Inside 10 Rillington Place: John Christie and me, the untold truth

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Thorley, who has investigated the crime with Lea for the past 35 years, argues that Christie knew Evans had killed Beryl and Geraldine and helped him to hide the bodies, but never turned him in because he had his own secrets in the house. He added: ‘They decided to not build anything on this land and it’s not listed as contaminated, but as a memorial garden.’ August 2020 brought with it the publication of a new book entitled Inside 10 Rillington Place. Far from being ‘just another’ book to add to the many already written upon the whole subject, this constituted a historical watershed in that the writer was none other than Beryl Evans’s youngest brother Peter Thorley.

In 1961, Kennedy published a book about the case and on October 18, 1966 Evans received a royal pardon exonerating him of the murder of Geraldine but not Beryl.Richard Attenborough was offered the lead by Leslie Linder while preparing his film Young Winston. Attenborough wrote "It’s difficult to describe Leslie Linder. As Johnny Redway’s ex-partner, he was an agent, and he was also a restaurateur: at the same time he was an impresario, a film producer, a keep-fit fiend, and a man bursting with creative ideas." Attenborough was attracted by the role in part because there was a push to reintroduce the death penalty. [3] In October 1944, Christie found his second victim, a work colleague named Muriel Eady. According the the Plymouth Herald, Eady had been suffering from bronchitis, and Christie lured her to 10 Rillington Place with the promise of a special cure. When he was eight years old, Christie’s grandfather passed away. Christie later cited the moment of seeing his grandfather’s dead body in a casket as life-changing. Here was a man who had scared him, now nothing more than a body. After that, Christie said corpses held a “fascination” over him. Shortly after his arrest in 1953 the place was renamed Runton Close in a bid to shake off the past. But Notting Hill was a grotty, rat-infested slum at the time, not to mention the home of a serial killer, and no name change was going to solve the problem.

Three years later, John Christie was still living in the same apartment complex when the landlord let another tenant use Christie’s kitchen. There, a grisly discovery was made: three bodies hidden in the pantry. John Christie was born on 8 April 1899 in Northowram, near Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire, [3] [4] the sixth in a family of seven children. He had a troubled relationship with his father, carpet designer Ernest John Christie, an austere and uncommunicative man who displayed little emotion towards his children and would punish them for trivial offences. John was also alternately coddled and bullied by his mother and older sisters. On 24 March 1911, Christie's grandfather David Halliday died aged 75 in Christie's house after a long illness. Christie later said that seeing his grandfather's body laid out on a trestle table gave him a feeling of power and well-being; a man he had once feared was now only a corpse. [5] In yet another contradictory statement, when asked by the police if he was responsible for the murders, Evans allegedly said, “Yes, yes.”

Eddowes, John The Two Killers of Rillington Place, p. xvi considers Kennedy's Ten Rillington Place and a newspaper campaign run by the editor of the Northern Echo as being effective in maintaining the view that Evans was innocent after the Scott Henderson Inquiry. The book is not without its errors, mainly as to matters of more minor detail, but a little disappointing nonetheless; it is understood that this was at least contributed to by an inordinate degree of intervention by copy editors for the publisher leading up to the final text which resulted in mistakes being introduced or indeed reintroduced despite correction in earlier drafts. And so, just as his detailed confession made apparent, it really does seem that Evans indeed did strangle to death his young pregnant wife and his infant daughter – the latter crime for which he was tried and convicted – and for which he suffered the only penalty available under the law of the day. Painfully for her youngest brother, no conviction in respect of Beryl’s murder was ever obtained. The police were called and after an examination of the property, three more bodies were found under the floorboards of his apartment. Investigators also found the body of Christie’s wife, Ethel.

Gammon, Edna (2011). A House to Remember: 10 Rillington Place. Memoirs Books. ISBN 978-1-908-22338-8. A huge fight erupted towards the end of 1949 and Peter Thorley told his father about the bruises he had seen on his sister. On November 30, he went to a Merthyr Tydfil police station where he told the police he had killed his wife. Christie gave evidence against Timothy Evans at the Old Bailey in 1950 and Evans was found guilty and hanged. It seems odd that Christie should have said hair came from the bodies in the alcove if in fact it had come from those now reduced to skeletons; not very likely that in his last four murders the only trophy he took was from the one woman with whom he did not have peri-mortal sexual intercourse; and even more odd that one of his trophies had definitely not come from any of the unfortunate women known to have been involved. [119]

Lusher, Adam; Rimmer, Alan (9 April 2006). "My father deserved to be hanged by Pierrepoint". The Daily Telegraph. Elder, Robert K. (1 June 2013). The Best Film You've Never Seen: 35 Directors Champion the Forgotten Or Critically Savaged Movies They Love. Chicago Review Press. p.247. ISBN 978-1-61374-929-6. This uncertainty led to a second inquiry, chaired by High Court judge Sir Daniel Brabin, which was conducted over the winter of 1965–1966. Brabin re-examined much of the evidence from both cases and evaluated some of the arguments for Evans' innocence. His conclusions were that it was "more probable than not" that Evans had killed his wife but not his daughter Geraldine, for whose death Christie was responsible. Christie's likely motive was that her presence would have drawn attention to Beryl's disappearance, which Christie would have been averse to as it increased the risk that his own murders would be discovered. [132] Brabin also noted that the uncertainty involved in the case would have prevented a jury from being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Evans' guilt had he been re-tried. [133] These conclusions were used by the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, to recommend a posthumous pardon for Evans, which was granted, as he had been tried and executed for the murder of his daughter. [134] [135] Jenkins announced the granting of Evans' pardon to the House of Commons on 18 October 1966. [135] Evans' remains were subsequently exhumed and returned to his family, who arranged for him to be reburied in a private grave. [134] There was already debate in the United Kingdom over the judicial killing. Evans' execution and other controversial cases contributed to the 1965 suspension, and subsequent abolition, of capital punishment in the United Kingdom. [136]