  Christie helped Evans sell off his furniture. With £40 in his pocket, Evans headed off back to Wales. But he could not get the fate of his young wife out of his mind. As a Catholic, he should have prevented her going through with the abortion. If he had, she would still be alive. Tormented with guilt, he walked into Merthyr Vale police station and confessed.

  At first, Evans thought he could take the blame without implicating his friend Christie. Evans told the police that he had been given a bottle containing something that would cause a miscarriage by a man he met in a transport café. Although he did not mean to give it to his wife, she found it when he went out to work. When he returned, she was dead. He opened a drain outside the front door and dropped his wife’s body down it.

  The Merthyr Vale police contacted the station at Notting Hill. They sent officers to 10 Rillington Place. It took three of them to lift the manhole cover. The drain was empty. Back in Merthyr, Evans’s statement was challenged. A detective told him he could not possibly have lifted the manhole cover himself. Evans made a second statement, this time implicating Christie. He said that Christie had performed an illegal abortion on his wife. She had died and, together, they had disposed of the body.

  Police searched Rillington Place, but not very meticulously. They did not even notice the thighbone of Muriel Eady propped against the garden fence. But what police did find was a stolen briefcase, and Evans was arrested.

  Christie went to the police station and made a statement about the Evans’s domestic quarrels. Beryl, he said, had complained of her husband grabbing her by the throat. The police believed him. After all, Christie was a former policeman himself.

  The house in Rillington Place was searched again. This time, the police found the body of Beryl Evans wrapped in a green tablecloth behind a stack of wood outside the washhouse; the body of baby Geraldine was found behind the door. Both had been strangled. Beryl’s right eye and upper lip were swollen and there was bruising to her vagina. To the police, this confirmed it was a simple ‘domestic’.

  Evans was brought back to London. He made a statement saying he had strangled Beryl with a rope and put her in the outside wash-house after the Christies had gone to bed. Two days later, he had strangled the baby and put her body in the outhouse.

  He was charged with the murder of both his wife and his daughter, but the Crown only proceeded with the murder of the baby. There could be no excuse for such a crime.

  The trial took place at the Old Bailey in January 1950. In the witness box, Christie denied taking part in the abortion and said that he had been ill in bed on the day of Beryl’s death. He apologised to the judge for speaking softly, but he said this was because he had been gassed in the First World War. The court was also told of his service as a Special Constable, giving the impression that he was a solid citizen and that his word was not to be doubted.

  Evans gave his evidence poorly. His allegation that Beryl died during an illegal abortion performed by Christie held no water as she had been strangled. And he had no possible explanation for the death of the baby. The jury was out for only 40 minutes. The verdict was guilty; the sentence – death by hanging.

  To the end, Evans maintained that Christie had killed both Beryl and Geraldine and there was some public disquiet about the verdict. A petition with 18,000 signatures was sent to the Home Secretary, but he would not grant a reprieve and Evans was hanged on 9 March 1950.

  Christie had got away with it. But on 14 December 1952, Christie said he was awakened by his wife Ethel going into convulsions. By now, she was elderly and arthritic. Christie decided it would be a kindness to put her out of her misery and strangled her.

  For two days he kept his wife’s body in the bed, then he pulled up the floorboards of the front room and buried her under them. He claimed that her loss caused him pain. They had been married for 32 years.

  For the next four months, Christie went on a sex and murder spree. Kathleen Maloney was lured into his flat to pose for nude photographs. Her body was shoved in an alcove in the kitchen. Rita Nelson had just found out that she was pregnant when she visited 10 Rillington Place on 12 January 1953. She did not leave alive.

  Christie had more trouble with Hectorina MacLennan, his final victim. He met her in a café and offered her a place to stay. But he was surprised when she turned up with her boyfriend. They stayed at Rillington Place together for three nights. On 6 March, Christie followed them to the Labour Exchange. While her boyfriend was signing on, Christie persuaded Hectorina to come back to the flat.

  Christie had given her a drink and offered her a whiff of his inhaler. She did not like it. There was a struggle and he strangled her; then he had sex with her after she was dead. He bundled her body in the alcove with Kathleen Maloney, propping her in a sitting position with her bra hooked to Maloney’s leg. Soon after, he moved out.

  Once Beresford Brown had found the bodies in the alcove and others had been found under the floorboards and buried in the back garden, the hunt was on.

  The day he left 10 Rillington Place, Christie had booked into Rowton House, (now the Mount Pleasant Hotel), in King’s Cross Road for se
ven nights. But he soon moved on, wandering uneasily back and forth across London. There were numerous reported sightings of Christie; few were genuine. On 19 March 1953, at around 11.00pm, the chief crime reporter of the News of the World, Norman Rae, received a phone call.

  ‘Do you recognize my voice?’ the caller asked.

  Rae did. He had met Christie before, in 1950, during the murder trial of Timothy Evans.

  ‘I can’t stand any more,’ Christie said. ‘They’re hunting me like a dog.’

  In return for a meal, a smoke and a warm place to sit, he said would give the News of the World an exclusive. Rae warned him that, afterwards, he would have to call the police. Christie agreed and they arranged to meet at 1.30am, outside Wood Green Town Hall.

  Rae parked outside the Town Hall, away from the street lamps, opened the car door and waited. Christie approached. Then, purely by chance, two policemen on their beat happened by. Thinking he had been betrayed, Christie ran off.

  Two days later, PC Thomas Ledger saw a man leaning over the embankment near Putney Bridge, possibly contemplating suicide. When Constable Ledger approached him, he said he was John Waddington of 35 Westbourne Grove. But the young officer recognised him and asked him to turn out his pockets. One contained a 1950 newspaper cutting of Timothy Evans’s murder trial. The hunt for Christie was over.

  Christie made detailed confessions and provided a variety of explanations for the killings − the prostitutes had forced themselves upon him and things had got out of hand; his wife had had to be put out of her misery; Muriel Eady and Beryl Evans had also been mercy killings.

  At his trial, Christie pleaded not guilty by virtue of insanity. But he could not disguise the fact that he had extensively planned the killing of his victims; he had constructed a special apparatus to gas four of them.

  The jury found Christie guilty and the judge sentenced him to death. There was no appeal. The only problem the law had was the conviction of Timothy Evans for the murder of his wife Beryl – a murder to which Christie had now confessed. A formal inquiry was set up, which found that two murderers had been operating in 10 Rillington Place – and that Christie had told the truth at Evans’s trial but had lied at his own. Christie was hanged at Pentonville Prison at 9.00am on 15 July 1953.